Movie Continuity- or lack thereof

[Shockprowl]

Maybe we shouldn't talk about this. Maybe we should just let it roll over us and just except the live action Movies as action romps not to be taken too seriously. Then again...

I've been reading alot online over the last few weeks about the general movie-verse continuity, and the MASSIVE holes in it. It just strikes me as grossly poor story telling. The more I read about plot gaffs, plot holes and apparently blatant plot ignorance by the writers/director, the more I find myself getting dragged into this mine-field of dissatisfaction. I enjoyed Dark of the Moon, I stand by that, and I always will enjoy it as an action romp. But the Transformers fan in me has begun to ask questions of the overall Movie Bay-verse continuity, and frankly I'm finding the incredible problems difficult to stomach.

You can read this stuff anywhere, all the major news/forums have reports on this. The most enormic for me is the overall continuity arch from movie to movie. Let's see. Megatron leaves Cybertron to search for the All Spark. At the same time he's the Batman of The Fallen (if The Fallen had revived Megs at the start of the 2nd film and convinced him to join him it would have sorted the whole thing out), and has been serving his 'master' for gosh knows how long, planning to destroy Earth's sun. Whilst also being in league with Sentinel Prime to revive Cybertron by turning Earth's population into slaves to do repair work to an alien planet that a giant robot could do in a millionth of the time? Forget the shooting down of the Ark by the Decepticons when they were apparently in league already with Sentinel. Forget the sudden appearance of legions of Decepticon cannon fodder on the Moon. Forget the fact that the space-faring Primes in ROTF saw fit to hide the Matrix away on Earth, right next to (may as well have been) the very device that they wanted to not be used to destroy the Earth, instead of just, I don't know LEAVING EARTH.

I pride myself in a what I like to call a child-like quality in myself to just sit back, switch off, and go for a ride when I watch a film. But he horrific continuity problems of the live-action Bay-verse Transformers films is causing me troubles.

I eagerly await your views, Cyber-chumbs.

[jameso]

The lack of an eternal consistency does bother me, but not in the sense of the continuity being wrong, more in the sense of 'oh what other element of the cartoon that they haven't got around to mentioning yet will they shoehorn in next and try to say that that's what it's been about all along?'.

For what it's worth, I think this just about works: Megatron arranges for Sentinel Prime to defect with his space bridge technology, but then heads for Earth to search for the Allspark and tells Sentinel to follow him once the spacebridge is ready. Megatron is stranded on Earth, and whilst Sentinel tries to leave Cybertron as well he is shot down by the Decepticons, who are unaware that he intends to defect.

Where it becomes awkward is at what stage and for what purpose did the Decepticons hide an army on the moon, start recruiting humans to their cause and realise that Sentinel had defected and collect the pillars from the moon. Also, how much of a gap is there between Megatron getting stranded on Earth and Sentinel crashing on the moon?

As for The Fallen... Uh, I dunno!

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I enjoy the movies, but not on a level that is remotely intellectual. I therefore don't mind the poor continuity between the films - just as I'm not remotely curious as to what happens in the tie-in comics and novels.

The X-Men movies, on the other hand, I think are worthy to be taken more seriously than Transformers and enjoyed on a number of levels, and it _does_ bother me that Xavier loses the ability to walk in First Class, when he is shown walking as Patrick Stewart in flashbacks in the other films. That annoys the hell out of me.

But Transformers... no, couldn't care less.

Martin

[The Doctor]

Clarity and richness of storytelling are uncommon bedfellows for the movies. The third one was entertaining in a so-bad-its-good watch-once way, but that's it for me, really.

-Ralph

[The Huff]

Megatrons plan was to ensure Optimus died to revive The Fallen whilst at the same time keeping Optimus alive so he could revive Sentinel.
Makes perfect sense to me!

[Shockprowl]

It could have been all so simple though! In ROTF, The Fallen, and his Decepts, retrieve Megatron and convince him to joint him. The Primes are all mortally wounded in a battle with The Fallen and his dark minions so have no choice to remain on Earth. In DOTM it's Shockwave, not Megatron, who made the deal with Sentinel! Then you could have had a brilliant scene where Shockwave makes contact with the injured Megatron and again convinces him to join forces, with Megatron secretly planning to take over all along, which would be why Megatron saved Optimus at the end- for his own reasons, not 'cos he's been goaded into it by Mega-Lips Carly! (The most vomit inducing part of DOTM for me).

I like JamesO's idea of the Decepts shooting down the Ark 'cos they were not aware of the team-up, that works really well, especially if it was Shockwave who had made the deal. Troops on the Moon- why not bring them all the way from Cybertron?! That just leaves us with why Earth is such a magnet for Transformers activity! And how the Ark went from Cybertron to the Moon in no time at all!

Damn, I should be in Movies, Baby!

[jameso]

Off topic: Martin, maybe Professor X and Magneto meeting with Jean can be considered to have happened during the montage bit in First Class where they meet Darwin, Angel, Havok and so on, we just saw it in X3 rather than in First Class. Doesn't explain why they looked different, but 'it is them, they just changed the actors' is always a good get out clause.

On topic: What actually happened with The Fallen in movie 2? I couldn't remember, so checked on Wikipedia and it basically said as soon as Megatron was revived he hopped upto some secret Decepticon spaceship where The Fallen had been the whole time and said 'do you want to do your secret masterplan now or what?'.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jul 24, 2011 0:29:59 GMT jameso said:

Off topic: Martin, maybe Professor X and Magneto meeting with Jean can be considered to have happened during the montage bit in First Class where they meet Darwin, Angel, Havok and so on, we just saw it in X3 rather than in First Class. Doesn't explain why they looked different, but 'it is them, they just changed the actors' is always a good get out clause.

Off topic: Yeah, but Jean would be too old then (as indeed Moira is). Yeah, I know, I know, madness awaits anyone who tries to follow the ageing process of Marvel characters in relation to historical events. Forget it.

Martin

[Fortmax2020]

For the record in the prequal comics I'm fairly sure it is Starscream who shoots down the Ark, unaware of Megatron and Sentinel's little deal. Megatron is not pleased by this.

[legios]

Jul 24, 2011 11:12:11 GMT Fortmax2020 said:

For the record in the prequal comics I'm fairly sure it is Starscream who shoots down the Ark, unaware of Megatron and Sentinel's little deal.

That is certainly the way it plays out in the novelisation as well. It makes a certain amount of sense - Megatron has to make some sort of effort to bring down the Autobot spaceship, because otherwise it would look very suspicious, it is just the Starscream lets him down by actually succeeding at his job. There is something mildly ironic about this.

As to how the three movies line up in terms of making sense as an over-arching narrative.... they don't. Given what we are presented with in each film they all have different back-stories and they don't reconcile with each other to form a complete "movie universe". But then, given that the plots exist for the purpose of holding the explosions together this is perhaps not surprising. These films aren't about anything in the sense of plotting and themes, they are aimed at showing things blowing up on a large screen. I don't bother subjecting them to any actual analysis most of the time. It would feel a bit like picking on them.

Karl

[jameso]

That Starscream, can take out spaceships single handedly, but is killed by Shia LaBeouf and Josh Duhamel...