I suggest you rewatch some of these movies lol

 

It's subjective whether you enjoy a film or not, it's not subjective the work that was put into a film by the people that made it however.

 

Lack of "NOoNONONoNONONONONooNonono"
And/or "IM AN INVENTOR"

 

And there is no way you could know that.

 

The problem were they were unstoppable. We saw that Charlie was vulnerable to the Decepticons, and couldn't do much to stop the fight. Sam and Cade casually fight among the Transformers, and show little fear. Charlie was more hesitant, and had a person she loved gone. Cade and Sam acted like assholes to the people around them, and everyone accepted them.
Also Sam and Cade were weird. And their dialogue reflects this. Sam felt like an overreacting kid, loud, and not a young adult who takes on his own responsibilities. Cade... I can't remember a damn thing about him except he was manly.

 

Yeah, I thought they might have been getting ready to establish Lennox as the main character in a later movie. Or his daughter. I was actually hoping they'd do that (especially meeting Sam in the first movie).

He came across as something of a thug at times (imo). I know we were supposed to sympathise with him because of his problems, etc, but he had a few traits I didn't particularly like. But he was a major improvement over Sam.

 

Cade and Sam are sterotypical Hollywood males presenting a lot of toxic masculinity traits. Insofar as they barely get along with any other men, because they divide other men into two categories: "Rival" and "subordinate". Seriously, find any scenes with any two men in the Bay movies that are showing geniuine indications of mutual affection rather than constantly bickering and belittling each other. The only exceptions really are Lennox and Epps, who are the closest the Bay films ever get to realistic, likable male human characters. Everyone else is a caricature, either an Alpha Male or a designated loser.

Charlie, by contrast, doesn't have any of that constant rivalry attitude going on. She just wants to find her place. Her relationship towards Memo doesn't instantly enter super horny territory (at least not on her end), instead she focuses more on the mission. The males in Bay's movies would get constantly distracted by the pretty woman.

 

Well, Cade and Sam were in movies that were directed by Michael Bay and “bAy = BaD ” and Charlie was in a movie not directed by Michael Bay, so by default she MUST be better.

 

A character must develop meaningfully over the course of a story to qualify as a good one. Charlie qualifies as the best of the three leads for this exact reason. And because she’s the only one with actual development: from a moody teenager distant from her family and unclear about her purpose in life to a cheerful more open person in just 2 hours.

By comparison, Sam took 3 films to kinda go from a stereotypical highschool loser to a mature and responsible family man. I say kinda because correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t he make those exact same promises with Mikaela one movie ago? Based on how their relation ended a guy like him wouldn’t sustain a marriage well, especially since you need to squint your eyes to see what ‘development’ he got by the end of DOTM.

Then there’s Cade who.. eh, I’m not sure if breaking out of voluntary celibacy counts as ‘character development’. He’s also still a jerk.

 

Sam and Cade both could have worked fine, if not moreso, it's less to do with the idea for the characters themselves and much more to do with the direction and writing of said characters.

It's not rocket science, I still think there's plenty to improve on in the human department, but Charlie, Memo, Agent Burns, her family, were at least marginally better than past bay movie humans. Amazing? Not really, groundbreaking? Definitely not, but an improvement? Easily.

 

Toxic masculinity?! Oh no

 

Competent director and writers made a decent character who didn't devolve into an unlikeable asshole.

LaBeouf and Wahlberg are decent actors and started out decently in their first movies (Sam being a teenager and Cade being a dad who wants to protect his kid) but in their next respective films I couldn't either stand them. Thank God they never shared a scene.

 

She’s neither a power fantasy, nor an obnoxious teenage Everyman who’s actually completely insufferable, like Cade and Sam respectively were.

She’s a character. And a fairly sympathetic one at that.

Also, let me just say that watching the Transformers fandom rub their two collective brain-cells together to try to reverse engineer what exactly makes good character-building is.... Absolutely hilarious. Especially when one user gets mad at another for saying “yeah this character was objectively not well made”.

 

I don’t get it she is as much of a teen stereotype as Sam is what makes her so special?

 

She's actually likable? She's a decent actor?

 

Yeah, Cade at times sounded like if you didn't believe he was an inventor, he'd be perfectly fine bashing your head in our breaking your legs until you acknowledged it, or admitted that 'his little girl' was all his.

 

Because she was in a decent movie that was coherent and felt more like an actual transformer movie rather than the usual Bay circus.

 

If you can't tell from just watching the movie, I doubt you'll ever know.

 

Were you ever a teenager or did you just skip those years? 

This is how a lot of teens are. It just is. Even though parents usually do their best, their teens generally see them as annoying or controlling or overprotective. She felt that her parents didn't understand her or the pain she still felt at the loss of her father, so she spent time with his old car instead. Until she happened to run into a car who had quite a personality and was thrust into an amazing adventure of a lifetime, which is something just about every teenager wishes for at some point. To be swooped away from their home life and away from their family (who loves them but just doesn't understand them) and into an exciting adventure that reignites their childhood happiness that they've already grown out of.

Yes, the mom and stepdad were good people. They were nice and patient and cared and loved her and they were always doing their best, but Charlie couldn't see that until the end. That was the point and that was a part of her character growth throughout the movie. It was intended to make her more relatable, not less. And I get the feeling thats exactly how it worked for most of the audience watching the movie

 

Precisely this. Charlie is a human, and a child who's still growing. Her path of development in the movie is coming to grips with her loss and accepting her family.

And let's not forget her mother remarried, which is a sensitive subject for anyone let alone a teenager still finding their place. Of course she's going to be upset when not only does her mother seemingly not care (although it's obviously not true) that Charlie's dad passed away, but seems to have happily replaced him in a relatively short amount of time.

That's gotta sting, and is the main reason she alienated herself from her family, because she felt they alienated her. The (often pandering) niceties her family showed her would've just been salt in the wound. (she basically says as much when she blows up at her mother over this exact issue. How you could watch the movie and not understand that... I honestly don't know)

I don't really fathom how people can view selfishness as a character flaw, unless it's the entire motivation behind them. Everyone's selfish, especially kids. That's what makes them kids. They're focused on themselves because at that point in their lives so much revolves around them. Unless they're narcissistic or egotistical, thinking about yourself isn't a negative. In fact I call bullshit on any depiction of children, especially teenagers, that tries to paint them as completely virtuous and self-sacrificing. Charlie was pretty damn accurate to the teenage mindset, still a good person who cares about others, but completely absorbed in their own problems. This doesn't make her unsympathetic, it makes her human.

A good example of an unsympathetic teen is Sam, a character who's almost constantly thinking of himself to the clear detriment of his friends. He cracks under the slightest pressure, argues and belittles any opposition he's against even if they're right, and is constantly high-strung and combative in his demeanour. Amusingly, Cade is much the same, except his dickbag nature is even less excusable since he's a father, but acts like a child. And not in a "young at heart but wise in years" way, he's just a douche who argues with everyone. He makes Charlie look like a saint by comparison.