I don't know - isn't it firmly established that the exterior shell of the Transformers isn't changed?

 

i'm all for speculation and educated guesses about what's happening in this movie.. . but this is just stupid. just because two trucks have 1 or 2 things in common doesn't mean anything.

does this mean that the red car getting cut in half might be bumblebee because it has two headlights and two turn signals?.. no. it doesn't.

 

their original concept is EXTREMELY stupid and i really wish they had a chance to rewrite it.

transformers, before coming to earth, simply being robotic skeletons with the ability to transform into a ball type steroid thing is a rather stupid concept.. especially when looking at megatrons robot and alt mode in the first movie and sentinel primes look from before he was brought to earth. it just doesn't add up and creates a lot of holes.

they all should've had different cybertronian alt modes relatable to their new earth modes.. sort of like if the WFC/FOC cast, but with the movie aesthetic.

hell.. even the look of cybertron COMPLETELY changed from the first movie to the third.

it's a shame because their explanation in the first movie gave them excuses for the second and third to have a bunch of "drone-like" decepticons that look the same. it's too bad they weren't their own characters.. it would've been a great way to please the fans by throwing in a bunch of non essential characters that look similar to classic characters.

oh well.

 

They all have unique Cybertronian modes, back on Cybertron.

When the Autobots came to Earth in the first movie, it was in their trans-scanning mode. They turned into asteroid-like forms and allowed space dust and other material to collect on their outer shells while they travelled to their destination to hide from Decepticons.

When they landed on Earth and transformed and looked for disguises, it wasn't really necessary to revert to a Cybertronian form to do so, and rather kept themselves in that protoform mode to hunt for diguises.

Megatron never reverted from his Cybertronian Jet mode, so he never was shown as an exoskeleton, and Sentinel Prime was in stasis lock and never had the need to transform into the asteroid mode since he had a ship.

 

I assume they can change into what ever they want along as its around their size. I would think they can change colour too if they want.

 

nope.

i believe it was bay who said, in the special features, that on cybertron they all walked around in their "under skin" i believe is the term he used.

all of the autobots looked the same when they crashed on earth.. they all were the same type of meteor looking vehicle and all of their robot modes were almost exactly the same.

the decepticons, as we saw in rotf and dotm, all look the same before scanning.

also.. in the beginning of dotm, the two autobots in the ark look exactly the same.. that scene takes place ON cybertron.. so the idea that they all look different on cybertron is incorrect.

basically, there were the decepticon protoforms, the autobot protoforms, the huge quadruped protoforms, the dump truck from the invasion scene in DC, he only looks different because they have yet to show us what it looks like when they scan something and change.. they just scan something and automatically transform into what they scanned rather than vehicle parts just being added to their bodies. i think it'd look too much like morphing, so they had to give him a robot mode that closely resembles the vehicle that he scans, and that's the only reason he looks different from the others. sentinel (who somehow already had his alt mode vehicle parts on him while he was in stasis .. maybe it's like in G1, in that he was automatically scanned and given an alt mode) and megatron.. otherwise, everyone else has looked the same. and shockwave.

other than those bots, they all, presumably, looked the same unless it was convenient for them to look different when they arrive on earth because of what they scan on earth.

also.. when we see prime transform from his protoform alt mode, i don't remember him being covered in space dust.

my original opinion still stands.. i wish they had different cybertronian modes rather than looking like a whole bunch of clones. and even if all of those bots who look exactly the same still transformed into different things, it's pretty shitty that that didn't translate into different looking robot modes.

so, again, most of the robots on cybertron weren't unique (at least, from what we've seen, their robot modes weren't unique)

it's also rather odd that somehow robots that scanned the same vehicles as brawl, sideways, long haul, and scrapper (i believe) would end up in chicago.. i would think they'd scan something more likely to be common in america since it seems they arrived on those ships or came from DC.

i think the easiest explanation for all of this is the budget.. they just don't have the money for every bot to be unique or not be a reused design. so, we get clones and copies.

i'm not saying that doing this ruined any of the movies, i'm just saying that it's a shame they couldn't give us more unique characters that hinted at beloved G1 robots.