Say hello to your wife for me is one of my favorite Decepticon lines ever so I can't agree with you on that one.

 

OP has a valid point. I'm not really a fan of a lot of the robot dialogue.

 

One word........get out of the thread if you're not gonna contribute something valuable to the conversation.

Oh wait, that might've been a few more than one word. My bad  

 

I think that was kinda the point of what he was saying. Now that I try to explain it, it doesn't make much sense but I think Optimus' point was meant in almost a sarcastic or ironic manner. Ironhide said it like primitive and violent go hand in hand, and Optimus was like we're not primitive but we're still violent. I hope I'm getting my point across well.  

 

That's an easy one, it's just Micheal Bay's sensibilities of pop culture. Have you also wondered why the sense of camaraderie between characters feels kind of 'off' with some of these movies? Where characters will kind of talk with an aggressive tone and throw and offhanded insults towards the characters look, ethnicity, or physical features? ("J-lo", "Shrimp Taco", "Ricky Ricardo", "Lucky Charms"     ) That's Bay too. It's his way of adding rapid-fire comedy to his films. He's done it in almost all of his other movies, so it's rarely difficult to catch.

 

Oh just get the fuck off the forums if you're really complaining about this. Which would you rather, bland wooden performances or actual personality?

 

It bothers me a bit that most of the time the Cybertonians only speak in either gibberish whatnot, one liner quip, or one way 'conversation'. I want them to have an actual meaningful dialogue (yes there is bit of that, but I want more) between Autobot with fellow Autobot, Decepticon with other Decepticon and Autobot with Decepticon. Even if that mean a conversation while they are in vehicle form, I don't mind!

Just let the robots speak more, so they don't come across 24/7 as trigger happy maniac with penchant for violence every bit of second.

 

It's sad that "Say hello to your wife to me," is considered one of the best lines of the franchise just because it felt like it was part of the scene. What a freaking low bar   Integrated CGI characters are becoming more and more doable, it's so weird that this franchise's seem to be getting less convincing as the movies go on.

 

The OP has a point here. Sort of. My only complaint with accents is the stereotypes. A Ferrari with an Italian accent would be a classic example. My complaint would be the absolute lack of imagination when it comes to the voices, not what they actually say.

 

God, exactly this. Why is the way the Transformers talk in these movies so weird? Take basically anything Lockdown said as an example example: He was less talking as he was stringing together some vaguely related sentences. Half the time all they say is one-liners anyway... and yet most of these one-liners don't even make sense in context!

TBF, IIRC Dino's accent was something that Ferrari itself insisted on. It was one of the many, many reasons that the character should've been cut or a different car used.

 

I didn't know this! Makes it even worse. They could have used another make/model rather than pandering to a car company. I didn't hear Soundwave speaking in a German accent when he was a Mercedes.

 

It was worse than just that.

Because he turned into a Ferrari, Hasbro couldn't make toys of him because those rights belong to Mattel. Subsequently they couldn't use a name that was associated with Hasbro and as such his name had to be changed from Mirage. Originally the character's name was changed to Enzo, after Enzo Ferrari, before being changed to be named after his son. Finally, Ferrari insisted on approving the character's voice.

Basically Dino was treated as a Ferrari that turned into a robot and not a Transformer with a Ferrari alt mode.

 

Agreed with the OP, except for Optimus, the rest of the bots never actually really talk like real mature adults with purpose or emotion. Bay's human character also talks in a similar way but it's really obvious with the bots. I mean it's ok for some of them can act like children but Hound and Drift should at least talk like adults.

Case and point theres no way you can imagine the bots in these movies having a conversation like this.

 

True, in the cartoons - both past and present - many times, Transformers said and acted anything but 'sophisticated'. I guess because it's animated, I can accept the cheap humour and eccentrics, if you will. But for a live action movie where they try to make a storyline as real-life as possible, I just don't see how advanced intelligent robot aliens would adapt that kind of jargon. It's like the TFs all sat down and watched episodes of Jerry Springer and MTV shows to learn the English language. I'd still like the TFs' dialogue to be interesting, evil, wholesome, funny, smart, etc...but in a more refined way. It would be more fitting, in my opinion, for these live-action characters. If a script was written by the proper writers, it won't be boring or stale.

Obviously not everyone agrees with each other on many factors of the movie (not just their way of talking), but I've yet to discover a movie that is loved or hated equally by 100% of the population. So I'm not surprised there are mixed opinions on the TFs speech in the live-action movies. I can appreciate that. It's great hearing other fans' viewpoints.

 

I share some of your sentiments. I'm not a very big fan of how some of them speak either.

I actually don't mind the profanity and cussing. But what I don't like, is that many of them mimic common stereotypes - the neighbourhood punk, the thugs, the army general, the Japanese samurai, etc. Some might call it characterization, but I call it cliche.

Transformers are made out to be advanced alien robots. Why would they need to mimic the speech patterns of particular groups of humans?
Why can't they sound like alien robots?

I liked the Cybertronian dialogue they had in TF1. Made them feel alien, unknown and exotic. But with each passing movie, it seems they keep getting humanised, both in look and dialogue. Which for me, strips them of the what makes them unique in the first place.

 

This is actually disgusting. It takes product placement to an entirely new level. This is the ultimate in whoring yourself out. Sorry. I know this is a little off topic. Rant over...............

 

Like it or not, a key theme in the Tf films is the slow acceptance that earth is there new home, and the silly way they talk is part of integrating with earth and adopting colloquial language. They often use it poorly, as they are aliens and its used for cheap laughs.

The knight theme also shows them integrating with ancient earth customs of honor, loyalty knights chivalry etc.

Fyi a lot of what they say annoys the shit out of me, but I still dig the film's.

 

There's plenty I don't like about the dialogue and voice acting in these movies.

1. Fake gravelly voices. Some of the voice cast remind me of when someone tries to do a death metal growl but end up sounding like the Cookie Monster. Megatron's voice from the first three is a good example. Cullen, Nimoy, and Welker do gravelly far better than Weaving.

2. Unintelligible voices. I can't understand half of what the secondary robot cast is saying. Sure, I get their key lines but a lot of it sounds muffled to me. I have no idea of half of what Hound is on about.

3. Accents. I don't mean the ones like Dino, Drift, and Hot Rod. It's the others like Ironhide and Crosshairs that I really dislike. What are they even supposed to be?

4. Robots declaring their names all the time as a substitute for characterisation. "I AM Optimus Prime!" "I AM Galvatron!" "I AM Megatron!!!" Great, thanks for clearing that up. Also, "That...is Shockwave" isn't much better. That tells us nothing. Fans know who he is and newcomers would be like "So? Who IS he?"

But none of that stops me watching them again and again and having a damn good time, even if there's a lot of cringing along the way.

 

A lot of it has to do with much of the dialogue for supporting Transformers not being written or finalized until after filming. Think about how many of the robots don't directly interact or converse with humans, which makes it easier to hold off on finalizing their roles or placement in shots until later on in the process. AOE and TLK worked on fixing this in a lot of ways, but you can still find many points in which the conversations aren't natural.

TF1 was an exception- because they had a largely completed script before filming. Also, I kind of liked the somewhat unnatural robot dialogue in TF1, because it sold them as being somewhat distant alien beings. For example, the way they treated hiding around Sam's house almost as some sort of military operation was funny (Autobots, fall back!).

In TLK, besides Cogman, Cade directly interacts with Optimus, Bumblebee, Hound, Daytrader, Grimlock, and Vivian with Optimus and Hot Rod. Not too bad!

 

OP has a point, and the way the transformers speaks like immature pricks are a problem, but that's only a part of my problem. My other problems is the majority of the robots dialogues are just there to be cool one liners like Sideswipe's "Damm I'm good" line. They're cool for the first time, but they have no substance beyond that and it gets old really quick.

An example of this case would be almost every single Optimus's dialogue in TLK. I'm not even joking when I can describe the dialogues during Prime's and Megatron fight in TLK to been something like this:

Megatron: We were brothers once!
Optimus: I am Optimus Prime! I am Optimus Prime! I am Optimus Prime......!!!

The fact that Optimus got only like less than 20 minutes screentime in this movie didn't help either.