Could a simpler aesthetic work in live-action?

I definitely think a simpler, more G1/WFC-esque style would work. I think the best aesthetic would be something kind of similar to this Gundam statue:



I don't think it would look at all out-of-place or anything in a live action movie.

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Nope. I love the designs. Keep them exactly as they are.

Yup.
Probably even better.

A lot of different aesthetics could work, however there are certain design features that will never look right in a 'real' setting.

Take that Gundam pic. Look at his joints, the elbows, wrists, and hips especially. That is absurdly, absurdly limited articulation which just will not work for an action movie (I'm assuming, of course, Gundams aren't 50's-style clanking tin-can robots lacking any form of personality). It'd need something a lot more "organic"; it doesn't have to be millions of random machine parts, but solid blocks with awkward hinges like that really won't animate well.

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Besides, most of those Gundams look the same to me. They all the proportions of a guy in a suit.

Theoretically, yes. Nothing is stopping them from 'working' in live-action, whether it's live-action G1, live-action RID, live-action TFP, etc.. "Super highly complex Bayformers" is not the only way Transformers could be visualized. It merely happens to be the way Bay & Co. wanted to go. After all, it's their movie. Every piece of Transformers media seems to have it's own, unique style and visual identity, it's only natural that the live-action movieverse would have their own as well. As much as I like the Bayformers aesthetic, personally, I think TFP and WFC/FOC would be absolutely fantastic in live-action as well.

I think the main thing that "haters" (and I use that term in the sense of the people who claim "anything would be better than Bayformers", "as long as it wasn't Bay's designs it'd be good", etc.. If you genuinely don't like the designs, that's fine. ) seem to forget is that there's more than just two options. A lot of people seem to view there only being two options.

a.) Bayformers designs
or
b.) something 'good'.

To them, there's nothing in between. There are dozens - if not hundreds - of different styles and designs that could've ended up in the movie. We could've had a direct translation of G1 on the screen. We could've had something like RID which emphasized asymmetry. We could've had something like TFP which has a lot of smooth, organic lines. We could've had walking steampunk/rivet-laden Iron Giant designs. We could've had highly alien Predator/Alien-esque designs for everyone. We could've ended up with something that had every character look like a medieval knight. We could've ended up with something like the Gundam image up above. And believe it or not, we could've ended up with something even more detailed and complex than Bayformers. And in between all of those options of dozens of other iterations. So many ways things could've turned out, at the hands of any one different filmmaker. And each one of those above-mentioned aesthetics would've had it's group of supporters and it's group of nay-sayers. Some people hate the G1 style. Some people love it. Some people hate the WFC/FOC style. Some people love it. Some people hate the Bayformers style. Some people love it. Same thing can be said for any possible aesthetic they might choose to do. It's all subjective.

But until a different design aesthetic happens, it's Schrodinger's Aesthetic. Until we see one fully conceptualized and brought to the screen, it could both work and not work at the same time. We've seen unfinished ILM tests of them trying what appears to be a straight translation of G1. I, personally, don't care for it. But they're tests. I'm sure with some tweaking and updating it could work. That is, if they wanted to do an out-and-out G1 aesthetic. Which they didn't. Can you really fault them for doing what they want to do?

Considering it would be a company like ILM working on the characters, pretty much any sort of look is possible. These are companies that make a living on bringing the impossible to life on film so the look is really only limited by what the production team wants the look to be.

Personally I'd like a sleeker look. Something like a Ferrari is a sexy car because it's such a nice sleek design, take a car and start adding random bits all over the body and you just end up with an ugly car.

I work on a machine at work and I keep on old clunker on the road so it' pretty much ingrained in me with the engineering motto of don't go adding bits just to add bits. Simpler is better so if you add something it better have a good purpose.

I know some people like the move designs, but all I see is pile of random parts sticking out all sorts of places and a distracting design because the human eye can only follow so much at one once.

Likely. I imagine that if a future film series wants a smoother aesthetic, they could take a lot of inspiration from the Iron Man films.

Something on the lines of Prime,WFC/FOC,and the IDW MTMTE styles can work very well on the silver screen.

No. It would look really, really fake. The tech just isn't there yet. It would be comical, nobody outside of the fandom would pay to see it, Paramount would lose millions.

Yeah, Bayformers don't necessarily look hyper-real, but the complexity distracts from the unreality. Plus, it would be hard to justify it, plot-wise. Would an audience really buy that an alien robot just happened to have its big, blocky, metal limbs arranged to transform into Earth vehicles? The series of tiny parts doesn't make sense, per say, but it's not so blatantly offensive to the viewer's logic.