You can't have your cake and eat it. Besides, what good was all the Transformers related stuff for, anyway? Most of the human stuff just ends up being about how much BETTER humans are at kicking autobot ass compared to the Decepticons in any given film in the same continuity, while the Autobots apparently now suck at hiding (Prime spontaneously becoming a shit leader who abandons them all like this situation never happened during a war he's fought for millions of years) and more screen time is wasted on three new assholes who have hardly any more development than the cast that survived DOTM.

Because really, what's so fucking special about Hound? The fact he ALMOST died, yet didn't wheras previous films weren't afraid to off Autobots fairly late into their plots? Was it the fattest ballerina one liner? Please, clue me in as to why he's so much more important than Jazz ever was. Crosshairs is no different - oh, he's basically a watered down G1 Starscream except not backstabby or evil, is that all the character depth he has? And Drift? You wouldn't even know he was an ex-Decepticon if you didn't read the card back bio on his deluxe toy, which is more than the film ever bothered mentioning!

EDIT: To be fair, upon consideration, at face value that it is true that AOE is transformer focused more than the other films, but only on that alone, since beyond that the focus is either on terrible characters introduced to replace existing popular ones just to artificially screw over the Autobots from being too OP from the start, or on how humanity generally seems to default to being terrible people to the robots who keep saving their asses repeatedly to the point you have to wonder why the Autobots ever gave a shit in the first place.

 

How did we get from me making a two sentence comment about how the plot of AOE is more Transformers-focused from all angles (which based on this you agree with) to this? You're entitled to your opinion and views on the movie but I don't know how or why it manifested from my comment.

I definitely think it's valid to critique the characterization of these robots - but I think it's saying something that they have the characterization to critique in the first place in AOE.

 

Looking back I would have wanted AOE to develop Lennox and Epps further. And doing so they could've provided more human and autobot scenes.

 

I dunno, I think even the earlier tf films were better in terms of characterization than 'violent gruff misanthrope with cigar', 'violent european misanthrope with goggles' and 'violent Asian misanthrope with sword'.

 

Like Aernaroth points out, there isn't exactly a whole lot of characterization there. There's a difference between having characterization and having good characterization.

Especially when AoE could have easily bullshit an excuse to have three Autobots survive and instead of having to build up three brand new morons to bring up to speed, simply use three existing characters and develop them further. Or are all the Autobots not named Optimus or Bumblebee ultimately disposable when all you have to do is just have them on screen longer and what actually is accomplished with CGI robots as characters is immaterial?

 

Nobody likes Hound because he was almost overrun by the KSI Decepticons before the Dinobots save the day. It's a combination of things, with John Goodman's voice and one liners definitely helping, but that's not the entirety.

What's cool about Hound is that he is indeed this violent Autobot who loves being in the heat of battle...but he also legitimately cares about his allies and especially his leader, Optimus Prime, and he will go to extreme lengths to fight for them.

He also is a misanthrope, at least initially. He calls humans, "backstabbing weasels," and pulls his guns out on the Yeagers, but as a result of Prime's relationship with the Yeagers as well as his own interactions with them, he actually comes to stand up for his new human allies. He threatens Crosshairs for the wannabe leader's desire to abandon Prime AND Tessa, and then in Hong Kong he is encouraging Cade in battle as well as protecting the humans, to the point that he runs out of ammo and has to get creative. Not bad for someone who initially calls all humans, "backstabbing weasels."

I'm not saying any of the Autobots are the deepest or most nuanced characters in the history of human fiction...but then again, neither is any other Transformers cast in the brand's history, whether in the earlier movies or G1 or whatever. And in stories about Transformers, I think what's more important than depth is fun. And the AoE Autobots are lots of fun to be around. They're colorful, and not just in terms of alt mode or color schemes, while also having a little more to them than often given credit. And I'd rather have robots that are colorful and lively, like Hound, Drift, and Crosshairs, than generic yes-men.

There's something that isn't true whatsoever. In neither AoE nor TLK does Drift say or do anything misanthropic. He laments a situation in which Autobots are few in number, and he expresses strong dissatisfaction with Bumblebee's leadership, but he never threatens or attacks humans or expresses hatred for them.

On the contrary, unlike Hound or Crosshairs, who pull out their guns on the Yeagers when they first meet them, Drift never does anything of the sort. If anything, Drift is helpful to the humans throughout the film.

 

I don't think he has anything to say about humans other than that haiku, to be honest, which is sort of a sign of how superficially he's used in AOE.

I guess I'm using misanthropic in a more general sense, rather than just limiting it to humans, the part that I remember best about him is when Optimus is giving the 'defend my family or die' speech that he and Crosshairs agree not to help Optimus. He advocates for calm (though when push comes to shove his first reaction appears to be the old ultraviolence), and while he appears mostly deferential to Optimus, he doesn't seem to care if his teammates, or the humans, live or die (and expresses a willingness to put them in the latter category more than once). He basically gets into fights with the other Autobots (sans prime) as much as the Decepticons/ksi, but that's partially because his team are all even more anti-social than he is.

He may not be as openly hostile as Hound or treacherous as Crosshairs, but even those (shallowly shown as they were in the film) were more coherent traits than Drift had. I certainly didn't see anything heroic in him or what he did.

That was my biggest beef with the new characters in aoe, that they could seemingly think of only one edgy way for them to interact with eachother, and even then it was one we'd seen before (and better, imo), in Ironhide.

 

But dismissing the franchise as a whole for not having deep characters? Sure, they aren't literary legends, but your open dismissal of every single one of the characters to ever exist in this franchise exposes your heavy bias for trivializing the entire franchise just to make the part you like the most - the films - look better. Because you want nuanced? Animated Ratchet, whose entire trauma quite literally set the stage of the events for all of Animated in one way or another.

You want more nuanced? The entire Autobot-Decepticon war is traditionally just a giant-ass robot version of Class Warfare, a.k.a. The Russian Revolution, and Megatron is essentially a fallen Sparticus having become the same kind of monster, if not worse, than the ones he was trying to overthrow in the first place. That's pretty fucking deep for a toyline-based franchise, and a hell of a lot deeper than any of the shit in any of the films.

 

Yes, because Optimus was fighting a giant, fire-breathing T. rex, who Optimus recruited. Plus, the fight between Grimlock and Optimus was between the two of them. It wasn't like Lockdown unleashed the Dinobots on the Autobots in Hong Kong, nor did they just attack the Autobots from out of some hiding place in the rocky jungle.

Drift is the honorable warrior archetype who does have his moments when he lashes out, BUT if you notice, he never actually pulls out his swords or fight others unprovoked. The tentacled alien on Lockdown's ship? It attacked him. Hound? Threatened to toss a grenade down his throat. Bumblebee? Drift remains totally calm and doesn't engage physically until Bumblebee physically attacks him. He only reacts violently when attacked or startled.​

The thing is, the supporting AoE Autobots weren't any more "shallow" than the supporting Autobots in the earlier films or the supporting characters in the other parts of the brand. Because guys like Sideswipe, the Wreckers, Dino, etc., have less to them as characters. I'd say the AoE Bots have more to them as both characters and a group than the 2007 crew, who were more within the comfort zone of both Bayverse and pre-existing Transformers fans, but didn't really have more to them as characters, and if anything the fact that the Pathetic Dirty Foursome are all heavily flawed individuals who have good within them, thus fitting in with the "You gotta look at all the junk and see the treasure" theme in the film, makes them more interesting characters than their equivalents in the other films.

But...Ironhide was a different type of character. His belligerence was more toward the humans and Mojo. The Autobots in AoE were hostile toward each other, because...far from being like each other...they were actually quite different from each other as individuals despite tending to share some antisocial tendencies. Ironhide never showed any hostility to his fellow Autobots. Comparing Ironhide and the AoE Bots in this regard is kind of comparing apples to oranges.

If you noticed my wording, I said casts. Neither did I say Transformers never has characters that have a little more to them. In fact, one of the charms of the brand is that it has moments that touch upon deeper ideas, while still being filled with plenty of silly and outlandish things and selling the heck out of those toys. BUT generally speaking, the vast, vast majority of Transformers characters are simple archetypes, stereotypes, and clichés, even in the more acclaimed stuff; the characters that have a little more to them are always the exception. Silliness with occasional ideas that are bigger. I think it's true for the cartoons and the movies. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I'd say it's the charm of the brand, actually. It's okay to admit that all Transformers is guilty pleasure land.

And "heavy bias?" Guess what? Every fan on this site has "biases" or preferences. We are ALL biased toward the fiction and characters we enjoy. The people who dislike the films are no less "biased" than the people who enjoy them.

 

Look, we can keep trying to justify our opinions to eachother but to be frank I don't agree with your perspective on the movie, and I doubt I'm going to change your mind on anything.

 

And that's fine, but there's always going to be multiple perspectives on any film/book/cartoon/etc.

 

You also can't hand wave away his examples because they don't fit your opinion.

 

I absolutely LOVE AOE and TLK !!!! They are my most favorite films! AOE being my #1 favorite because Knight Optimus got alot of screen time and cause I freaking love him haha.❤️

 

Happy that you enjoyed the films