One thing that's bothered me about Transformers since I was a kid, is the War and Transformers lifespans lasting millions of years.

In both instances, it seems too long in my opinion, especially when young characters like Hot Rod and Blurr are supposed to be over 4 million. The Marvel comic made it worse by saying new Transformers could not be created without the Matrix and we all knew the Matrix was stranded on Earth for 4 million years.

It also suspends disbelief in the case of Cybertronian myths. It takes away from the mythical aspect of supposedly ancient artefacts when the average age of Cybertronians is millions of years.

Fall of Cybertron was worse as it implied Transformers alive today were alive during the time of the dinosaurs over 65 million years ago simply to explain the Dinobots alt modes.

At least Beast Wars addressed the dinosaur issue by having Megatron, Terrorsaur and Dinobot scan underground fossils.

IDW had the Transformers lifespans at thousands of years old in the early comics which I think works better. Along with the fossil scanning for dinosaur characters, these would negate the need to have wars and lifespans last millions of years in future series.

What do you guys think?

 

From a G1 pov, I always thought it was stupid that Shockwave, one of the most intelligent tfs, would just stand around for four million years and do nothing. You figure, Shockwave would of found new energy sources, reactivate and rebuild the Decipiticon forces, even fully defeat the Autobots, except those that were on Earth.

 

I'd rather have the war be four thousand years long.

 

I don't mind the length of time, but part of it is that you kinda just have to ignore how literally unfathomable it is for them to live and fight for that long.

The problem comes with Beast Wars's "300 years later most of the old guys are gone somehow" bit.

 

Yeah, I've always had a bit of a problem with this.

A few thousand years would probably work better overall, yes.

 

300 years after the END of the Great War which never ended definitively in Sunbow and was likely to start up again in Marvel. (It DID start again if you look at the various splinter-sequels)

 

Which is it though, 4 million earth years, or 4 million Cybertron years?

That's the real question.

 

It is way too long.

 

What purpose does it serve for them to fight for four million years? None whatsoever. It's just an astronomically large number. They can live long, but having the war last for millions of years is a bit too much. At the risk of being Eurocentric, even one of the longest conflicts in European history, the Hundred Years' War, was broken up by truces.

 

Four million years is a stupid number. Especially since the war lasts for four million years, but once they reach Earth it's usually a few decades max before it ends.

I'd rather it be four hundred, myself.

 

I've always ignored that part as while I know that they wrote it to make it "more epic", it never made sense, and has no way of making sense in any way.

For me, just the "rotation" of characters in a single "human" timeline of all the cartoons and such go through so many characters that such a long war, none would have survived a very long time ago.

To me, a TFs lifespan is maybe a few hundred years, maybe a few thousands at the most. No matter their "technology", everything degrades in time until it breaks down.

The usual explanations people invent are mostly based on magical properties of energon or such, which to me is a plot device darn close to a "Deus ex machina" scenario.

The fact that you have "young" TFs characters all the time, and the "old" guys talk about a particular event/battle, etc. comes off as, once again, just plot devices for lazy writers.

Plus the fact that after millions of years, they would have seriously evolved, but yet, are the same in the flashbacks.

It's actually one of the things that I'm going to take on and explain my take on this, in my comic "True origins"...

 

I never had a problem with those 4 million years, because they were off-line that entire time

The problem I had with was the at least 5 million years we know guys like Optimus and Megatron were fighting long before their 4 million year sleep

I never felt cartoon shockwave was all that bright anyway

I do believe the Marvel comic had them fighting for about 1000 years before their trip to earth

I’ve been saying that for a long time

 

4 million years to me seems like a stretch. With that amount of time, the war could have ended and either side would have enough time to think of ways to destroy the other side and win.

 

Millions of years does seem rather too long; it makes their conflict and their ages much too esoteric. If they live to be thousands of years old, that still puts them far ahead of any organic life.
Also, I suppose it's hypothetically possible that the Autobot/Decepticon Civil War occasionally had some truces. I mean, even a hundred years would be a VERY long time to wage a war with no ceasefires at all.

 

I always found it weird when people try to justify why a robotic race would live forever while they type on computers that probably aren't even 5 years old.

It'd be one thing if transformers were digital beings who could upload backups of themselves but whether the cpu or spark transformers have always had an irreplaceable physical component.

 

Yes. It's a perfect example of sci-fi writers having no sense of scale. Like @SPLIT LIP said, I'd much rather have the Great War be 400 years long, and the maximum Transformer lifespan be about 1200 and only a few living that long to begin with.

 

Time scale has never been particularly strong for toy based fiction, even now as evident by most Transformers fiction having sketchy timelines with large gaps (or sometimes very short gaps). Of course, 4,000 years doesn't sound as cool.

 

It's too long.

Going by the original G1 premise this 4 millions of years was the time spent by the Ark and Nemesis crews in the stasis.

But then we learned that in this time nothing really changed on Cybertron save for the Decepticons slooooooooowlyyyyyyyyyyy getting the control of the planet.

A war lasting thousands of years or only centuries makes more sense.


Also, machines don't last forever unless they're maintained... And we know that at least two vital components of a Cybertronian body can't be simply replaced. Maintaining a TF ad infinitum is something that could work only in Budiansky's G1 or in Sunbow where they're machines with no supernatural elements.

 

Not at that time.

So in the real story, you say.

 

And those are the only continuities where this timescale made any sense.