Fit For Natalie

Possibly, depending on what material is used. For flexible durability, they usually use Polyamide(PA), also known as 'unpaintable plastic'. http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Unpaintable_plastic

What Golden Arms said was: He said 'fans' as apparently referring to all fans. I countered with the fact not all fans hated this movie and it did not suck for them. Tell me, how is that argument 'stupid'? You must have misunderstood. Eh, I've nothing to say to the rest, because I am well aware of the limitations of the movie, its many faults, Bay's arrogance and general assholism, the various claims to the contrary and mistakes in the film (which I've been mocking lately), yet I can still enjoy it. As for changed styles - Transformers is ever-evolving, that's how it is generally the top western robot franchise and how it manages to avoid the stagnation of the later years of Generation 1 when the fad started to die out. It's not that well known if one hasn't paid attention, but Transformers has been doing very well for the past 6 or so years with this strategy. (If I understand you correctly, I assume mean you've not met a single G1 fan who likes anything outside of G1) it appears you've not hung around one of the major Transformers boards or been to a convention, because there are plenty of 'old school fans' who liked the movie, loved Beast Wars and love other non-G1 TF series. Hell, I am an 'old school fan'. Beast Wars is considered one of the finest Transformers fictions ever made and paradoxically the future of G1... and its beginning.

MP Starscream is 'meant' for collectors', but Hasbro basically flogs it to everybody. For example, they never specifically targeted collectors for Alternators, because there was too small market for them to risk such an expensive line upon (apparently they sunk over a million dollars into developing it because at the time Hasbro was funding Transformers development while Takara was lingering on it's death bed). The excuse for the black hinges I already explained that it's likely they made some other/i] parts somewhere else black, which had the result of making the hinges on the same sprue black.

Funny, there's this bunch of other fans who thought the movie was great.

Australia is currently in woe. We've recently spent about six billion dollars on 24 yet-to-be-delivered Super Hornets as an interim fighter to plug any gaps that might occur between the retirement of our F-111s and the (distant) delivery of the F-35s. Four Corners, a current affairs type programme on the government-owned network, aired an episode on monday detailing Australia's conundrum as politics interferes with our usually 'intelligent purchases', making us spend alot of money on fighters that nobody else wants to replace fighters it can't hope to match for our long-range requirements, or match the fighters that are being fielded by our neighbours. We have no carriers, either. Of interest are tactical simulations showing a formerly secret plan from 1999 to attack Indonesia with a handful of F-111s. The same analysts later run the modified simulation using the Super Hornets versus Indonesia's Su-30s, showing the limitations of the Super Hornet for our requirements. Video links on the right side (hopefully they work for foriegn visitors): http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s2070484.htm Opinions?

I meant that the hinges are black (most likely) because they are part of another sprue of parts that Hasbro has made black for aesthetic purposes and the wing hinges were the trade-off. This entirely sprue was hull-coloured on Takara's Starscream. Now, this means a bunch of parts on Starscream that were once hull green are now black. Find them, and you find the sprue companions of the hinges. Well, in most Transformers Hasbro doesn't specifically cater to collectors, since that's a kind of a small and relatively unimportant market, so they go with colour schemes they think will appeal to kids and/or fits the theme of the toyline, but occassionally do G1 colour schemes as nods to the adult fans and/or because it simply fits the toy.

Surely you guys have heard of gang-molding parts, right? Likely, the hinges are on the same sprue as another part that Hasbro changed to the same colour. Likely, look for a part on Takara MP SS that was once green that is now black on Hasbro MP SS, and you'll have your answer. I'd say Hasbro is more imaginative than say, Takara is. Imagination is a good thing when making a children's toyline, and exemplified in the fact Hasbro is the company actually having success with Transformers.

After Prime kills Bonecrusher, he would have also killed Barricade (possibly by throwing him into a support pylon). It was cut from the movie, but was left in the comic book and other mediums based upon earlier scripts. Writer Roberto Orci said they're leaving his fate open for the sequel.

Since they didn't show Barricade being killed by Prime, I hope Barricade gets his rematch with the shiny new Bumblebee. SALEEN S281 EXTREME VS 2009 CAMARO WHO WILL WIN?!?!?!?

So who's gonna buy Starscream?

What's wrong with Primus, Unicron and... whomever you were talking about? They enrich the culture of Cybertron by giving the Transformers religion and beliefs other than just being 'toy robots who fight'. They were a great idea. Unless you were looking at it from a strictly G1 cartoon perspective, or viewing the TFs merely as toys, or from a Japanese fan perspective. For the latter even TakaraTomy have officially incorporated the Primus creation mythos into their multiversal continuities in line with Hasbro's. Besides, who doesn't want to own transforming robot toys of God and the Devil?

Compared to the tv show, yes, but that film didn't go down very well with audiences. Granted, it was due to the fact they killed off Prime and co, but as it is, the 2007 TF movie is rather intense for the traditional Transformers target audience already. In a way, it is the medium's fault but also the audiences' fault. Today's audience wants to be bedazzled by CGI while cel-animation is seen as 'old fashioned'. The problem CG movies have now is bad storylines choked with random stars who were loitering around the studio lot at the time. Simon Furman tends to disagree with you - he prefers the second season because they were building backstory, their own mythos (which they generally left alone in season 1) and strong character stories. Season 2 was why he was so adverse to the G1 cartoon when he was writing the UK Marvel comics, partly because he was concerned that he wasn't presenting the characters 'as intended'.

Yeah, and I disagree with them. So does my dog. And my cat. And the guy who drives the home ice cream truck around my neighbourhood, and my local member of parliament who's running for re-election and needs my vote and will agree with whatever I say. HA! Not only you can drag up random people who support your point of view! 1. It doesn't matter which continuity it is, as I was using it as an example of humour in Transformers being extremely broad. B. Pissing and farting are both similarly lowbrow and funny depending on who's doing it to who. Z. (FFN couldn't think of anything funny to say here) Gazebo. 10. And other people thought it was funny! Probably because it's a movie based upon a franchise that overwhelmingly caters to children and families, and Bay stated from the outset that he wanted to do a 'family movie'. No doubt Steven Spielberg and Hasbro had such an influence too, no matter what Bay boasts. Violence generally isn't Transformers' forte when it comes to moving-picture media, I'm observed. Oddly, The Island is one of his better movies in terms of critical acclaim, even though its largely ripped off from another movie. Didn't Disney's last cel-animated movie bomb? Granted it wasn't terribly good... Then we would have recieved poorer quality CGI, or late delivery of their work. Essentially, only ILM had the experience and resources to tackle such a project.

Transformers has HEART AND MAGIC... whatever the hell that means!

I've decided that 'HEART AND MAGIC' will be Bay's new meaningless catchphrase, at least for myself.

I expect to be called a mindless stooge or a sheep soon. This one one problem genre fans have compared to the rest of the population: You already know Transformers, you know who they are, where they came from and what their motivations are. Previous Transformers storylines were either targeted very specifically at kids (Buy the robot toy now!) or adult fans of the franchise already (Obscure character appearance most people can't remember). Meanwhile, the movie is targeted at as wide an audience as possible because, naturally, they want to make alot of money. As such, the story presents the humans (and to a lesser extent, Prime) as the main characters with the Transformers as supporting characters, presumably to better appeal to an audience of mostly non-fans. And yes, there have been episodes and storylines of Transformers where Spike and Carly or Buster or Rad or Coby were the main characters while the Transformers. Nothing wrong with that, so long as it's decently presented, and I thought it was, particularly the scenes with Lennox's men and Sam. However, I tend to agree Maggie and Glen were superfluous. Rachael Taylor was good to look at, though. And I disagree. Rhinox totally humiliated Megatron by defeating all the Predacons by flatulence. That episode was awesome. It's funny. What's wrong with it being funny? Transformers takes itself less seriously than fans do. And I shall continue to mock anybody who feels personally insulted over a movie they didn't like.

Not pointless because fans want to see this continuity's Cybertron and they need to tell people why they're here.

The thing that makes the All Spark's mass shifting more 'acceptable' to the audience is that it's a mysterious, mystical Plot Device from God, plus the scene is well-visualised so people didn't laugh when it became small enough for Bumblebee, then Sam, to hold. I thought the reactions they gave to Frenzy (awe) and Bumblebee (hesitation at touching it) to the All Spark were really nice. Frenzy was designed long before his alternate mode was finalized, so yeah, he turns into nothing. Erm, no, Spike was not 'already an adult'. During MTMTE and Season 1 he was 14 years old, so he's even younger than Sam, and can't actually drive. It's a fairly common comment that it's a mystery why a kid works on an oil refinery (in reality it's a contrived set up for the Decepticons to attack so that the Autobots could defend it and immediately befriend the kid who just happened to work there with his dad.) One problem G1 had (MTMTE or not) was lack of character development outside of the core characters due to a large cast of characters. At most, one character got an episode to himself, and from then on disappeared into the background. However, Spike and Sparkplug generally had decent development because they appeared in most episodes. Really, humans have always been prominent principal characters in Transformers. Where did you get that G1 was targeted at 10-14 year olds? Which age group do you think they were selling the toys to? By comparison, Beast Wars had a more mature tone and heavier issues, with a considerable dash of slapstick and lowbrow 'adolescent humour. One hallmark of Transformers cartoons (except for Beast Machines) is to never take itself too seriously. You give G1 far too much credit.

When they said 'no mass shifting', they pretty much meant things that would be really noticeable such as Megatron turning into a hand gun or Soundwave into a cassette player. But, the All Spark's reformatting sequence, in my opinion, was partly to telegraph to the audience the very concept of mass shifting so they can work Soundwave into a sequel later on, so the audience doesn't like, laugh or something if Soundwave becomes small enough for Sam or somebody to carry.

They do use different models that are just robots and ones that are designed to transform to and from vehicle mode, and most of the characters have several different transformation sequences. ILM said they do cheat, and parts do shrink or enlarge as required, but they are chained together and move where they need to go during the animation.

Bay comments on Transformers 2, but its very little. http://www.eonline.com/movies/reelgirl/det...a7&sid=reel Here's what's important: I take this to mean he doesn't want the sequel to be 'bigger', as is what is expected in a franchise sequel, but to keep on doing what was good, fun and what people enjoyed. In my opinion, 'heart and magic' would be the scene where the Autobots arrive to Earth - now *that's* a good sequence.

You're gonna lose cred as a TF fan if you're seriously suggesting Pat Lee have anything more to do with Transformers. The man is a talentless hack who sponges off the hard work of other artists and then doesn't pay them, OR, he has Alex Milne (the guy who drew the Soundwave cover you posted in the other thread) ghost for him and then pay him a fraction of what Lee recieved as payment from Top Cow. Plus, he has serious gaps in Transformers knowledge while Dreamwave was still in business, such as believing Sideswipe (his favourite character) died in the movie and that he wasn't sure if Beast Wars ever really worked.

We've discussed issues of scale in Transformers on the TF wiki http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Scale

Well, it was based upon conversation with somebody who works on another game. But granted, EA and LA are reasonable so they'd work something out. Still prefer to see an offline single-player RPG, though, as KOTOR's strength isn't really it's setting, but its strong narrative, decent plotting and (in the case of KOTOR 2) very strong characterisation and development. Not sure how that would translate into a mmorpg.

This will probably not pan out given that Bioware has been purchased by EA. EA already said Mythic is its MMO division, so if KOTOR MMO were to continue, Lucasarts would be subject to EA's whims, and likely have to hand KOTOR over to Mythic, which they won't do. Politics, really.