Well to be fair, no one knew that it would be a huge success and a sequel would be ordered immediately. No one knew that everyone would love Bumblebee and the way he is before the movie came out.
They didn't set out to write a trilogy before TF1 so not everything is smooth as silk but I do agree that their writing needs to be polished up and I think we can blame the writer's strike for this one. However, Paramount should not have pushed to get this done because it did affect the quality.
That is another thing I learned, I learned that Paramount are ****es like Fox.
I agree, except for the writers strike. If anything, the strike provided writers with lots of time to reflect upon their work, basically, they all got huge extensions. Just because you are on strike, doesn't mean you stop working, it just means you stop providing your work to your employer. Every movie maker should be thinking about the future of the franchise, even when working on the introductory film. When this doesn't happen, you end up with tripe like Superman Returns, where in order to save the franchise, so much would have to be retconned out of the introductory film, that it might finally be safer to just start a whole new franchise. This is clearly not the case with transformers, yet. But just a point I'm using to illustrate the idea.
Transformers 2 taught me that MBAY still has a long way to go, in learning about visual continuity: case a point, Optimus and Bumblebee save Sam from the warehouse, then suddenly end up in the forest, just a wierd transition,,,, or absence of transition all together. It's actually the exact same foul up as in the first movie, where Bumblebee saves Sam in daylight, drives into a building, and then 2 seconds later, it's night time. These are rinkydinky mistakes that only the most inexperienced highschool filmmakers make. It certainly didn't make me happy after paying 15$ for a movie ticket, and then 20$ for 2 500ml bottles of coke.