If you’re only paying attention to the movies, Megatron’s Evil Scheme Flowchart gots lots of holes and makes little sense. But if you follow the fifty million movie-based novels and comic series, it’s put together somewhat reasonably. (Mostly thanks to John Barber, who is kind of awesome.) If you want to see how Megatron’s Evil Scheme Flowchart works in the “expanded universe,” TFWiki.net’s “Movie timeline” page puts everything into amazing detail. Chris McFeely put it together (and continues to maintain it) and it was so awesome that it was last month’s Featured Article.
But, yeah, going only by the movies themselves, it’s kind of a mess.
EDIT: Okay, I thought I could get away with just posting this here without a huge disclaimer that I’m not saying this “fixes” the movie, or that people should be required to know this stuff or whatever bullshit like that. I just thought it was interesting supplementary material. Additional reading, were one to be so inclined.
I think a lot of friggin’ stupid things, apparently.
I think that’s what we call “retroactive continuity”, where supporting writers pick up and patch the plot holes left by the core franchise… But yeah.
Sorry, but a movie series shouldn’t require extra content in other media for shit to make sense; I should get all the information I need in the movies themselves.
Agreed, it’s completely rediculous when fans insist that casual viewers have to pick up all the outside supplementary material to make some sort of sense out of the films themselves.
Not to mention alot of times a new film will completely ignore or contradict what was established in various spin off materials, such as the “expanded universe” was as the various Star Wars prequels were released.
Which to be fair, has already happened multiple times with the IDW movie books – plenty of TF1 and ROTF comic elements were contradicted by the subsequent movies, and even by the movies they were supposed to tie in to in the first place – BUT which has all retroactively been cleaned up, clarified, retconned, and MADE TO WORK by John Barber’s DOTM comics. It’s the sheer impressiveness of THAT which is to be enjoyed here.
Why “sorry”? Did I ever claim what you’re trying to refute?
I agree with the first two comments. This doesn’t make it good. This doesn’t “fix it”. I really hope Paramount goes with the reboot. I’d love it if they brought back the writers from the first movie, we saw what kind of glory they can write when they aren’t working under Bay, the Star Trek reboot (also Paramount of course) was freaking fantastic. Hell, bring JJ Abrams as the director because, again, the Star Trek reboot was fantastic. I’d love to see that writing and directing team reboot Transformers.
Yes, because that’s Transformers needs. More lens flares and a convoluted take on time travel that is unlike how time travel has ever been handled before in the franchise. Or maybe we’ll only see glimpses of Megatron until the end of the movie, and the payoff won’t be worth the buildup.
“unlike how time travel has ever been handled before in the franchise.” ??
Obviously, you missed TNG’s “Parallels.”
-30 Geek Cred Points, and a beating with a Klingon Pain Stick for you.
In any case, it’s not actually “time travel” as such, it’s an entire parallel dimension, isn’t it?
So it would actually bear more resemblence to the “Mirror Universe” stuff than time travel… which it does.
t’s a parallel dimension created by time travel. Some of the less-knowledgeable Trekkies assumed that Trek was a siungle timeline, and that changes in it ALWAYS wipe out the prior timeline, because that’s how it appeared in a couple of episodes like “City on the Edge of Forever” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
However, “Parallels” (and yes, the MU Episodes as well) established that many (over 200,000, anyway) parallel timelines can exist simultaneously.
ADD to that the most current time travel theory that postulates that you CAN’T travel back in time to your own past, but only to a pre-existing parallel timeline (to avoid a causality paradox, the universe forces this on you), and EVERY discrepancy in the 2009 Movie (“NuTrek” we call it) is easily explained.
Abrams’ Star Trek is Star Trek for fans of Star Wars. I’d much rather see a Star Trek movie made for people who actually enjoy Star Trek. And, with Transformers, a Transformers movie made for people who actually enjoy Transformers. Which doesn’t really describe the Bay movies or what Abrams would probably do with it.
Man, a Transformers movie made to please “Transformers fans” would be the worst thing ever. I don’t think I could sit through it.
I dunno; the recent Marvel films (Iron Man, Thor, etc.) are movies made to please Marvel fans (like myself) and I think they’ve been pretty darn good! You can make films that are knowledgable and respectful of the source material and still be appealling to the general non-comic audience.
I don’t think “pleasing Marvel fans” was the number one priority of Iron Man or Thor. The number one priority of Iron Man was to make lots of money, and to do that, you have to appeal to a wide audience, not just comic book geeks.
Contrast with Green Lantern, which was just as “fan-pleasing” as Iron Man or Thor, but was a boring mess that nobody liked.
So the number 1 priority of Green Lantern WASN’T to make lots of money??? I’m not saying hardcore comic book fans aren’t an obsessive lot that will scrutinize little details, but alot of the things that make these properties popular in the first place with geeks (such as Spider-man’s troubled love life and money woes, in addition to his cool spider powers) ALSO translate well with mainstream audiences; it’s not nearly as impossible as you seem to think it is. You take the core of the character and you flesh it out, you don’t have to scrap everything. (You wouldn’t put Spidey in a long black leather duster give him a gun and surround him with explosions just because that stuff seems to appeal to the masses.) The stuff that made him one of the most popular superheroes in the world since the 1960′s still resonates today.
Green Lantern was a crummy movie made by committee. They threw together all the things they saw work in other films (An abundance of CGI, lots of explosions, turning Hal into Tony Stark, etc.) and it shows.
Several such Star Trek movies, and hundreds of hours of television, have been released over the last few decades. Kindly watch those and never trouble yourself with anything new, original, daring, or inspired by other financially successful franchises.
Assuming “you” = “everyone” fail.
Sorry, every Star Trek fan I know (and I know many, being a huge Space Geek), except for 2 or 3 Internet Bitchy Continuity Fetishists – who always ignore the fact that TOS itself had CRAP continuity – enjoyed the new movie, including my father, who was a TOS fan during the original airings, and my mother, who HATES Star Wars (and most other Science Fiction.)
So, NO.
I admit that Megatron’s plans were very layered but I didn’t think it was all that convoluted… I’ll admit that I pondered over it for a bit but it all made sense and fit together before I finished my drive home from the movie.
The way I figured it, Megatron had made this deal with Sentinel Prime first, but Sentinel’s ship was attacked and lost. Megatron then started seeking the AllSpark, and crashed on Earth. When he was reawakened in Revenge of the Fallen, he learned from the Fallen of the sun harvester which could repower Cybertron. But in order for the Fallen to be safe, Optimus had to be gotten rid of. After the Fallen was defeated and Optimus had the Matrix, Megatron realised Optimus could revive Sentinel and set his plan with him in motion. Something that couldnt have happened without the events of the second movie.
I dont think it was ever his intention for more than one of these plans to be successful. All it would have taken was one,
Okay, i meant that to be more informative, yet it just came out as a recap of what we already know.
You know, this would have worked if not for the “we used humans for at least 50 years” bit during the first two movies. That makes it clear that he was attempting his Sentinel Prime plan even before his “saving the fallen” plan on earth. Worse yet, he would have needed to have set it into motion wile he was frozen.
As I commented on Monday’s comic, the way I see it all working together is this:
Megatron always had one plan in mind… restore Cybertron to it’s former glory.
It started with him talking with the Fallen and creating the decepticons. The Fallen knew where the star harvester was and it could be used to keep the Allspark charged. That was the first plan.
Then came the war which was destroying Cybertron so Sentinel and Megatron made a plan that would end the war and save Cybertron. Starscream did not know the plan and messed it up by “destroying” the Ark. Megatron thinks Sentinel is dead and scraps that plan. Then Optimus shot the Allspark into space to keep it from Megatron.
Since the Allspark was so important to the survival of Cybertron, Megatron chases after it and gets frozen. His decepticons come to earth looking for him and also discover the wreckage of the Ark on the moon. Sentinel is in stasis lock and as far as the decepticons know, can only be revived by the Allspark.
Megatron is awakened on Earth and the first thing he tries to do is get the Allspark back. Sam kills him and destroys the Allspark. Megatron is revived and since the Allspark is destroyed, can’t revive Sentinel. So he goes with the Fallen’s plan to use it sun harvester. That fails, but does reveal a new way to revive Sentinel, the Matrix. So Megatron goes back to that plan, resulting in Transformers 3.
So if you look at it that way, it is not 3 overlapping plans that conflict with each other, it was just 1 plan that kept needing revising as the situation changed. Wars are not won unless your plan evolves with changes that occur.
Exactly. And the last thing you said was key. Megatron is just a great opportunist. He sees an opportunity and he takes it. So however events unfold, he comes up with a plan for it.
Wow, lots of jumping to conclusions in here.
Either way, John Barber has made some great comics from the movie’s messes, and are definitely worth reading, regardless of your love of the movies. Just saying.
Who is the little guy in the picture in front of Sentinel Prime and is that Prowl standing in front of Optimus?
I think the little “guy” is Arcee and the one in front of Prime is Ironhide.
Actually it’s Elita-1. Who is established in the prequel comics as (along with Chromia) actually being a Arcee’s sister, not a component of her of some sort.
Primus bless McFeely and his doctorate in Transformerology!
For the record, thanks for sharing this! I found it enjoyable. And I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to know everything revealed about a continuity, regardless of whether or not it all fits together. This just made it a ton easier to keep track of things and what material I still need to read.