they complain all the time, where you been?
explanation was always "the force" was at play.
even have a name for it "The Principle of Evil Marksmanship."

 

Meh sort of but from the trailer it just seems like a bunch of generic cons attacking Chicago. So if anything that's good since it leaves more room for character developement between soundwave, megatron, shockwave, and starscream. I wish they would add another new con though that isn't a reused cgi model (besides that driller).

 

good way to preserve names for hasbro too.

 

I hope the Bank Truck does something. My guess is that he'll wind up as a Brawl type character, big and cool looking, gives the humans a hard time before getting a tough Autobot to take him down.

 

This just screams Prime Breakdown to me.

 

Same here but I hope his name is payload just too match the alt mode.

 

Most of these characters were "named" by the toyline. So I don't see much of a difference really.

In TF1 you have a few Decepticons, they get a really brief roll call, and then they all get smoked (or disappear) except Starscream.

In TF2, we are back to having Megatron and Starscream. They get fleshed out a little more and the Fallen gets added to the mix. Soundwave + Ravage give us a little fanservice. And then you have an army of Constructicons and protoforms. They didn't have personality to speak of, because they are the enemy army in an action movie.

In TF3, Soundwave looks to have a little more to do. Fallen's dead, but add in Shockwave (and pet WMD), Laserbeak, and a new subgroup of goons. Dreads + generics + spaceships = the threat.

Like many of you, I love the Decepticons. Part of me wants them all to get fleshed out. But let's face it, I don't want the movie to break down into a rollcall of both sides and then have all of them duel, or something. It's an action movie, and what happens in that genre is a few, well-equipped, charismatic heroes mowing down a horde of faceless mooks. That's exciting. In a very real sense, these films already have way too many characters. Having a manageable number of strong personalities among the villains keeps the story clean. It's not like a comic or TV series where you can just meander and do whole stories about the Decepticons.

 

Can someone enlighten me on this apparent bank truck Decepticon I keep reading about?

 

A bank truck was spot on set with a decepticon insignia on it.

 

This thing?

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That's cool if it's a actual Con in the movie. But for some reason I doubt it.

 

A little bit. I can understand the need the need for drones, but its still nice to have some individual characters. Personally, I think they should've brought in Skywarp and Thundercracker.

 

That would have been awesome in TF1 to have them,especially the scene where Starscream takes on the human fighter jets. He could have commanded Skywarp and Thundercracker to destroy them while he sat back and watched.

 

Unless a Decepticon is named Megatron then the only thing they are a threat to is some nameless extras or something you think some nameless extras might be riding in.

Even poor Starscream goes from doing some stuff in the first film to doing nothing in Revenge of the Fallen.

I kind of like the idea of not even bothering to slap a name on them. Just reminds back to when the character could do more than just get killed because heavens forbid we get a film where Prime and Bumblebee aren't the robotic version of Chuck Norris, Snake Eyes, Wolverine and Kratos from God of War.

 

Not at all, as long as the Dreads and the big four iconic Cons get heaps of screen time. Wish the Seekers would've made it into the film though.

 

Counting the Autobot characters in total that appears in the movie trilogy and comparing it with the Unicron Trilogy numbers per series it shows around the same general character numbers.

Think of it as like G.I. Joe in the 80's tons of good guy characters with the bad guys a core cadre with mooks. In this case the Decepticons in the movie have tons of mooks.

 

This

 

This has been one of my major concerns about the movie.

The Autobots get characterization and all. As for the Cons, just a few leaders and the rest become generic cannon fodder.
It gives the impression that the good guys are all individual and unique, while the bad guys are merely a bunch of mindless clones. It does start to feel like LOTR.

For all the mayhem the Cons are said to unleash on Chicago, I find it quite disappointing that apart from Shockwave and the Driller, there isn't any other character that stands out.

I would have loved to have seen the space shuttle become Astrotrain, or one of the spaceships becoming Trypticon, etc. But all we have are the Dreads, again generic SUVs.

Don't get me wrong, I've loved what I seen so far. But character-wise, at least on the Decepticons side, just seem to lack the wow factor that was aplenty in TF1 with Blackout and Bonecrusher, and ROTF with Devastator.

 

People need to realize that these movies are in the action genre, not "deep" sci-fi genre.

Think about something like MiB, Rush Hour, Bad Boys, Die Hard etc... In all of those, 90% of the bad guys are just thugs to be defeated/killed by the good guys to make them look cool.

With that said, I would love more lines for them. Both out of battle character-building, but also in-battle. Would Bonecrusher be quite as awesome without those screams? I don't think so. Same goes for Barricade. I really wish the constructicons had been talking during the desert battle, would have been cool if done right. Just a line here and there can really create a bit of characterization quickly. All we know about Sideswipe we pretty much got from his one line. Just little touches help so much.

 

I remember long haul talking he said whaputchu dowreeeegh

 

Come on, you're exagerating this mounstrously, both Optimus and BB are shown as NOT invencible.

'Bee got his legs obliterated on TF1, he even ended up incapacitaded for half of the final battle, Megatron wiped the floor with Optimus' face for the whole Battle of Mission City.

Also, as I said, on TF1 all the 'Cons got their small time to shine, even if dying.

Well, we have THA DREADS.