I actually liked those characters, along with Leo.

 

Deeply, deeply annoying characters, and I can absolutely see why they were problematic to audiences that were never given context to their attitudes and speaking patters. If you want them to be gangster wannabes, you have to establish that somewhere. Instead they came across as absolutely terrible inner city stereotypes. Offensive and ill placed.

That said, they were the first bots in the Bay helmed bits of the franchise to get actual personalities that we could identity and say were consistent. And they are certainly memorable, though I'm not sure if it's better to be infamous than bland in this case. Bonus points awarded for their combined ice cream truck alt mode during the opening action sequence, which was both novel and awesome (though sadly underserved by the mediocre toy release).

And I love their designs, save for the awful head designs. If they'd just scrapped the heads and redone them they would be fantastic.

Also, Human Alliance Skids is my favorite HA figure, bar none, stupid head design aside.

 

I put up a thread quite some time ago discussing their merits: Twins represent, Yo! - Belated Skids and Mudflap appreciation (thread was locked because the racial talk got out of control... tread lightly).

Long story short, I didn't hate them. With a bit more perspective, I actually grew to like them. With more competent storytelling to flesh them out just a tad better, they could have been excellent characters.

 

So what?

 

Well, a lot of the anger about the twins back in 2009 was that they were apparently racist caricatures, but that simply wasn’t true.

 

Their scene not being in DOTM was a terrible disservice. I did get to see DOTM Mudflap when he was on display.

 

They were racist caricatures.

 

Not the way they were depicted. They were intended to be like white guys acting thug.

 

One was played by Reno Wilson. If they were caricatures, he wouldn’t have voiced one of them.

 

my kid brother was like that when he was young. And last time I saw him he was white.

 

With how Wheelie went from leg humping to saving Bumblebee and actually helping unravel the moon conspiracy, it's such a shame the Twins didn't get their redemption moment too.

I feel like the only reason Bay had keeping them in the original script was to die. Their deaths would've been cool, but ultimately pointless filler to a pair of widely hated characters so they were cut.

 

The Twins got their "redemption moment" by standing their ground against the biggest, baddest mofo the 'Cons had to offer.

Narratively, they did need a little follow-through, though to push them over the edge and solidify the character development/arc they had going. But Bay and co were never ones for the fine details and narrative continuity like that, so they just took the easy way out and cut them instead when they were viewed to be... problematic. Which kinda sucked. I rather liked them. They could have easily been great characters in RotF itself, if just a bit more thought had been put into them.

 

Well. I'm now convinced.

 

Is that sarcasm or..? Sorry it’s hard to tell

 

Incorrect.

 

Definitely correct.

Which means nothing. There's no rule here because Wilson voiced the character it's not racist.

 

*Sigh*

Unfortunately, it becomes hard to separate the Twins from the negative racial connotations because even if you ascribe the less offensive "they're just acting street" aspect to their characteration, that in and of itself is derivative of the urban black stereotypes pushed throughout the 80s and 90s, and perpetuated in hip-hop culture today.

It then falls to whether you view the Twins in a positive or negative light that tends to colour further discussion along those lines.

For the record, I don't see the Twins as having been intentionally offensive. But the editorial shortcomings of Revenge of the Fallen leave their story arc in an awkward, inconclusive state that doesn't quite manage to pull them out of the bad side of that portrayal, as their scenes dwell far more on their seeming failures, while their character development is more subtle. So I contend that while the intent was to characterize them as poser street punks, the final effect of the film can veer awfully close to a more negative stereotype, depending on how sensitive you are over such matters.

 

I liked them.
I thought the designs for both ice cream van and car versions were good for the movies.
Most of the movie humour is forced and doesn't amuse me, but i did actually find the twins funny.

 

Please give an example of them being racist.

 

I think this is the best summation of them - I sincerely doubt that Bay and the writers were intentionally intending to make racist caricatures; one of the writers (Roberto Orci) is Hispanic and Mudflap was voiced by a black man. Fortunately, nobody has ever implied this.

The intent was probably to characterise them as poser street punks; indeed, that's what the voice actors, who came up with the shtick in the first place, stated. The characters were then rewritten - and I think, to an extent, redesigned - to fit the new portrayal; something which Bay and the writers later admitted was not the best decision. However, the hasty manner in which this was done led to the characters coming off as half-formed, with scenes dwelling more on their failures, and their unintentionally coming off as caricatures. The fact that they took screentime from the previously established (and well-received) characters Ironhide and Ratchet, as well as highly-anticipated "legacy characters" Arcee and Sideswipe didn't endear them to fans any further.

Now, people had every right to be offended by the characters, which Orci and Kurtzman later admitted. However, the overall reception to the characters stem more from the issues ROTF went through in production, rather than any actual intent to make any racial stereotypes.