Shia Labeouf Interview at Ain't it Cool News

Post by **Best First** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:52 pm

Some spoilers, including some stuff about Mr megs's alt mode, the glasses stuff and 'The Energon cube'.

his enthusiam is kind of infectous as well

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=24383

oh, and some interesting thoughts from the interviewer at the end of the article as well.

PS - <R Labeouf has a potty mouth, you have been warned.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:08 pm

I'm not Ben Affleck. I'm not.

Good to hear...

Post by **Best First** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:14 pm

"But I'm just a kid, bro. I'm 20 years old and I'm on a set with John Turturro and that's Michael Bay, there's Jon Voight and [composite word including 'f*ck']! There goes Bumblebee!"

Predabot · Post by **Predabot** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:44 pm

"It's folklore, it's mythology. Religion is dead and this is the **** that people eat up, this is what we eat up!"

F*ck yeah!

I think I want to be Shia Labeouf right now!

Doesn't many of us??

"It's like being on a drug!!"

And BLOW SH*T UP!

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:31 pm

I'm glad he's having fun, but stuff like this...

It's an action film and you don't have a lot of those anymore... Because everybody's trying to be so character-driven.

... worries me.

Post by **Best First** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:45 pm

yeah, there was actually quite a bit of stuff in there that i wasn't mad on - the stuffabpout the amount fo direction the actors are getting for example did not come across as a good thig - i got a bit dragged along by his enthusiasm.

SPOILERS

the glasses idea and the notion of a single 'Energon Cube' both sounds very weak to me.

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:11 pm

Shia LaBeouf wrote: Then you have Spielberg giving him cell phone calls. It's not as though he's alone in this. It's the Michael Bay and it's the ******' action you've never seen before, but it's also Spielberg on the other end saying, "You gotta make people care about Bumblebee. This is how you make him emotional." And Spielberg is the king at it. Sometimes you watch Spielberg films and some people might say he's too soft. But on the flip side of it, you have the hardest guy in the business. It's a beautiful balance. It really is a beautiful balance.

Something positive i'm taking from this is that. Spielberg is at least making some sort of creative input in the direction, which is a good thing if you ask me.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:29 pm

And he's not making any other films this year, so hopefully he's giving it some quality time and thought.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:55 am

spiderfrommars wrote:I'm glad he's having fun, but stuff like this...

It's an action film and you don't have a lot of those anymore... Because everybody's trying to be so character-driven.
... worries me.

Yeah. Me too.

What I got out of that interview is that we have a budding star unfamiliar with the big time, who seems to have the "happy to just be here" kind of mentality.

Stuff about 'special glasses' and the like scare the **** out of me.

And the stuff about being a movie with political undertones, well, is a Transformers movie really the place for that?

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:11 am

Is this film about humans and politics or Transformers?

It sounds more like Donny.F trying to secure the use of Transformers as a military tool, hmm?

BB Shockwave · Post by **BB Shockwave** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:14 pm

Gah, the guy is propably so happy a big-time director hired him he notices nothing else...

Btw, whatever Bay does, he'd have a hard time making anything great out of that script.

Especially with the 'this is a story of a boy getting his first car' approach...

Turturro sounds good, but trust me, his character is such a stereotipical "Agent *sshole" that we'll wish Walter Barnett back. Heck I wish Barnett was there...

If you knew how the Tfs change shape or adopt new forms (anyone noticed BB is a new Camaro now in the scenes where he's driving with the military) you'll wish they made an Armada TF movie instead of butchering G1 characters...

Heck, it's still saveable... rename Megs into Cykill, Prime into leader-1, Blackout could be coptur, Ironhide Turbo, Barricade Crasher and BB Scooter. Then call it "The Gobots", butcher that franchise instead...

(frankly even THEY wouldn't deserve this horror of a story)

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:47 pm

BB Shockwave wrote: you'll wish they made an Armada TF movie instead of butchering G1 characters...

Well personally I don't see how this movie continuity's variance from "G1" is any different to Armada's. People criticised Armada for butchering G1 characters by assigning their names to new characters.

It's a new franchise/continuity/whatever, just like BW, just like RiD, just like Armada. The main difference is that it's based a bit more on Gen 1 than the others were. I don't view any of the changes as particularly more sacriligious than Megatron being a six-changing bat/jet/hand/thing, or one of the central Autobots being called Hotshot.

You can argue that a pair of glasses that have had a map lasered into them is a rubbish plot device. It's no more outlandish than the Voyager Disk having info added to it, or having to run around trying to find Minicons.

It's not Gen 1. It's a new franchise. Okay, it may well be rubbish, but we've all seen in the past that "not being Gen 1" doesn't make it rubbish on its own. I'm sick of people using "OMG they made Starscream fat! Megatron isn't a gun! Optimus has flames on him! Who the hell is Barricade?!" as base rationale for this being rubbish.

If it's rubbish, it'll be because it's a Michael Bay film, not because they made it different to previous iterations of the source material.

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 1:40 pm

But Optimus would never have flames on his cab...

Its the lil things - across any continuity that are upseting ppl.

Post by **Best First** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:08 pm

er... Laser Road Op had a big exploding flame affect down the side, as drawn be geoff

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:27 pm

Ah... thats why he was ****!

I guess the kids like all that stuff - I hope they all have ipods and nike air too...

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:50 pm

That's really where the problem lies: Is it another continuity, or is it a G1 homage? Trying to be both is going to bite them in the ass.

If it's another continuity, a movie one, where everything looks weird and stupid, but it'll be a crazy ass action movie, I can respect that. But they throw in just enough shout outs to G1, like Witwicky and Cullen, that that's not the entire case.

If it's a G1 homage, then again, WTF is up with Optimus? He's an iconic character, and I just don't feel they're respecting that.

I mean, look at the flare up that happened when they gave the Bat suit nipples, for God's sake. And then they expect us to swallow this like a piece of melting ice cream.

Still, it's not like I'm not open to the idea of Optimus being something different. I just feel like the whole "We're giving props to G1" diatribe of Murphy and his ilk over the past year or so has been nothing but an elaborate c***tease to keep enough interest in the project to get that all important greenlight.

Hound · Post by **Hound** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:04 pm

Impactor returns 2.0 wrote:Ah... thats why he was ****!

Laser Rod Optimus Prime is one of the best Prime toys.

Post by **Kaylee** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:36 pm

The kid comes off like an unprofessional tit imo, it makes his interview very irksome to read when every other sentence is spliced with "**** yeah this is so cool I was like woah and they were like yaha and I was like no way and we're doing something soo huge and awesome!"

I appreciate how uncharitable that is.

I'm no more enthused about the movie than I was before- it still sounds big, dumb and thought out from the perspective of a 14 year old headbanger who is hoping that if he strings enough incoherent explosions together to death metal it will suddenly turn into a fantastic movie. So basically I couldn't care less.

Essentially the only reason I post in these topics now is the act of interaction with my board friends... bah. I'll leave now... [/contributes nothing]

BB Shockwave · Post by **BB Shockwave** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:44 pm

Yeah, I feel the same way too - I dunno why I care. Maybe because I wanted to take some friends with me and show them THIS IS TRANSFORMERS. But, alas, it won't be Transformers.

Don't get me wrong, It's not the new direction or the new characters. They simply reiinvented so much (much of it I can't tell without spoiling many things) that it's more like a mixture of ID4, Godzilla, and Herbie. Yes BB will play a crucial part, but when you see what, you wish he was renamed into Scooter... or R2-D2. Trust me on this...

Btw, as IMpy said: this should be about G1. It's not following Armada as there are no MInicons, Hot Shot. It's not BW as there are no beast modes or pre-earth settings. Ergo, it's supposed to be on G1 continuity, where I mostly expect that they use the Matrix, not an Energon Cube, and where Megs (G1-G2 Megs) never was a plane. Megatron can be described in two words as a mechanoid (in design): indestructible and awesome firepower. Not what you expect from a plane, those are not known for armor.

Post by **Best First** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 8:55 pm

i don't have an iussue with the flames (especially Given that Laser Rod Prime is in the top 3 primes ever), or really the fact that Megs is a plane, more the fact that they don't really look like the popular perception of a Transformer, i know there have been exceptions, most notably Beast Machines, but most people's perception of a TF is of a robot that overtly turns into a vehicle of some kind - something relatively chunky with aspects of the vehicle relativley apparent in the robot form. Original Prime and Megs remain pretty seminal, even if, as i think most people accepted his alt mode could not be a gun.

as for the plot devices being no more stupid than the cartoon, surely that's kind of the point - this is supposed to be the realisation of TFs on the big screen in a more mature medium.

The base rational for being skeptical is that they don't look like they are doing a good job of translating those familiar and in some cases well recognised design aspects into 'real life' transformers or of turning this into something a bit smarter than "Arrival from Cybertron".

Autobot 420 · Post by **Autobot 420** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:47 pm

Best First wrote:i don't have an iussue with the flames (especially Given that Laser Rod Prime is in the top 3 primes ever), or really the fact that Megs is a plane, more the fact that they don't really look like the popular perception of a Transformer, i know there have been exceptions, most notably Beast Machines, but most people's perception of a TF is of a robot that overtly turns into a vehicle of some kind - something relatively chunky with aspects of the vehicle relativley apparent in the robot form. Original Prime and Megs remain pretty seminal, even if, as i think most people accepted his alt mode could not be a gun.

as for the plot devices being no more stupid than the cartoon, surely that's kind of the point - this is supposed to be the realisation of TFs on the big screen in a more mature medium.

The base rational for being skeptical is that they don't look like they are doing a good job of translating those familiar and in some cases well recognised design aspects into 'real life' transformers or of turning this into something a bit smarter than "Arrival from Cybertron".

Great point I totally agree with you.
Ok people let's get real, a lot of people keeps saying this movie is gonna be Horri-bull( sorry I had to go for it

) and those people *cough*Karl lynch*cough* are saying "OMG this is gonna be the worst movie ever and I'm not gonna see it ever!" but how many of us is actually going to do that honestly. Yeah this move is not looking good right now. What with Megs and Starscream looking like s*** and this whole "magic glasses" thing really sounds stupid, not to mention the fact that there is only one energon cube and it f***ing small as hell, but you know what I'm still gonna see it. Hell I'm gonna go to the first showing the day it comes out. Untill then I'm gonna remain open minded about this movie.

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:06 am

My weak fooled problem is - no matter how crap this film is, no matter how 'un-transformer' like it seems to me...I just know ill be there on release day, with my ticket, looking like an 8 year old whos just recived metroplex for xmass.

Only to later find out - its a bit ****.

The plot sounds daft - and with so many to draw inspiration from, why this glasses, energon cube bull?

The designs of certain transformers just dont say 'Transformer' to me, they are great sci-fi robots but I dont think they are Transformers.

I recently showed megatron to a friend who knows about transformers due to me... He had no idea that it was a transformer - Bumblebee yes, Optimus yes - Megatron, no idea what it was.

Now, I would have thought the basic design principle would be to make it look like a transformer in some way?

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:37 am

Yeah, all my non TF friends were the same way....Optimus and Bumblebee "That's cool," Megatron, "WTF???"

I have no problem with the glasses and energon cube, really. Ok, energon cube is stupid. But they wanted to connect the WITwickys (I hope that's an AICN typo) AND they wanted a reason for the Autobots and Decepticons to find the Shia character absolutely essential. And they've done that. And in a world of movies like "National Treasure", a laser etched map on a pair of old glasses is far from the bottom of the barrell, sadly.

Post by **Kaylee** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:25 am

Autobot 420 wrote: Great point I totally agree with you.
Ok people let's get real, a lot of people keeps saying this movie is gonna be Horri-bull( sorry I had to go for it ) and those people *cough*Karl lynch*cough* are saying "OMG this is gonna be the worst movie ever and I'm not gonna see it ever!" but how many of us is actually going to do that honestly. Yeah this move is not looking good right now. What with Megs and Starscream looking like s*** and this whole "magic glasses" thing really sounds stupid, not to mention the fact that there is only one energon cube and it f***ing small as hell, but you know what I'm still gonna see it. Hell I'm gonna go to the first showing the day it comes out. Untill then I'm gonna remain open minded about this movie.

I'm "actually" not going to see it. I faithfully promised the loathsome glob that is pleased to call itself Don Murphy that his attrocious attitude and various distasteful views meant he would not get a single penny of my money and I stand by it. It won't exactly be hard, I'm hardly a movie going person.

Nice paraphrasing of my posts, removing all the humility and rationale like that. Keep up the good work, I'm sure it will eventually entice me to go watch what will no doubt be a stirring, seminal milestone in motion picture development and add a huge amount of valuable realestate into the best elements of the Transformers mythos. [/Sarcasm]

I need a Sgt. Bilko smiley, one with a speech bubble going "Gyeesh!"

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:29 pm

BB Shockwave wrote:it's more like a mixture of ID4, Godzilla.

It's funny you mention these two movies, as they rank as some of the grandest debacles in movie history, IMO. Particularly Godzilla.

If you were to ask me what my scariest nightmare would be, it would be that this movie will be to Transformers what Dean Devlin's atrocity was to Godzilla. The ultimate disappointment.

Michael Bay has veered too far of course on this one, I'm afraid. Give us something, ANYTHING, that says "Transformers" to me besides character names.

And I totally agree with Karl on that Shia interview. The kid sounds like a real [composite word including 'f*ck'].

Predabot · Post by **Predabot** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:19 pm

's funny weird Karl, I got the exact opposite reaction reading the Shia-interview from what you did?

You do seem a little bit irritated, as if you are generally a bit off, something troubling you muchly at home?

Your reply to Autobot 420 didn't exactly restore any faith that you have any humility, you sounded very angry, and just a bit nasty even.

Anyways, I love it that Labeouf has a potty-mouth, 'cause he's like Snarl yo!

Actors don't always 'ave to sound like mother-******* sweet-ass supa-dupa ****-sucking ultra-svade. ^^

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 3:00 pm

Karl is down - but not down at other ppl on here - at least I dont think so.

Snarl uses his foul language like a pro - unlike this kid.

BB Shockwave · Post by **BB Shockwave** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 4:10 pm

Snarl's kid posts here?

YEah, Yaya, it's like Godzilla. Most of the plot is about humans, TFs appear only halfway. Bots get 'some' and I do stress some, characterisation, Cons none at all.

So yeah, I just hope this will be like the first LOTR cartoons - first attempt to make it into a movie. Then, 20 years from 2007 someone will do a REAL Tf movie.

(I'm working on my version of the script...

)

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 4:14 pm

BB Shockwave wrote: YEah, Yaya, it's like Godzilla.

Hmmm.....I WONDERED why I said that two weeks ago.

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:04 pm
Yeah, I've gotta say, I'm pretty worried about these designs. I don't want to push the panic button, but my finger is hovering.
What Emmerich did to Godzilla Bay is doing to Transformers.

Post by **Kaylee** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 5:39 pm

Predabot wrote:'s funny weird Karl, I got the exact opposite reaction reading the Shia-interview from what you did?

You do seem a little bit irritated, as if you are generally a bit off, something troubling you muchly at home?

Your reply to Autobot 420 didn't exactly restore any faith that you have any humility, you sounded very angry, and just a bit nasty even.

Count the tears I'm weeping.

I don't particularly like being made to sound like a drooling idiot because I prefer to base my opinions on what I've actually seen (which is pretty poor imo) rather than mindless optimism that somehow everything will all work out.

Other than that it's got zero to do with you. If you should have an interest in my affairs then I tend to end up whinging about them in General Discussions enough for you to notice, I should hope.

That, since you appear to have an interest in it, is 'a bit nasty'. [/heartless f***]