I think the entire concept of "robots in disguise" was vastly underused and has potential for a lot of different story elements that were never used. Like a Decepticon shooting at a yellow camaro only to find out that the Camaro wasn't really Bumblebee with the actual Bumblebee behind him. That would add a sense of suspense to the movie instead of blindly shooting at everything that moves. It would also greatly improve the use of espionage and spying as no one would ever know what was or wasn't a TF.

Even just using a scene reminiscent of Knight Rider where the driver of the car talks to the TF via the dashboard would add quite a lot to the story and expand greatly on characterization while being extremely cheap to pull off.

 

I think the movie used the "robots in disguise" concept very well. Just watch the scene with Blackout. You have the general feeling something's not right, and then---BOOM! He transforms and trashes the base!

 

But shooting a Camaro would only blow the 'con's cover. I think the movie did it quite well, with Frenzy infltrating Air Force One as the stereo, Starscream perfectly impersonating part of an attack squad of F-22's, and Ironhide disguised as a tooth fairy (okay, maybe not the last one, but the first two are legit)

 

Also, look at Bumblebee, he successfully kept his cover while doing his work, then Barricade as well, you see how he fooled Sam until he attacked him.

 

To be honest, I actually thought that the 2007 movie made some of the best use of the "robots in disguise" concept to date, not that that's saying a lot. When you actually break it down, the Transformers franchise to date has actually made relatively little of the whole "disguise" aspect of the alternate mode; since traditionally the robots have always been the primary focus of the narrative, there's never been any suspense or ambiguity presented to the audience as to their identity. What few scenes of "disguise" or "espionage" there are are always presented from the robots' point of view, and even then it's almost always been in a throwaway manner; I can't remember any branch of TF fiction prior to 2005 where the secret, hidden nature of the 'bots has been any kind of major plot strand, and no particular importance is attached when the robots are discovered.

The 2007 movie and Simon Furman's IDW continuity are pretty much the only incarnations I've encountered where "robots in disguise" actually meant something, and I think that's due to the fact that both are grounded in a human perspective; that distance from the 'bots, at least to start with, allows them a certain level of mystery, which means that the disguise idea does get to become suspenseful in the way you described, and that's something I find refreshing about them. TRANS+CRAZY and Autobot Burnout both gave good examples of moments in the first film where this was used to good effect; I hope that RotF continues to utilise this theme, because frankly, it has been vastly underused in the franchise as a whole thus far.

 

that scene was so D'awwwwww-tastic.
I think the 2007 movie used the element of disguise really well.
espeially for all the instances listed so far here.

It'll be interesting to see if/how ROTF improves on these concepts. Especially given the supposed increase of bot-screentime.

 

That scene made me want to strangle that kid >_>

 

I think the first movie used this concept awesomely.

 

That kid annoys me.

"Excuse me, are you the tooth fairy?"

Seriously... didn't her parents tell her what a fairy looks like?

 

I can see what you are getting at, but I think the film did a good job with the concept of "robot's in disquise." I think DieMaus put it best in their comment:

 

Maybe she just had a really vivid imagination?
I know if the tooth fairy looked like that we'd party every weekend.

 

I thought the concept was used appropriately in the first movie. After all, all the audience needed to see at the time was that the robots could disguise themselves as vehicles. It would have been nice if there was a scene explaining why they do that, but I think the movie provided enough hints that any audience member who wanted to think about it could think about it.

However, I do think TF1 did an good job of using the "more than meets the eye" concept, an idea that conveys mystery and implication. Bay et al allowed the movie to foster it without using the proverbial hammer to hit the audience over the head.

 

The movie nailed it. Despite the alt-modes being some pretty colorful and sporty cars, that would turn heads in real life, they still didn't reveal the robots underneath. Which means them damn robots where definitely in disguise...

Hell, Bumblebee even had his hood popped open and they couldn't tell he was a robot!

 

The first movie robots, to me, were all about the "robot in diguise" gimmick, and was the ultimate advantage of having the story told from a human's perspective. I remember on the drive home from the theatre my sister kept joking that now she thinks of what each car we see would look like as a robot. The diguise thing was one of the best parts in the first movie. Wheras the second movie looks to still have that, but it's main robot gimmick is combining. Maybe next movie will have triple changers?

 

It by far used the concept better than any other incarnation of the franchise.

 

The only way they could have used the disguise idea better is if they had indeed spent their time communicating only in vehicle mode unless movement was neccesary. And as good a use of the disguise element as that would be, it would be kind of boring. And get some knight rider copyright infringement suits happening.
Really, this is to date the franchise that has best used the disguise element.

 

I think it depends on which part of the film you want to talk about since some areas seemed to nail it rather well and other parts, well other parts didn't do so well.

Robots fooling humans, not so bad. The scene with Blackout was a really good case of what can be done with the concept.

Robots fooling robots, just didn't seem to happen. Ironhide seems to know it's Starscream even before he transforms so that aspect of it seemed rather blown. It would be cool if the robots couldn't spot each other in vehicle mode because then you could do stuff like an Autobot hides from the Decepticons in a parking lot or something.

Then for robots in disguise we end up with characters that can't hide like Megatron and scorpie. Just takes something away when characters don't have an Earth alt mode.

Ha ha, although you might want to argue they took robots in disguise too far since the movie was called Transformers yet you hardly saw any Transformers at all. A rather generic sci fi film staring humans, hard to disguise a robot movie any harder than that. Ha ha, Decepticons were hid even better since we never saw a robot worthy of being a feared Decepticon warrior.

 

Anyways... after the first movie. Every human knows about them.

So, there's no need to be in Disguise. So, their Alt Mode, is more like an improve.

Just a wacky though  

 

well, we still don't know how well the government succeeded in their coverup yet.

not to mention that even if everybody knows that there is a black Topkick that turns into a robot somewhere, chances are they won't know WHICH Topkick.