GoBots may have been referred to as the B-Quality Transformers during the 80's. But you think a well-made GoBots live-action adaptation become the Transformers movie the fans have been hoping for?
If you ask film geeks, critics, and aficionados; most of them are in utter contempt towards Michael Bay's "greatest" achievement: The Transformers movies. His creation enrages film analysts and critics on one side, and the true-blue fans of the 3-decades old Transformers legacy on the other. As much as critics and analysts want Bay to fail, the jock-filmmaker seems to always succeed with flying colors at the box office with every Transformers movie. You also have the true-blue fans demanding a better adaptation of their robot idols' legacy, or pry it away from Bay's hands. Obviously, that will not be happening anytime soon. Bay's movies bring in tons of cash for their producers and distributors. Not unless some kind of a miracle happens, Bay will be riding and milking the Transformers cow till the day it dies.
Some producers and film outfits have been trying to copy the Transformers formula too, with movies like "Real Steel" and "Battleship" but that movie (Battleship) did not really do it right because all they did was copy the bad parts of Transformers flicks and disregarded the little good things that made it bearable. Meanwhile some people point to "Pacific Rim" as something that rides on the Transformers bandwagon, but in PR's defense, they were tapping more on the classic mecha-action concept that Japan had pioneered decades ago. If any, Pacific Rim merely tapped on a marketing scheme that worked around the appeal of robots the same way Transformers had appealed to its audiences.
Producers and film companies do take notice of the Transformers' success and acknowledge it. If only there was some way of getting the geeks' wishes of having some kind of reboot. Which got me to thinking: I wonder if Hollywood had forgotten the "GoBots"?
Very much similar to the history of the Transformers, the GoBots was a line of transformable robot toys, which later had a cartoon TV series that helped promote its toys. "The Challenge GoBots" was the title of its cartoon series which featured the battle between the good robots (The Guardians) and the bad robots (The Renegades).
The GoBots concept could stand as the Transformers reboot/remake that the fans would have wanted.
Back in the 1980's the GoBots (with their "Challenge of the GoBots" cartoon series) was considered as the B-version Transformers. In essence, they're pretty much similar. GoBots was just a little campy and was more light-hearted. But with Transformers being haunted by that brand of an awful movie, GoBots could have their revenge, and this time, be the better robot material. What makes the Transformers movies a universal hit is simply because it features robots battling; you can have that with GoBots... and you could make it better than the Transformers movies by injecting a little more quality to the spectacle.
The GoBots could emphasize on "doing right" all the negative shortcomings of the Transformers movies. If the Transformers movies had shallow characterization of the robot characters, the GoBots movie should have way better characterization of their robot characters. If the Transformers movies had begun to have character designs that looked like some industrial mess, have the GoBot designs to be more clear-looking. Here's a simple short list of where GoBots could improve:
- better script; better stories
- robots have richer personalities
- clear looking robot designs
- focus on the awesome transformation sequences (that the transformers sequels seem to have ignored)
- robots serve as better role models
 |
| Custom-Modified Designs of GoBot Characters |
Get Phil Lord and Chris Miller to work on GoBots. Well, they seem to be the masters of turning bad and risky ideas into masterpieces (21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie), and make those masterpieces work on a spectacular box-office level. Specifically the reason why I pointed out the Lord-Miller directorial duo is that the GoBots movie could easily work also as a satire while being a sci-fi action-adventure movie at the same time. If it would not be helmed by the duo, at least have it directed by somebody who can provide that great balance of well-made story, incredible action, and spectacular fun, the kind of formula that make movies like Joss Whedon's Avengers movie a hit.
Because this is all just some wishful thinking, for now, we're stuck with Bay's garbage. Just watch the old cartoons instead. It'll make you feel better!
[by Reymundo Salao]
[RETURN TO MAIN PAGE]
No comments:
Post a Comment