The Fallen Dave Polls #5 of 10

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Which new piece of hardware made the best impression, for only being on-screen briefly?

[blueshift]

Its a toss-up between Ravage and Soundwave I guess. I think Soundwave made more of an impression on me

[Benn]

Sideswipe. I liked the look of that guy. More of him and the Bike-bots would've been good. But Soundwave made the most of his time, I suppose.

[The Doctor]

Soundwave. There seemed to be a purpose for him to be there.

-Ralph

[Nigel]

As I've said elsewhere, Soundwave's limited screen time was somehow just enough to fully establish his character. Except for his name. I don't think that was actually used in the film. Nor Ravage and Scalpel, for that matter. Hmm, perhaps Sideswipe and Devastator made better use of their time, then, as they actually had names. At least, I'm pretty sure Sideswipe's name was mentioned near the start.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Soundwave announced himself by name when he first appeared.

Martin

[Nigel]

Did he? Thank you. All these details for the polls and all, were you taking notes?

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Oh, all right, all right, I'll come clean.

I saw it Friday morning at Cardiff Vue before catching the train for a long family weekend that saw me become a godfather. Then I saw it again Monday afternoon at Cardiff Cineworld after being deposited back in town by the return train.

Martin

[Rich]

A bit off the point, but on the lack of characterisation, or even names, for some of the bots; while I agree that it can be frustrating, I also think it's necessary to some extent.

Nobody's been crying out for extra characterisation for the Nest soldiers, and are minor TFs any different? I mean, what about British soldier bloke (he was only there so America couldn't be accused of unilateral nastiness)? Would it have added anything to the film if we'd known his name or if he'd had some cursory character trait?

...

Well actually, yeah it might have if it had been done properly, but it may also have just made the film longer. In the same way, some of those Deceps and 'bots were just there to make up the numbers to give it a sense of scale. So despite the complaints of 'oh no not more new toys to introduce' during the 80s, there are plenty of transformer stories where it's actually daft how few robots are involved (TWW2 is a newer story that springs to mind) given that this is supposed to be a 4 million year old war that originally involved billions.

There's a tension between having loads of obvious red shirts, and interrupting the flow of the story. This happens a lot in Fantasy novels and kind of goes one of two ways; most writers usually go with having a character showing up improbably multiple times, so, for example, sea captain Greldick in David Edding's novels (if any of you know them) is always ready and available all round the world, the absurdity of this is explained by the fact Destiny has it's own favourites and likes to keep using them! The other option is to attempt to make every person who shows up into a defined character with a real story (which hardly any writers attempt), which can, when taken to extremes, lead to something like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which became so bogged down that despite running to 10 novels (each about 900 pages long with smallish print) when he only planned a maximum of five, the series remained unfinished when he died. As far as I can remember, the last 3500 pages of that series only managed to advance the story by about a month because Jordan had to tell the story of so many nobodies, none of whom I could ever remember when he went back to them!

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jun 23, 2009 21:38:53 GMT Rich said:

Nobody's been crying out for extra characterisation for the Nest soldiers, and are minor TFs any different?

I would argue that you should only have as many Transformers as you are prepared to give characterisation to. Same as superheroes - the more you have, the less super they become, so you should only have as many as the story requires.

There's no reason why there need to be _any_ background Transformers - except to sell toys, and now that each character can be represented by multiple toys in different size classes (so I hear), even that goes out of the window. So just have as many land on Earth as the story requires.

The original Marvel comics would have been so much better if new robots were only introduced when the plot required new robots.

Having said all that, it appears that in the live-action universe characterisation means becoming a comedy character, so the only way Soundwave, Ravage, Sideswipe, Jolt and Arcee can avoid becoming comedy characters, and the only way Ironhide and Ratchet can stop being comedy characters, is not to receive any characterisation at all. So perhaps they got a better deal than Bumblebee in ROTFD after all.

Martin

[Bogatan]

Soundwave gets my vote, but the little doctor guy was pretty cool.

Andy

[Andy Turnbull]

Soundwave for me as well. I was so happy when he spoke and it was Frank Welker.

Andy

[legios]

I'd have to agree with Soundwave. He had a distinct and unique narrative purpose, and therefore stood out from a lot of the other secondary and tertiary robots, who really did seem to be just there to bump up the numbers. I'd be hard pressed to tell you who a lot of them were if it wasn't for the fact that I have seen pictures of their toys.

I actually think that Soundwave benefited from having less to do than some of the other characters. It tended to be that the Transformers who got less screen time where the ones that I most liked in this film. I think that may have been because they spoke less and therefore had fewer opportunities to dissappoint me.

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I'd like to see the scene after the film ends with Soundwave getting impatient and lonely up in space:

"Soundwave to Megatron! I sent all the troops down like you told me! How went our glorious victory? ... Megatron? ... Ravage? ... Our glorious victory? ... Is anybody down there?"

Martin

[Nigel]

Upon discovering the Decepticons' defeat: "I'll get you next time, Optimus, next time!"

[Shockprowl]

Ravage was ace. Devastator was awesome- but wasted on the freakin' Twins.

So, Soundwave, a disturbing menace up in orbit.