Transformers 3 Screenwriters Still Apologizing For Transformers 2
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is akin to an $800 million grossing bad penny. The thing won't go away! Speaking to THR during a roundtable discussion of screenwriters responsible for the coming batch of summer blockbusters, Revenge of the Fallen scribes Ehren Kruger (who also wrote Transformers: Dark of the Moon) and Roberto Orci were once again faced with answering for the derisible 2009 sequel.
As you may recall, the legacy of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is so tarnished that even previously cheerleading director Michael Bay has basically disowned his work. As the director told Empire:
"We made some mistakes.The real fault with [Transformers 2] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers' strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you've got to have a story in three weeks."
It certainly must be, judging from the plot and dialogue in Transformers 2. Not that Orci and Kruger have any hard feelings -- in fact, they seem surprised the film happened at all.
Orci: Two weeks before the [2007-08 writers] strike, we handed him a 30-page treatment, then he went off, he turned it into 70 pages. He started prepping the movie, and because of the time constraints he got totally locked in. We were locked in a hotel room for three months because the strike had just ended, and it was five blocks from Michael's office. So it was me, Ehren and Alex [Kurtzman] in a hotel room every day so he could drop by at noon, see what we had, take pages, and then go prep the movie because it's gotta go shoot!
Kruger: Many of those things, under a normal process, would have been considered a first draft outline. And then suddenly you're locked into some of those things. And at that point it becomes very difficult -- and very expensive -- to try to rework macro ideas.
The script for Revenge of the Fallen was kind of like a first draft outline. You don't say, Ehren! Here's hoping with additional time, Kruger was able to turn in more than just an outline for Transformers: Dark of the Moon before shooting commenced. Otherwise, 30 Rock might be very prescient: by the time Transformers 5 rolls around, it has a good chance of being written by no one.
· ROUNDTABLE: The Writers Behind Summer's Biggest Blockbusters (Exclusive Video) [THR/Risky Business]
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Comments
So when does the apology tour for Transformers 3 start?
Do the parties involved realize the first film wasn't exactly Shakespeare? And that they are making films about big ass robots fighting each other?
Let me put it this way: Jason Bourne never got stuck in tangents like, "My parents think I masturbate" and "My girlfriend thinks I cheated on her with a humanoid robot that just tried to kill me in front of my girlfriend."
Revenge of the Fallen was TF2. If you were doing any kind of legitimate reporting you could at least get that right.
I'm pretty certain I did.
There's an art to making big, dumb action movies, especially on purpose.
They said that the third Transformers movie was going to be the last one. There isn't going to be a fifth one. You might as well get that one right.
Uhhh, yeah, that's CLEARLY what the article says. Obviously you were so enraged in your obsessive love for the moronic Transformers movies that you couldn't read correctly.
Both Transformers movies sucked. They should have stuck with the original cartoon stories. They would have been amazing movies, the storyline was great. Now the robots look like walking scrap yards. The story is crap. I may not see the 3rd movie.
You people are idiots. Transformers: Revenge Of the Fallen was badass. This is a movie about transforming robots, NOT Shakespeare. We're not watching a Grammy winner here, it's a comic book movie. IT WAS BLOODT ENTERTAINING which is all a movie is meant to be. MORONS!!!
he looks just as good, people that are fkrneiag out need to get their brains checked, just like the people that hated the movie. you read these books which are amazing and you get such idealistic views of how YOU think the movie should be, but its not YOUR movie, you have to seperate the books and the movies, just like you have to separate edward from robert, they are two different people, if robert wants to cut his hair yay for him, he has been dying to since they stopped filming, i think he looks good, its just hair it will grow back
I am a big fan of all 3 TF movies. I saw them for the entertainment value and as a revisit to my childhood, just on steroids.
However, the choice to kill off Ironhide in TF3 was a bad choice, in my mind. Ironhide is a badass Autobot that should not have been done that way. Taken out in a double cross is not the way a true warrior should go out.
if there is a fourth installment to the franchise, I would really like to see a way to reserect Ironhide. Optimus Prime and Megatron were both brought back, why not Ironhide.
Thanks for the awesome movies overall.