Ideas Thread: for Transformers 2...

This movie was a ridiculous bloated mess, but I felt there were some redeemable parts scattered throughout. I felt that if the majority of the distracting crap could be cut, then we could have a pretty good action movie on our hands. Preliminary thoughts:

Skids and Mudflap have GOT TO GO! I just cringed every time they were on screen.

I actually thought the little deception was kind of funny, but I’m probably in the minority here.

Cut out most of the goofy humor

The final action sequence went on WAY to long. I really stop caring about what was going on pretty quickly

Sam and his Dad’s interaction late in the film was actually one of the only touching moments in the film. I thought it gave the character some real depth.

Devastator scrotum has to go

use of Green Day’s 21 guns was totally out of place in such a gung-ho, campy action movie. The whole song is about “laying down your arms” and “giving up the fight” which doesn’t fit at all.

CUT CUT CUT. WHole scenes can go that had no story relevance. Also the whole part about the Deceptions having to kill Sam and get the shards made no sense. It ended up being about the matrix and The railguns anyway.

I think this movie is RIPE for a fan edit... most of the scenes of the bad jokes and the Twins (who weren't really useful to the story at all, and the one place they were could be easily enough explained away as a cracked wall)... could be easily snipped out.

Frankly, I'd rather see MORE scenes slowed down. Too much fast, blurry footage for my taste (same complaint with the first movie). Maybe subtly slow it down during some of the fights, like 4% or something. I can buy that the massive robots are capable of speed, but I want to be able to SEE the action and tell who is who... which can only be done in a few scenes when he either pulls back or slows it down.

I'm really looking forward to a "resparked" version of TF2:ROTF.

Heck, I'd shell out and buy BOTH movies on DVD to get a great edit (or two) out of this.

Turning both movies into a single film? Or like a two part episode of a TV show? Fantastic!

I can't wait...

PS: Please cut out the little decepticon not only humping the leg (nevermind the humping dogs), but his stupid line about "you're pretty hot, but not too bright..." Sorry, but I don't buy it that an evil alien robot will use earth slang to himself that indicates he considers an overly made-up model (who is supposed to be 20 years old, but looks more like 25) to be attractive!

Some of the humor can stay, but the Twins and most of the sex/toilet humor can be trimmed and the movie will improve!

Please PLEASE tell me Reave is going to do a "Resparked" version of Revenge of the Fallen.

There's a good movie in there, somewhere. What I'd remove/cut down:

Sam's mom.

The roomate intro/computer crap

The Twins. As in, COMPLETELY remove. They are completely useless.

Much of the "humor" with Simmons and the roomate.

Much of the "humor" with Wheelie and Jetfire.

The dog humping.

Tighten the battle scenes

Slow down the two big Prime fights

I definitely like the idea of a leaner cut of TF2 without the dog humping. I actually liked the movie enough that I'd be happy to see it again as-is, but it definitely should have been at least 30 minutes shorter. There's plenty of frivelous junk and maybe an action scene that could easily be cut out while still keeping it coherent. I think that this movie has tons of potential for fan edits, so I look forward to seeing what people do with it.

Also, while I like the idea of editing Soundwave's voice to give him the classic vocoder sound, aside from that I'd be pretty leery of trying to "fix" any of the other robots to be more G1-like. Even if it were technically possible to recolor or modify certain characters to look more like the G1 versions without making it look sloppy, it doesn't really seem very constructive to me. Ideally, a fan edit should be able to take a hard look at a movie, and cut or rearrange stuff without sentimental bias, with the end goal being a film that is better. Trying to put a G1 filter on the robots seems more like an oldschool fanboy nitpick to me than it does an actual improvement. Personally, I like the robot designs in the movies just fine for the most part (except for the twins since they look like retardicons), and I think that at best, making them look more like the G1 versions would be a sidestep in quality. The only real change I would make (besides filtering Soundwave's voice) would possibly be getting rid of the whole "split personality" gimmick on Arcee. If there was a way to make her appear to be just one bike and one robot, I think that would be an improvement since it didn't really make much sense in the original cut.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens with this. I enjoyed this movie a lot already, but if given the right cuts I think it could easily be on par with the original 2007 Transformers film. Also, if there's any way someone could make a 1080p HD fan cut using the Blu-Ray as the video source, that would kick ass!

Personally, I don't m ind a little goofiness... But there was just way too much in this movie, and a lot of it was way too crude. Seriously, how can they add characters like The Twins and claim "they're there for the kids," and then have show two dogs humping? I mean, parents were gasping about the masturbation convo in the first movie, but this movie made that scene seem G-rated by comparison.

My ideal cut wouldn't be a totally de-humored version, but rather something that manages to be similar to the first movie. The first movie IMHO had a good balance of humor, action, and drama, whereas the sequel was excessive in everything but the latter.

There's plenty of stuff to edit from this movie, but I know that when I get around to doing my edit, I will be keeping 100% of the Twins and Wheelie.  Really, outside of the forrest scene they are the best thing in the movie (Ms. Fox's looks not withstanding).

I will definitely be cutting the very beginning, some of the college stuff, some of the military stuff, and much of the desert stuff.

Also with the "robot heaven" thing, I don't really have a problem with the idea, because I realize it's not "robot heaven."  I do have a problem with how the scene looked however.  I have an idea of a possible way to remove it, but it will take some looking into once I get the blu-ray.

Excelsior Prime said:

Please PLEASE tell me Reave is going to do a "Resparked" version of Revenge of the Fallen.

 

My beef with the "Resparked" version of Transformers is that it kind of stripped the human characters of a lot of their personality and character development, and it in general seemed to have a lot of contempt for the humor in the movie since so little of it was left in. I do not mind the fact that the Transformers movies are funny, I just think that most of the adult and bathroom humor in the movies shouldn't be there, and I think that Transformers 2 was about 30 minutes longer than it should have been (in addition to having more than a few plot holes, inconsistencies, an downright annoying moments). I know some people simply hated the human characters and Michael Bay's sense of humor altogether, so I suppose Resparked is more for them, but there are a lot of people (myself included) who overall liked the movie as-is, but were disappointed by the fact that Revenge of the Fallen was bloated, unfocused, and had a more sophomoric and inappropriate sense of humor.

I don't want a cut of Transformers 2 that's going to strip it of any personality-- I just want one that's shorter, coherently paced, more age appropriate (no humping, man thongs, robot scrotums, etc.), and has the presence of the twins reduced drastically. I've only seen the movie once so I'm sure there's more stuff I could nitpick through that I'd like to see changed, but overall I think a successful edit of the movie's goal should be to make it feel more in line with the 2007 movie, not to completely remove the humor and push the humans into the background.

Timstuff said:

Excelsior Prime said:

Please PLEASE tell me Reave is going to do a "Resparked" version of Revenge of the Fallen.

 

My beef with the "Resparked" version of Transformers is that it kind of stripped the human characters of a lot of their personality and character development, and it in general seemed to have a lot of contempt for the humor in the movie since so little of it was left in. I do not mind the fact that the Transformers movies are funny, I just think that most of the adult and bathroom humor in the movies shouldn't be there, and I think that Transformers 2 was about 30 minutes longer than it should have been (in addition to having more than a few plot holes, inconsistencies, an downright annoying moments). I know some people simply hated the human characters and Michael Bay's sense of humor altogether, so I suppose Resparked is more for them, but there are a lot of people (myself included) who overall liked the movie as-is, but were disappointed by the fact that Revenge of the Fallen was bloated, unfocused, and had a more sophomoric and inappropriate sense of humor.

I don't want a cut of Transformers 2 that's going to strip it of any personality-- I just want one that's shorter, coherently paced, more age appropriate (no humping, man thongs, robot scrotums, etc.), and has the presence of the twins reduced drastically. I've only seen the movie once so I'm sure there's more stuff I could nitpick through that I'd like to see changed, but overall I think a successful edit of the movie's goal should be to make it feel more in line with the 2007 movie, not to completely remove the humor and push the humans into the background.

Age appropriate for who?  As far as I'm concerned it's age appropriate for 0-120.  And I disagree about the plot hole part.   Pretty much all of the plot holes people have brought up are easily explained if one uses their noggin a bit.  But I do agree some of the humor is too corny or over the top, or just goes on too long.  And it does meander a bit the last hour or so. 

I agree in part with you criticism of Resparked.  There were some moments that I personally found humorous that were cut out in Resparked, and so I left them in my own edit of the film.  Humor is subjective, and is probably the biggest place people will differ in their opinions about what should be cut.  That said, there was plenty of human moments in the first film that needed to be cut significantly, mostly consisting of the computer analysts and military guys.  There are also a lot of lines that serve no purpose, provide nothing extra, or just repeat what was already said.  My edit I just completed cuts out approximately 20 minutes from the theatrical version, and I hope to get it to someone to see shortly.  I will be doing an edit of ROTF as well and will probably cut out more than 20 minutes from that as well, but that's primarily because it's a longer movie.  On the whole I found it to be a better crafted movie than the first was, but still with obvious flaws.

doubleofive said:

Kevinicus said:

Age appropriate for who?  As far as I'm concerned it's age appropriate for 0-120.  And I disagree about the plot hole part.   Pretty much all of the plot holes people have brought up are easily explained if one uses their noggin a bit.  But I do agree some of the humor is too corny or over the top, or just goes on too long.  And it does meander a bit the last hour or so.

Well, I for one felt VERY awkward in the first movie when they stop a scene to have a discussion on masturbation in front of my 9 and 14 year old brothers.  And the scenes in the second with the Deciptiwhore trying to seduce Shia would be the same, along with the random pot brownies.  I think both movies have several examples where "fun for the whole family" becomes awkward really fast.  Pixar seems to know how to make movies that appeal to both children and adults, and you don't see such a wide variety of senses of humor in it.

I guess I just don't see why that has to be awkward for anyone.  I have no problem with kids hearing "swear" words or sexual innuendo.  I see no point in babying kids, it does them no good.  But if it's not something you want to hear, oh well.

Well the official DVD comes out in less than a week. Can't wait to see what the editors can do with it!

Kurgan said:

Well the official DVD comes out in less than a week. Can't wait to see what the editors can do with it!

And the DVD (and BD) are out today... let the editing commence!

I would have started by now, but as it stands I need to purchase a AnyDVD HD license in order to get it on my computer.  I can't afford that right now so I'm waiting for another software to work (I have the Blu-Ray, if it was the DVD I'd have no problems). 

I have skimmed through the first 25 minutes or so and made mental notes of what to cut and how difficult it would be to work with.  So far it seems like I can make significant changes without having to work too hard, so that's good.

Kevinicus said:

I would have started by now, but as it stands I need to purchase a AnyDVD HD license in order to get it on my computer.  I can't afford that right now so I'm waiting for another software to work (I have the Blu-Ray, if it was the DVD I'd have no problems). 

I have skimmed through the first 25 minutes or so and made mental notes of what to cut and how difficult it would be to work with.  So far it seems like I can make significant changes without having to work too hard, so that's good.