Image Credit: Bethesda
Forgot password
Enter the email address you used when you joined and we'll send you instructions to reset your password.
If you used Apple or Google to create your account, this process will create a password for your existing account.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Reset password instructions sent. If you have an account with us, you will receive an email within a few minutes.
Something went wrong. Try again or contact support if the problem persists.

Transformers 2 Writers Explain Why it Sucked

This article is over 13 years old and may contain outdated information
image

According to the people who wrote its script, bad timing proved to be the undoing of the second Transformers movie.

When Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out in 2009, it didn’t exactly win over the critics. In fact, they blasted it with such choice phrases as, “a horrible experience of unbearable length,” and “simply despicable.” Even director Michael Bay said that it was “crap,” and in a roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter, writers Ehren Kruger and Roberts Orci explained exactly what went wrong.

According to the writing duo, it wasn’t one thing that went wrong, but a series of problems and quirks that chained into each other. As they related back in 2009 at the BotCon convention, the script for the movie was written in a big hurry after the WGA writers’ strike in 2007 – 2008. That wouldn’t have been a problem for some movies, but for an effects-heavy movie like Revenge of the Fallen, work has to begin months before shooting starts in order to have everything ready.

That wouldn’t have been a problem either as the movie could have been put on hold, but Bay didn’t want to wait, and so took an expanded version of the treatment that had been created before the strike started, and used that as his guide. “The movie could have been pushed,” said Orci. “But [Bay] uses all the same people over and over. He considers himself kind of a jobs program. And for him the idea of pushing the movie means all these people that rely on him go down and they’re in between jobs, etc.”

“[It] would have been considered a first draft outline,” Kruger said. “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. Added to which, he was a bit cross about us going on strike in the first place!” Kruger continued, saying that the strike put both Bay and the movie in a rather untenable position. He said that the movie ended up being a collection of spectacles with the narrative connecting them as well as it could.

It’s worth mentioning, however, that as much as critics might have hated the movie, it still made a boatload of cash. It made back its $200 million budget in just five days, and went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars more, both domestically and internationally. Hopefully, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which hits theaters on July 1st, will be just as successful, without sucking quite so hard.

Source: via Blastr

Recommended Videos

The Escapist is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.Ā Learn more about our Affiliate Policy