Transformers/The Last Stand: The inevitable comparison

[Angamb]

​

Yesterday I saw Transformers and couldn't stop thinking about X-men.

Inevitably the transformers remind us the centinels in the xuniverse, but apart from that, I was impressed with the big spectacle that the movie was, that big action in different places, but specially in the big city, something that the x-movies never had, and could, specially in X3, with the final battle.

So I create this thread to post all the thoughts, opinions, and comparisions.

What film was more epic?
Could X3 have been like Transformers? would have you liked it?
Would Michael Bay have been a better choice than Brett Ratner for X3?
What can learn X3's responsibles from Transformers?

Let's discuss!

And a comparative information:

Transformers budget: $150 million
X-men: The last stand: $210 million

X3 final boxoffice worldwide: $459,256,008
Transformers actual numbers: $460,854,365 (less than a month)

 

[flavio_lebeau]

Micheal Bay for X-Men: big huge effing NO. Unless we want a mindless action film. The X-Men were always defined as an action film which doesn't have action for the sake of it. Character development is a symbol of the X-Men, and it should stay this way.

 

[blind_fury]

The first X-men movie was lame.

 

[Angamb]

Flavio, I understand what you say, in some form, but why mindless action? don' you think X3 also had a bit?

And apart from it, what about the other questions?

 

[flavio_lebeau]

don' you think X3 also had a bit?
?

Isn't that exactly why X3 isn't as well received as the others?

 

[blind_fury]

Isn't that exactly why X3 isn't as well received as the others?

Yeah but this thread is a comparison between X3 and Transformers.

 

[Angamb]

Isn't that exactly why X3 isn't as well received as the others?

between other things, of course, hehe. but seriously, what do you think about the other questions? I always like to know your opinions.

 

[Neptune]

What film was more epic?

Transformers. X-3 could have been really epic but it wasn't.

Could X3 have been like Transformers? would have you liked it?

What do you mean?

Would Michael Bay have been a better choice than Brett Ratner for X3?

My dog would have been a better choice than Ratner.

What can learn X3's responsibles from Transformers?

Get a team that likes the X-men to work on a X-men movie. Also take the time to at least try develop a good movie. Don't rush it!

 

[Child-of-Light]

i still like brian singer becuase he gave it a certain mood that i liked but when they got a new director i think i would prefer bay of brett becuase he would have made it longer i do belive his phoenix sould rock and so on

 

[Child-of-Light]

Would Michael Bay have been a better choice than Brett Ratner for X3?

My dog would have been a better choice than Ratner.







well put brett should just stick withh rush hours

 

[Angamb]

i still like brian singer becuase he gave it a certain mood that i liked but when they got a new director i think i would prefer bay of brett becuase he would have made it longer i do belive his phoenix sould rock and so on

that's for sure, his Phoenix would have been one of the best action momments in the whole history. Just imagine the final battle in the city in Transformers, but with Phoenix flying and the x-men fighting with her

 

[JP]

Er, both movies suck and both directors should stop directing.

 

[TKing]

While the action in Transformers was top notch, I didn't feel there was much characterization elsewhere.

Almost to the point that I wanted the Decepticons to capture the Allspark.

 

[xii22_loop]

didn't Tom Rothman say he didn't want any Big Robots in any of HIS/ Fox's movies.

****ing dolt, look at the good money big robots make.

whatever he and his studio were always the problem for the x-men movies and many many other movies (Alien 3, etc. even on the I Robot commentary there is talk of certain not very nice stuff about the studio)

 

[X-Maniac]

Well, I haven't seen Transformers.. I might pick up the DVD but I can't say i feel the urge the rush to see it now. The idea of big robots isn't attractive by itself - I'm more a fan of superpowered people (X-Men, other superheroes) or robots as part of a larger sci-fi story (Sky Captain). Likewise, I haven't seen Harry Potter, don't feel the urge to rush and see it, and have been advised not to see it as I haven't seen any of the other movies or read the books and therefore I will not be clued up on a lot of what is going on.

However, I think Transformers succeeded as a robot smash spectacle partly because of Spielberg's role as executive producer. Spielberg would have brought a lot of experience and expertise to the movie. The movie is being slammed for poor characterisation and praised for being loud, noisy fun. I don't think we'd want X3 reduced to loud, noisy fun - it gets enough stick on here for being too action-heavy as it is!

X3 probably didn't have the budget to achieve a climax any bigger than we got (the same probably applies to FF2). Huge amounts of money in X3 went on actor salaries for a big-name cast. Transformers doesn't have a megastar cast. I think the finale we got in X3 was down to budget (and maybe to time?), which is why we didn't get Phoenix lighting up the sky, parting the waters of the bay and creating a dome of water over the island.
It's far easier to create a CGI finale on computer in TF with robots smashing through skyscrapers than it would be to create a live-action battle in X-Men. A Washington setting might have been nice in X3, but for various reasons we didn't get it - Brett said a lot of sci-fi movies tend to focus on battles in major US cities (and Spider-Man 3 did exactly that), but there was also the budget and arranging the filming of a complicated street battle with real actors.

So, I think TF and X3 are very different things.

TF does show that giant robots are very possible... but it didn't have to spend almost $100 million on actor salaries like X-Men. Jackman, Berry, McKellen, Stewart are on BIG money, especially Jackman. There goes a big chunk of the budget!

 

[La_She-Beast]

Oh gosh, I didn't like at ALL Transformers. It had a very nice beginning, but the rest of the movie contained the terrible Spielberg touch.

At least X3, demonstrated that surprisingly someone was thinking, but Transformers...it had the classic ending, the classic objective, looser boy meets sexy girl, will looser boy save the world? Who knows! Although I prefered much more this movie than the Simpsons one. Anyways.
X3 had the classic ending for an original plot.

What could've learned X3 from Transformers? Create the Phoenix and a better, original design for the Sentinel.

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

I still prefer X-Men: The Last Stand to Transformers, but I highly enjoyed Transformers. It was the most fun I've had at a movie in a -really- long time.

The reason why I like X-Men: The Last Stand is because X-Men are so personal to me, it's about more than just having fun at the movies. And despite all the common complaints, I still feel that the movie had the heart, compassion, depth, and character that an X-Men film demands.

Transformers really was a movie of "we'll work the story in around the action", where all of the X-Men films are more like "we'll work the action in around the story". Even X-Men: The Last Stand.

As far as the questions:

What film was more epic?
-I believe that X-Men: The Last Stand was more epic. To me, it was much more emotionally driven, very powerful, and high scale. Transformers was big, but not epic.

Could X3 have been like Transformers? would have you liked it?
-I believe that the X-Men films could have benefitted from a little bit more "fun". Yes, to me, X-Men are more than just fun action, but let's not get carried away here. This is still comic book source material, and saturday morning cartoons. I think X-Men: The Last Stand showed that it was okay to take the action up a few notches, while still keeping in grounded in reality. I love the "real world" approach that Singer took with his films, but I would have liked to see a bit more action as well.

Would Michael Bay have been a better choice than Brett Ratner for X3?
-I don't know about that. I don't think that Ratner was a -bad- choice. I believe there was some problems with the script, that didn't allow Ratner to provide some of the elements needed for the film, but on the whole, I believe Ratner did a good job with the script.

What can learn X3's responsibles from Transformers?
-Huh?

 

[Gilpesh]

Transformers just proved you could do actual big robots and make it believable.

Take that Rothman.

 

[Child-of-Light]

thats what was missing in it...but i do think it had a better feel then x men 3 but i would worry if bay directed x3 he might make it too dark which i am not sure would be for x men but it might be im not too sure really

While the action in Transformers was top notch, I didn't feel there was much characterization elsewhere.

Almost to the point that I wanted the Decepticons to capture the Allspark.

 

[Child-of-Light]

Oh gosh, I didn't like at ALL Transformers. It had a very nice beginning, but the rest of the movie contained the terrible Spielberg touch.

At least X3, demonstrated that surprisingly someone was thinking, but Transformers...it had the classic ending, the classic objective, looser boy meets sexy girl, will looser boy save the world? Who knows! Although I prefered much more this movie than the Simpsons one. Anyways.
X3 had the classic ending for an original plot.

What could've learned X3 from Transformers? Create the Phoenix and a better, original design for the Sentinel.

i still would rather have phoenix commit suicied though becuase it shows that jean still could over power phoenix and she would rather take her life then live a destructive god that destroys all (the whole point of the phoenix saga) transforms i didnt really like either everyone raved about it but i didnt really see what was so great the plot to me was boring as well

 

[gothicFLAVOURS]

Are we going to compare every new comicbook movie to X3?

Transformers had a different studio, Spielberg and a concept that hasn't been done before (at least in a believable way), huge robots fighting against each other. That's what it's making more money than any of the X-Men movies (not just X3) did individually.

I really liked Transformers but I didn't really care about any of the characters and that's one of the few flaws of that movie. Anyways, it's one of the movies I can watch more than once without falling asleep.

 

[Matt.S99]

Are we going to compare every new comicbook movie to X3?

Transformers had a different studio, Spielberg and a concept that hasn't been done before (at least in a believable way), huge robots fighting against each other. That's what it's making more money than any of the X-Men movies (not just X3) did individually.

I really liked Transformers but I didn't really care about any of the characters and that's one of the few flaws of that movie. Anyways, it's one of the movies I can watch more than once without falling asleep.

thank you! it seems every damn movie to come out is compaired to X3

soon we're going to see BRATZ compaired to X3 LOL

 

[Angamb]

I named Transformers for two important reasons:

1: Giant Robots as a menace (Centinels in the xuniverse)
2: Less budget than X3

And there are more reasons, of course, between then, impressive action scenes, one of the best seen on screen, in my opinion.

 

[Matt.S99]

I named Transformers for two important reasons:

1: Robots (Centinels in the xuniverse)
2: Less budget than X3

And there are more reasons, of course, between then, impressive action scenes, one of the best seen on screen, in my opinion.

Transformer robots are nothing like Sentinals...ok lets just name any movie with robots in it, it has to relate to X-Men right???

 

[Theweepeople]

​

What film was more epic?

Yep. In terms of action and special effects Transformers was considerably better than X3.

Could X3 have been like Transformers?

That's an interesting question. X-Men could have used better action, more action, and consistent special effects. The movie was too short for any of the action sequences to have a lasting impact and it's obvious that a lot of money was wasted.

would have you liked it?

The movie should have been no less than 30 minutes longer. Since the storyline was more complex than X2 it should have even been longer than that movie. Therefore, yes X3 would have sucked less if it had been more like transformers.

Would Michael Bay have been a better choice than Brett Ratner for X3?

Yes. The one thing Michael Bay does know is how to direct exciting action sequences. At least he would have gotten that right and X3's run time would have been around 2 hours and 30minutes. Ratner gave us mindless action sequences and mischaracterized most of the characters in the film. It's sad that transformers lack of characterization upset me less than X3's lack of characterizations and mischaracterizations for multiple characters.

What can learn X3's responsibles from Transformers?

Don't hire a talentless hack who has a fascination with Chris Tucker's mediocre acting to direct a franchise with multi-billion dollar grossing potential because he will screw it up.

Transformers budget: $150 million
X-men: The last stand: $210 million

Some people had cut X3 slack for the film not feeling like a 210million dollar movie as a result of it's actors salaries. This is BS. Considering the complexity of transformers action and special effects it's buget should have been considerably higher than most movies released this summer. The chronicles of Naria and Titantic both had higher budgets than transformers despite having effects that were less impressive.

What's really interesting about this whole argument is Laura Donner said X3's budget was set at 150million before Vaughn left. How in the hell was Fox going to make an epic movie with two complex storylines from the comics, a running time 30 minutes less than X2, an increase in characters from X2, and a considerable increase in actor/actress salaries from X2? The answer to these questions is there was no way Fox was going to accomplish all these things with a budget this small and it shows. That extra 60million dollars that were added to the budget is the result of Vaughn leaving and money being wasted on sets that were scrapped from the original project.

It is clear to me that Vaughn knew there was no way he could direct a film anything close to being epic under these restrictions so he bailed on the project. It was a smart move for him because he ended up saving his reputation. On the other hand Ratner may never get a chance to direct another film outside of the Rush Hour universe again.

X3 final boxoffice worldwide: $459,256,008
Transformers actual numbers: $460,854,365 (less than a month)

What's really pathetic about these numbers is despite having a strong history of 40 years of comic book source material all three X-Men movies were made with less quality than a film based on a toyline. What's even more pathetic is a film franchise based off of a ride ended up killing the X-Men franchise financially.