Barricade.
Blackout
Cogman
An army of Transformers created by humans.
Bumblebee's more 'Bee-like' appearance. (I'm mainly referring to the BB-film design on that one)
Dino/Mirage and Sideswipe, design wise.
Shockwave's pet Driller.
The Fallen.
Sentinel Prime being a turncoat, or just an Autobot turned Decepticon.
N.E.S.T

 

I'm trying to think of something, but honestly, it feels rather subjective...

I liked the concept the 2007 movie was originally going for with making the Cybertronians feel more like an alien race of shape changing robots. Despite popular opinion I liked a lot of the initial designs(Sadly still do.) and the overall conceptual visual aesthetic of the robots.
I would say that it certainly could have benefited from some creative tweaking, in fact the problem with a lot of the following films was that they tended to move away from what worked for the designs at first and just really leaned heavily into the negative aspects more and more, almost like Bay was actively trying to troll the detractors of the films in some weird form of passive aggressive escalation.

I mean you don't really need anything that convoluted, It's not that hard to believe that there'd be people who would turn on these literal extraterrestrial aliens as a whole, regardless of which were "the good ones" or not.

 

Yeah but if one side of the alien are on your planet to destroy it and the other half is there to protect it. You kinda want the protection, no?

 

One would think, the sad reality is(without getting too heavy, or breaking forum rules.) people rarely think objectively in times of conflict.

 

Despite my initial misgivings about the robot designs, my only problem with the 07 movie was Simmons. He was the start of the silly humour in the series. Otherwise, the film was legitimately funny and funnier than most so called comedies.

I like Radio speak Bumblebee. I never liked G1 Bumblebee or Optimus Prime until the Bay movies. I like that Prime had a mouth.

I almost gave up on the franchise after watching Revenge of the Fallen. It looked great in the trailers and after how good the first movie was, I had high hopes.

The Twins having Buck teeth, Demolisher's unicycle and Leo, the most annoying human character since Carlos.

That said, I liked most of the Decepticon designs especially Long Haul and Rampage. I hated Scalpel's cliche evil doctor voice.

Dark of the Moon regained some of the first one's glory with a great opening and a fantastic performance by Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime. It's a shame Optimus executed him.

I love the small piece of music when Megatron said, "Who would you be without me, Prime?" and Prime dramatically slides on his faceplate, "Time to find out!"

I hated Brains though and he was the start of the dip in voice acting quality, along with the Wreckers.

I liked Wheeljack's voice, reminded me of the voiceover of the UK G1 toy commercials. Shame he didn't have the Travis Knight head design. I genuinely felt for him as he begged for his life.

Age of Extinction gave us proper G1-esque faces with Drift and Crosshairs. Crosshairs, Hound and Lockdown had personality. I loved Galvatron and how expressive his optics looked when he said he had no fear.

However Drift, Crosshairs and Lockdown suffered from terrible voices, unforgivable for the main villain of a big budget blockbuster.

I actually liked Stanley Tucci. He was even better as Merlin.

I loved seeing Nemesis Prime and Quintessa. Great villains and great designs. I'd love to have seen more of Canopy.

I expected to hate Hot Rod because I feel accents on alien robots sound corny and are a lazy way of giving character. That said, I didn't mind him at all. He at least had an in story explanation for it. I hated Cogman though. Nothing wrong with his voice or design, just his hyper personality.

I've found over the years, that I become more forgiving of the flaws the more I watch each movie.

Bumblebee wasn't perfect either. The humour just wasn't funny.

 

Here are the high points for me:

*Introducing Barricade to the TF Universe

*Cogman - I kind of like the idea of a psycho...er...sociopath crazy ninja robot butler. I'd like to see him carried over to the main cannon with the same type of personality

*John Goodman voicing Hound - I never realized how much I would love to hear John Goodman voicing a good until I heard him voice Hound in AoE & TLK. If Hound is introduced in any future movie, I'd like to see Goodman offered the role again or be given a chance to voice another character.

*Cemetary Wind - I didn't like it when they killed Ratchet, but I do like the idea that the Autobots were not buddy buddy with humans at this point. In fact, I wish they had come first or side by side with NEST.

*Dinobots - I'll always like the G1 dinobots first and foremost, but I loved the designs for the movie Dinobots as well in both modes. I just wish they had a larger overall role instead of being reduced to overgrown pets in TLK (remembering Cade Yeager telling Grimlock to spit out the cop car).

*Simmons - Ok, I'll admit it. I liked the Simmons character. Not so much in 2007 but he grew on me in ROTF and DOTM.

*Soundwave - Hard to argue with G1 Soundwave but I liked how they made him a satellite in ROTF that could actually fly around hack into signals for reconnaissance or broadcast images.

 

Mark Ryan is really good as Lockdown. I'd love to see him voice the character again.

 

I liked having robots that were more than just a bipedal robot with two arms and two legs.


A lot of the answers have already been touched on here.

 

Soundwave being a satellite is one of the best ideas and I’m still mad it hasn’t been done since.

 

Transformers having their own language and learning English via the Internet rather than just... they speak English...

Holographic pilots... which I actually wish they would use more... like any time a character is in vehicle mode just have their voice actor as the hologram pilot.

Sector 7

N.E.S.T.

That is all...

 

That reminds me of how I had hoped they were planning a major 'fake-out' in the 07' film.

When Sam goes to the roof to do the Allspark handoff and we see the helicopter come up and the guy reaches for it. I was waiting for Sam to start handing it over...and then we see the guy in the doorway 'glitch,' and know this is a Decepticon!

 

Soundwave's satellite alt-mode is the best updated alt-mode he's had. That they tossed it out for a boring car in DOTM and, as far as I know, hasn't been re-used on other Soundwave incarnations since is such a waste.

 

This was great!


This could have worked better...


but I think they didn't want to do something like Terminator, yes the movie came out before SGM.

Of the few things that entertained me in DOTM


They could have given it another ending.

Grimlock



And some designs like:
Blackout
Jazz
Sideswipe
Long Haul
Sentinel Prime
Drift

And I don't think I can say any more.

The forest fight and the final fight in Transformers.

 

Making Megatron more of an interesting character in the sequels instead of just an obstacle made him more relatable. In Transformers 2 he wants revenge on Sam and Optimus, has a mentor and father figure in The Fallen, and seemed genuinely upset that The Fallen died and his race could be going extinct. There are more examples that makes this Megatron the best version. In the third film he even has his own antagonist that he defeats in the form of Sentinel Prime.

I notice a lot of people tend to think The Decepticons are looking for the Sun Harvester/"Pyramid Thing" when they're clearly looking for the Tomb of the Primes that houses the matrix of leadership that powers the harvester. And Jetfire said and I quote "Somewhere, in this desert that deadly machine remains The Fallen knows where it is and if he finds the tomb of the Primes, then your world will be no more.".

 

I would like to see a movie from the deceptions perspective for example a film that takes place between aoe and tlk staring Galvatron nitro onslaught dreadbot barricade Mohawk and berserker causing chaos living life on the run gathering survivors while being hunted by the trf have Galvatron leave at the end to find Quintessa and show his transformation back to Megatron

 

Sadly enough, AOE's portrayal of society against robots would be the most likely outcome of them coming in the real world, so gotta give credits to the production team and writers for that

 

To be fair, he was a Mercedes to keep an eye on Sam and secure Carly as a hostage.

 

I kind of agree. But killing the robots THAT HELPED the humans is a little extreme. It'd be better if Cemetery Wind was more of an unaffiliated-Militia made up of Anti-Transformer extremists, rather than it being an actual Military Force. Idk how a Military Force could've gotten away with killing Autobots, aka their allies.

The concept is great, but the execution was done poorly.

 

Would've liked some redneck anti tf force, heck, even some Cybertronians working with them ala planet of the apes

 

Actually Terminator was being edited in the same building and Michael Bay admitted that he stole one of their robot designs and put in the movie so they obviously have no issues doing something like Terminator when there is literally a Terminator in RotF. If you pause the Egypt battle at the right time you can even see T-800 is written on one of the robot's arm as an Easter egg.