>cashing in on nostalgia would be replicating the 80's cartoon
>-- exploiting fans' disillusioned feelings towards a childhood
>memory by recreating that same universe.

not necessarily. It would have been that much more obvious.

>Bay did not do that. he simply used the franchise as a vehicle
>for his own ideas. do you think every movie based on an old
>book is created to pry on nostalgia?

He used a nostalgic franchise as a vehicle for his own ideas. He made this film because he had nostalgic ideas of TF which he then molded into his own image. It started with a nostalgic thought.

This is not always the case (i.e. old books); in this case, it definitely is. The Transformers (as a property) is a distinct period piece, something that can be easily tied to the 1980s. Where s a book, can be written in one era, reflect the feelings/ideas of a particular era, but can not be so deeply entrenched in the time of when/how it was written. Something like the Transformers is way too much identifiable with the era. To add, '80s culture has been "in" for a good part of this decade, or at least the romanticized version of such.

Even if the end product does not bear any real resemblance to the '80s version, the idea in and of itself was an attempt of bringing back those memories. Same as the G.I. Joe movie that's coming out this year, and the rumblings about all those other '80s shows resurrected from the dead. We've got a bunch of '80s kids running popular culture now. Bay didn't come up with the idea of transforming robots (or rather, the "Transformers" as stated, as the "transforming robot" idea is much older than that). Had he made this film in say... 1991 or so, when it would not have been a "good" idea (investment wise)? Maybe The Doc would be able to buy the idea that this whole thing wasn't jumped off a nostalgic idea/meant to cash in on that.

On the other hand, looking at Star Trek, The Doc doesn't think it was really a case of "nostalgic resurrection" because unlike Transformers, it had remained in some kind of high-visibility form (movies, references in other TV series, etc) through the '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s. Transformers (in the US) had more or less been in "pop culture" stasis until this decade.

Selling TF on a grand-scale (i.e. outside of the toy-buying sector) as Bay was attempting to do with the idea of this movie doesn't quite strike The Doc as anything else but nostalgic.

>the proof is in the film's success. it appealed to pretty much
>everybody OUTSIDE the circle of nostalgia.

that is sort of irrelevant to what The Doc was arguing. It's not who bought into it, or how the movie was marketed, just the idea of relaunching that franchise on the silver screen in the midst of an '80s nostalgia boom in the first place = nostalgia. They lucked up.

>as for what Deluge (and other fanboys are feeling) posted --
>are we reading the same thing? he wrote "explosions and
>laughs...thats not the transformers i grew up to love". what
>was the original then, exactly? a spellbinder filled with
>mature themes, clever dialogue and grandiose expositions into
>the difference between man and robot?

Dunno. Why not ask Deluge what he thinks about it? It's just not necessarily true that he thinks ALL (or even some) of those things about the original show. He just maybe thought the original show was more entertaining than a bunch of "explosions and laughs". Not necessarily on a deeper, more intellectual level, but on an "entertainment" level. Maybe the explosions and the laughs WERE better in the original show to Deluge.

>of course it wasn't! the 80's cartoon was cool robots and
>explosions that appealed foremost to the pre-teen male mind.
>the end.

Your opinion, but you said you were on the "precipice" of remembering the old show earlier, so maybe you don't understand it/feel the same way as Deluge did.

>furthermore, I don't understand your use of this "cop-out".
>I'm not saying Bay gets a pass for making a similarly mediocre
>movie when the the original cartoon wasn't great. but for
>older fans to imply that the original cartoon was perfect
>source material (as is) for a great modern movie -- yes,
>that's a cop-out.

It's a cop-out because you assumed that that's where his line of thought was. Maybe his argument was, perhaps that wasn't the best idea to make it into a modern movie in the first place, based on what he said. The only real concrete thing The Doc can pull out of what he said is "Bay's movie sucks because it just blows up shit and has cheap laughs". The rest is open for interpretation.