We all love the Dinobots, but why did they have to be so stupid? Meaning their intelligence level. Aren't we now finding out that the Dinosaurs might have actually been smarter than we all thought? What if the Dinobots were intelligent?
Um, you're obviously a cartoon fan. Check out the comics, esp. anything by Simon Furman - all the Dinobots, especially Grimlock, are much smarter than the cartoon portrays.
The Dino's were really Dumbed down for the 86 Movie, but other then that I loved 'em. Read the G2 Comic as well, Grimlock was very smart in that.
I don't read comic books either, so to me they were what they were in the cartoons. If they were smart they'd come up with a better disguise than extinct dinosaurs.
Because in the cartoon, nearly everyone was stupid so why should the Dinobots be any different? Who need intelligence when Prime will save the day?
Donald F. Glut figured that dinosaurs probably were stupid, so it'd totally make sense if the Dinobots were stupid too.
I kinda prefer the dumb dinos in the cartoon. In the comics they weren't exactly rocket scientists but they just blended into the background with all the other former flavor of the weeks (minus Grimlock of course). At least being the stereotypical dumb brutes in the cartoon they stood out.
If you're just talking about the cartoon, then I don't it's that they were especially stupid, just that some aspects of their programming was sometimes drowned under their sheer arrogance. That and the fact that they weren't natives of Cybertron and built by other Transformers perhaps meant that they weren't always 'firing on all thrusters' so to speak. Add in brute strength and firepower and you have a group of characters whose prioritites lay away from tactical nous, philiosophy and subtle humour.
I think it was meant as a character flaw so that the Dinobots would not be too powerful of a force in the cartoons. The Dinobots were shown as the heavy hitters so on the brute force level there wasn't much that could stand toe to toe with them. But by making them less than bright that gives the bad guys a way to either outsmart or manipulate the Dinobots. I mean just imagine how almost unstoppable they would have been if you combined the strength of the Dinobots with a keen mind.
I never read the comics. I don't mind stupid or simple Dinobots. I just didn't care for silly comic relief ones from season 3 in G1.
You need to read more Marvel UK! The Dinobots did anything BUT blend into the background in stories like "Dinobot Hunt", "Icarus Theory" and "In The National Interest". They also gave Galvatron a good beating in "Fallen Angel" which has to count for something!
To put things in perspective, in the comics the Dinobots were never really intelligent... even if you go back to Budiansky's original Tech Specs, they were about average, with Slag and Sludge being a bit dumb. I think the point of the Dinobots was that they were stubborn, rebellious and rough-mannered... in the cartoon, they just decided to interpret that as pants-on-head ******ed. Originally, they were just slow-witted, but by the time Season 3 came around, Grimlock and company were full-on comic relief. zmog
