Some were better than others. Jazz, Long Haul, Sentinel Prime, Sideswipe, and Dino were what I'd consider to be "perfect" designs. Others came pretty close. Some were absolute shit. EDIT: Crosshairs was perfect too.
As a G1 and Beast Era fan I love the film designs of all of the films. Yeah, they're different from the previous incarnations of Transformers, but so has most every other iteration of Transformers been different. As for alt mode kibble, maybe I'm in the minority, but I never minded the lessened amount of alt mode kibble in more recent movies. As a matter of fact, I actually prefer the more recent movie designs because the faces of the main robot characters are more visually expressive in the cases of the Autobots, Lockdown, and Galvatron/TLK Megatron, and Quintessa. Cybertronians are supposed to have emotion, so I like it when their facial designs and body language shows that through the work of the animators and designers. Plus we still have a variety of designs. The KSI Transformers have a nice variety of designs, the Steeljaws are gnarly looking, I love the fanciful appearance of the Dinobots' alt modes as well as their barbarian robot appearances, the Stupid Drones are hilarious, Barricade's redesign is simply delightful, and Mohawk is also gnarly looking. So yeah, I like a variety of robot designs.
HA! I knew it! I'm guessing we are going to get G1 designs with Bay elements but we'll just have to wait and see.
Its so funny. I can remember seeing the first images before the release of The Transformers and almost everybody on these forums hated them. Megatron in particular. It is amazing what 10 years can do. I cannot imagine these Transformers looking anything different from how they turned out. When you think that arguably just two Transformers had any resemblance to the original G1 characters. Those being Optimus Prime and Shockwave, it is amazing that we are so cool with this now.
No too future movie Tfs having ugly faces, clothes, shit haircuts and testicles. Optimus prime was alright though.
I'll miss it. I actually think the Wreckers Roadbuster and Topspin were some of the best designs of the whole series that others should have strived for. Barring their heads, they looked great proportionally and aesthetically. Especially because they had kibble on their bodies and little bits hanging off their backs as weaponry. I wish we got more like that instead of fully integrated designs like Ratchet or Ironhide.
Ditto! I'm not saying this just because the Constructicons are my favourite characters, but they really had some of the most creative robot designs in the Transformers movieverse. Rampage bouncing around, Mixmaster having his shields, Demolishor two big rotating wheels, Long Haul a big brute, and Overload having multiple legs and hands. Even those that were just design studies, like Hightower, looked 'out there'. It's a shame the majority of characters in subsequent movies had to be straight up, human-like bipeds, complete with human-like faces.
I think I may be in the minority, but I think I like the newer designs better than the first trilogy designs. I still absolutely adore the older ones and Sideswipe will always be my #1 favorite moviw design but overall, I like the new ones better. Drift is my second favorite movie design. And I honestly doubt they will change the aesthetic much at all.
I absolutely LOVED the creativity that went into the designs in ROTF. They were so out there, all going for different things; bipeds, wheel-feet, multiple limbs, etc. Everyone had a unique silhouette, and that's crucial for fast-paced action movies. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of shaky-cam shenanigans, which hurt many scenes, but you just can't deny how unique designs like Arcee, Rampage, Mixmaster, Scrapper, Jolt, Sideswipe, Scalpel, etc. were. It's such a shame how many of them were used for a maximum of two minutes each, I'd have loved for some more action with them. We did still get creative designs in the future, but I say that ROTF was the height of the designs in the movieverse. I'm not gonna lie, though, I liked the AoE/TLK designs, too. The essential abandonment of putting vehicle kibble on robot modes allowed for them to go for a single theme and go all the way with it. You had Crosshairs, who looks like an action movie protagonist with his trenchcoat, SMGs, head gear, and what not, Hound looking like an average Special Forces commando, Galvatron looking like he's made up of average futuristic technology to push the idea that he's a bleeding-edge, hyper-advanced mech that's leagues ahead of our tech, Lockdown as the ideal male body (dat booty) to intimidate the audience with just his silhouette, Black Templar Megatron being probably the best design the character's ever had, Barricade's "police brutality" thing, and even Bumble/Stinger were channeling ninja themes in AoE. The only ones I didn't really like were Optimus and Drift. Drift was really just a robotic samurai with wheels in his legs; the coolest part of him was really his vehicle mode(s). As for Optimus, I still say that he shouldn't have gotten any Knight-style armor until the Silver Knight upgrade that should've happened. As is, there's just a totally random Knight theme when he rescans in AoE that very subtly gets more armor at the end when there should've been more emphasis on his Knight upgrade - more people would know where his jet boots came from too if this happened. ...So yes, I do like the movie aesthetic, in case you still couldn't tell.
Count me as one that has enjoyed the movie aesthetic thus far, even for AOE and TLK. I grew up with the iconic G1 designs, but I'll echo everyone else's comments in saying that the movie designs dramatically challenged my preconceived notions of what a realistic Transformer might look like, and I thoroughly enjoyed that; they all had a vaguely-humanoid look, but they were alien enough to resemble something never seen or even imagined before, denoting biomechanical alien lifeforms, which is exactly what they are, at the end of the day... Concerning the "humanizing" of the more recent designs, like Drift, Hound, and even Optimus Prime, I thought it made sense...obviously the Autobots relate to humans in a very deep and visceral way. Prime even asks the question in the first film, when alluding to human nature, "Were we so different?" So I'd expect Transformers, being the perpetually-evolving race they are, would begin to therefore continue to evolve and adapt to their new home in the universe, taking on some physical traits of Earth's indigenous lifeforms as they acclimate to their new environment. That's just how I've explained it all away in my own imagination... Having said all of this, I would not be totally against some new designs that were something of a cross between the movie aesthetic and the G1 designs. Back in the day there were just so many iconic and unique elements that defined each character...except the ones that shared the same toy mold, of course. (lol) As an old-timer, I was so disappointed when the film version of Ironhide looked so diametrically different than his G1 counterpart. I always wondered why they opted not to go with the striking head design...his original "mohawk" look just screams "warrior" to me, like an intergalactic Spartan soldier or something. Another example would be Hot Rod...ever since the promise of a sequel to the first film, I hoped there would eventually be a Hot Rod appearance. Finally, when they do decide to use him, he looks absolutely nothing like his G1 design that seems to be so popular that everyone tends to gravitate towards. These are just a couple of examples of many, where I feel more G1 design elements would make future film characters possibly more memorable.
I would go as far as to say that the opposite is now happening. Movie Autobots are beginning to look too human facially. In particular Crosshairs and Drift. I now find myself not liking it!
I think the overly human designs of the last movies would've been cheaper to animate than earlier designs. Recent models have less chrome, glass, and other materials that reflect light differently. They are also far less gappy which may ease some additional rendering in the background. The recent cast honestly made me think of the thick Gears of War models.
Also if they didn't kill everyone in every movie the cheap model reuse could have been mostly avoided and explained by, I don't know, some returning badass characters that have a chance to "build" character.
