With the story of the Alias writers off to keep busy on Mission: Impossible 3 for a while, Coming Soon has asked what will happen with Transformers of the two writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci:
“‘Transformers’ is very tricky, because it’s a movie based on a toy line,” Kurtzman told us, when asked about how hard it might be to turn the Hasbro toys into a feature film. “The first question you have to ask yourself is what’s the movie? We sat down with Steven Spielberg, and we said that the action scenes in this movie are a given, but he said that that it’s the story of a boy and his car and that he wants to bring back the old Amblin movies. It’s ‘Back to the Future’…If you start ‘Transformers’ with giant robots sitting in a spaceship flying through space, your movie is dead in the water. It’s all about keeping it at a human level, and seeing the amazing things that are going on through the eyes of the characters.”…
…”The staple characters: Optimus Prime, Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave, Starscream, Jazz,” Kurtzman replied. “There’s going to be a lot of them. You’re going to have ten Transformers in that movie, and if that’s not enough, you can go see 2, 3, 4 or 5.”
“The meat and potatoes are going to be in there,” writing partner Robert Orci continued. “We’re just missing the premise for the sequels.”
They still believe that Michael Bay may be directing the movie, but they do have to hand in the script before he makes a final decision.
Wow there’s a lot of information there. Basically it looks like Transformers is looking superb so far. They aren’t not going to just focus on a CGI based robot movie, but centralise the story around the human aspect. Not to mention that they’re thinking about the whole ethos of Back to the Future in these movies.
Bay is still involved as far as the writers understand it, and the question is what would Bay make of the idea above, could he carry off successfully? Overall this sounds really promising with the characters, proposed storyline and the franchise idea, the question still stands though…is Bay still the best bet considering the direction? Frankly if they’re looking at a Back to the Future and a humanised feel I don’t see Bay pulling this off…he’s all robots and big bangs!
I agree transformers is and has never been just about a toy line. Where do you think they got the toy line from. I am excited about the movie coming out. With steven spilberg it’s always good. I also thought that this qoute could end differently. “If you start transformers with giant robots sitting in a spaceship flying through space,”… you would be doing a good job in following the original story line and people could relate and you’d have a freakin awesome movie.” X-men and most other comic or cartoons turned to motion pitures are all good but in it’s own way bad. For example. X-men … Ice man is supposed to be an adult not a young boy like the in the movie x-men. Ice man is originally from the first generation of x-men. And rogue didn’t get her white streaks from magneto, she was naturally like that…that’s just not right. To much of a change in the storyline is not good. People are going to hate it. If you start transformers with giant robots sitting in the middle of a street that’s just way off…Cybertron is the city of autobots….I hope you directors and/or writers start with that. Or why don’t they just start with orion pax becoming prime. Well I hope they don’t screw up like most game movies and cartoon movies and comic movies that have come out in the recent years. Mortal combat sucked why because liu kang wasn’t liu kang. Radien wasn’t radien, sonya wasn’t sonya, i don’t know x-men lots of the characters had to much of a change in character as far as story and back ground wise. Sabertooth doesn’t look anywhere close to the comic character…a red and yellow beast with fur not a trench coat and black eyes. Iceman a young boy…totally off rogue and how she got her white streaks …off. …etc etc. Please do a good job you have two more years.
I like the fact that it appears some actual thought is going into the project. I do agree with Mantiss about the toy line comment. The Transformers were far from just a toy line. I hope that the genre as a whole is considered and we get a well plotted fun movie.
The only thing in there I didn’t like was his statement about Transformers being based on a toy line. Though some of the Tv shows incarnations were admittedly poorly done. Some of the original storylines were great and more than big screen worthy. I just hope they don’t pull images and names and then rewrite the whole world that a great anime show was based on.
Did anyone else think this quote was going to end differently?
“If you start ‘Transformers’ with giant robots sitting in a spaceship flying through space, your movie is […]” going to be frickin’ awesome!
I think it could work. The writers are some good ones and people are saying that The Island is the best Bay movie yet. It has a real story , not some cheesy crap. Maybe this could keep that trend going.