Yes in the first movie, planes couldn't even kill the little Scorponok, it was stated nothing other than sabot rounds can hurt them (and even if they, they would instantly regenerate). Decepticons were so badass in the first movie but now they're complete jokes.
So do I. But I think it's become really easy for them to take the Cons down. Considering they've not had any advancement in weaponry since 2007. I mean, they work it out that high heat rounds and damage to the chest hurts them but...
I don't mind the military because it's realistic. There is no way in real life that if giant fucking robots were battling it out in the middle of a city, that the military would not respond. In fact I find it fake as shit when we get these long drawn out TF fights in the middle of a major city and the military isn't there lol. TF1 did it right. ROTF did it but it was so not realistic because the Egyption armed forces should have been ALL OVER THAT! Instead we get massive Nest/American military forces and a few Jordanian choppers lol. DOTM was more realistic. And AOE was fake as all hell lol. The Chines would have been out in force!! Now I know these are movies and they want to show off the TFs more and I'm ok with that. But if the military does get involved, please for the life of all that is holy!!! Don't pull a ROTF and show F-18s taking off from the carrier and then never show them in action lol. Or don't say (TF-1) their sending F-22s and then show F-16s mobilizing and never show them in action in the movie lol. Also I hate the F-16s in ROTF and Starscream also in ROTF dropping flairs/chaff for no reason lol.
I would enjoy it if they did it well, but ROTF and DOTM made the military far more effective than it should be. As for the Chinese military in AOE, you see their air force arriving as the battle ends. I guess they just didn't react fast enough to get in before the 'Bots dealt with it.
The problem that people have with the military is not with their involvement or effectiveness but the fact that when they do get involved, they tend to take center stage during the battles which pushes aside the Autobots' fight scenes to nothing more than background shots and some of 'em aren't even shown and only happened off-screen. Maybe the Chinese military were there but not shown just like in the first Avengers film where the military arrived in New York but were only shown during their arrival and fought the Chitauris only off-screen.
I don't get the complaint about DoTM. It's like people think that they are just regular soldiers that stumble across Decepticons and defeat them. Despite the film CLEARLY pointing out these are veteran special forces who have been training hand in hand with the Autobots for years specifically to fight Decepticons. Also, look at their weapons, they are enhanced. As for RotF, they put up a good fight but the Fallen completely wrecked their shit. If it wasn't for Optimus humanity was doomed.
It's true that the 'Bots didn't get enough focus in ROTF and DOTM's action, but I think that's a mostly independent problem. There were too many of them to give each one spotlight, and those two films never picked any of the bad ass ones as main characters, outside of OP and Bee. In ROTF, purely comic relief characters took focus, and in DOTM, they seemed to drop a lot of the comic relief, while forgetting to replace them by giving other 'Bots focus. That's why I don't choose to bring that point up in discussions of the military in these films. I do personally feel the issues aren't that connected. For starters, I don't really see why you single out DOTM. ROTF established the 'Bots were working with human militaries (even if we didn't see them training together) and it featured a larger human force going up against a smaller 'Con force. For those reasons, the human militaries in ROTF didn't bother me as much as the ones in DOTM. To actually address your point, you make the same mistake that so many people who defend this does. You emphasis human strengths, while ignoring the ones the 'Cons should have. Most of the 'Cons have been alive much longer than any human, and would've spent the last several hundred, probably thousands of years in constant war. We're talking about a race of giant robots, living war machines, who are capable of turning into living weapons, if they choose. They have technology far more advanced than humanity's, they can freaking travel across the galaxy. They should be able to annihilate us, which would be accurate to how they're depicted in most other versions of the franchise.
And yet there are still a bunch of scenes where the focus is on the humans with a robot fight happening in the background. At first I too thought AOE was better because of the robot screen time, but after watching it again, that memory just didn't hold up. And when the robots ARE on screen and do talk.. The stuff that they say is atrocious. It's a bunch stereotypical, depthless garbage... Sadly.
Once again, the humans have Autobot allies. The very enemies that the Decepticons fought for all those countless years. The decision against sharing weapons tech seemed to have been changed in DoTM, the weapons that Epps' Nest team have are not standard military issue, and Que gives out explosives. Then there is the weakness of Decepticon over confidence, they consider humans insects .
I think DOTM is singled out because, given the plot and what was happening in the climax, the bots and cons alike shouldve got AOE level screentime at least. Instead it really feels like there are scenes missing. Compare it to the novel and comic adaptations and you really cant help but feel Bay and crew cheated you out of seeing more robot screentime and characterization and instead favor the camera towards humans. I have to admit DOTM and ROTF are ridiculously annoying for this reason. In a climax in a film called transformers, a good bit of us dont want to see a black hawk down kind of film, which is the EXACT way they, the film makers, described dark if the moon as! And even though AOE had some military involvment, they got it right by only showing so much of CW at the beginning of the film and the chinese forces were seen mobilizing and they definitely are there, theyre just not a focus of any kind. We see jets taking on the night ship in the background. THAT'S the way to do it. Because up until then, it was the autobots taking on clover-con in the background in DOTM while the camera focus is on Sam after having killed Dylan. I really really hope with the addition of more military forces that they dont pull a ROTF and DOTM in this film especially when AOE gave such an awesome feel of having this be just as much a fight for the autobots as it is the humans.
Yes I have recently read the DOTM comic adaptation and it's mostly better than the movie (although there are a few scenes that is better in the movie.)
Read the DOTM book and compair! There are a lot more Dreads in the book too! Even one scene where Ratchet has to force the twins to pull back so Ironhide can handle a hand full of additional dreads. Dino (called Mirage) actually uses his cloaking ability and other little things are explained, like the 3 main dreads actually come to Earth by hitching a ride back on the Xanthium when OP and Ratchet go to retrieve Sentinal. And a very cool scene with Sentinal at a park in his fire truck mode and kids are playing on him and he more or less is in a state of awe at how "these little creatures" interact and socialize. That's when Sam and Bee find him to let him know he's in danger and need to escort him back to NEST. Which leads to the Dread Freeway chase.
I feel like I'm the only one here acknowledging how much cheaper and easier it is to crank out pages of a comic book or a novel than it is to render multimillion dollars worth of photorealistic CGI.
NEST had a handful of Autobots, going up a against a Decepticon army, plus, even if the NEST guns in DOTM weren't standard issue, they still didn't look Cybertronian in design, and if they were meant to be, that should've been established. Hell, there's nothing to establish their weapons aren't ordinary, for anyone (AKA a good chunk of moviegoers) who aren't familiar with gun designs. Heck, even if they were established as Cybertronian guns, there were only a handful of NEST soldiers in DOTM, going up against (as I said before) a Decepticon army. They were joined by random people Epps brought along (mercenaries in the novel) and some other soldiers who somehow got in (not even acknowledged in the film, but their vehicles are there) who seemed to be from the regular military. They all should've been decimated. I completely agree. When I questioned why DOTM was singled out, I meant why CKPRIME singled it out as an example of doing it right, as I see it as ROTF again, but worse. Two points. 1.) If Transformers can't be done justice on the big screen, then they shouldn't be done at all. 2.) The first movie did manage to get it right. What the hell happened with the next two?
So I'm guessing you were pissed off that most of the Avengers weren't mutilated in seconds while fighting the Chitauri in an extremely similar situation. I was pointing out that the information was explicitly stated and shown in DoTM why they should be able to fight Decepticons. I disagree completely with those points.
Another flawed point I see brought up far too often. The Avengers are superheroes. Their whole shtick is that they have powers beyond what everyone else has. The Autobots are ordinary Cybertronians, no different to any of the Decepticons. The films certainly treat them differently, but there's nothing to explain why. What makes Bee any more powerful than those countless protoforms the exact same size as him? I did raise an eyelid, during the Avengers, at Ironman having better tech than these aliens, but he's just one Avenger, and it's not like I'm attached to the Chitauri. I don't read Marvel comics, and as far as I can tell, they're minor villains that comic fans wouldn't be attached to, unlike the Decepticons, who are the main villains of Transformers. Like I said, it's easy to assume NEST had humans training with the 'Bots in ROTF, and DOTM never explicitly stated anything about their weaponry. Care to elaborate?
