This is the thing I find bizarre about people defending the Bayverse, and it's a common thing. Outright ignoring the example and side tracking it. Did I ever mention his role and personality? No, because that is Inconsistent if you look at his major versions. Cybertron one is a radio kinda guy, and the Animated one is the guitar one. What I was talking about were design and voice.
G1: Design and voice
Cybertron: Design
Animated: Design and voice
Prime: Voice and design if you include RID

Those aren't surface level, because his voice is for the most part the bulk of his character. Soundwave doesn't have much else, he's basically just the definition of a robot personality wise. And this contradicts your previous point, because personality wise he does vary quite a bit from the OG incarnation based on the contuinity.

It's funny you say this, because besides the fact it's outright wrong and actually goes against your point of Transformer characters being inconsistent.

Barricade and Crosshairs are shit examples because the G1 versions are versions most people either don't know or care about. Other characters that people actually do know like Optimus, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Ratchet, Jazz, Wheeljack/Que, Dino/Mirage, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Shockwave and I could go on are not translated well at all.

 

We've already had this exact argument in another thread, let's not do it again.

 

Except, Bayverse Soundwave has the same position and rank, the same role as a spymaster, the same telecommunication-based abilities, the same sidekicks, and the same loyalty to Megatron as he did in G1.

You seem to be placing a lot of emphasis on how a character looks, rather than how they act, when sometimes, it's the latter that's more important.

Take the 1998 Godzilla for example. When that movie first came a lot of people hated the interpretation and still hate it to this day. Why? Because Roland Emmerich didn’t understand Godzilla - he and Dean Devlin (who was a huge fan) did not commit to anthropomorphising Godzilla, instead, attempting to make him an animal trying to survive. Plenty of fans would have accepted a horizontal Godzilla - I know I would have done - but the way he was portrayed was the reason why the film was so hated.

Conversely, Godzilla: the Series was fondly received, despite the fact that the titular character was using the G98 design. Why? Because, despite still having the Emmerich design, he had some of the Japanese Godzilla’s traits and acted more like him overall.

Maybe I misstated - compared to other incarnations, Bayverse Soundwave wasn't really a radical reinterpretation to G1, which is true.

How is it outright wrong?

In the Ultimate continuity, Black Widow is a murderous sociopath, Deadpool is a psychotic racist, half the X-Men are assholes, Magneto is a repugnant genocidal maniac who has eaten human flesh, and Reed Richards is an omnicidal bastard motivated entirely by a severe god complex. Their 616 counterparts are nothing like this at all.

Conversely, in the Bayverse, the well-known characters generally have the same rank, the same roles and roughly the same personality quirks as the originals.

For example, Ironhide - even though he doesn't have the southern accent or say anything about "busting Deceptichops", he still acts like Ironhide, in that he's a trigger-happy Autobot weapons specialist with a bit of a tough attitude.

 

So your response to me saying that with Soundwave his personality and role are less important than his appearance is by saying the exact same thing again. Okay.

There's a lot to say about this, but the fact your response to my first thing was literally just repeating your argument again kinda says it all. Mod requested to not go back to this subject so fine by me.

 

I really hated just how bland and generic and without personality the vast majority of Decepticons from the five Bayverse movies were. Dropkick in Bumblebee being a blood knight bruiser and going, "This is SO humiliating!" when he knelt with Shatter at their meeting with Sector Seven gives him more personality than, what, 90% of the 'Cons from the previous movies?

I mean I hear a lot about how 'Onslaught needs a Studio Series figure!' And I'm just, "Who? The Combaticon leader?" So I look him up on the TF Wiki and I'm all, "Oh, the last Knight. No wonder, didn't see it." And then i click out and about five seconds later I've forgotten.

And yes. That a lot of them are generic gray blobs that manage to be soft-focus and all hard angles actually kinda impressive.  

 

I’d argue Dropkick and Shatter weren’t all that much more full of depth and character either. Sure, they had more to do than the D-Cons of previous films, but that’s a result of BB movie’s smaller robot cast and more scaled down, focused direction.

To be fair, Dropkick and Shatter had about as much characterization as The Last Knight Decepticons like Nitro Zeus and Mohawk. The only thing Dropkick and Shatter have going for them is that he “likes the way they pop” and that Shatter is evil.

I think that the reason it works for Bumblebee is, again, they actually give the characters things to do and there are not nearly as many plot points and characters to juggle around. Had the first five movies done this, I think it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad.

So, I’d probably say the worst aspect was the lack of consistency and focus for the characters and plot.

 

That the Transformers never felt like the main characters in their own movies, or characters at all, and that so many of the tie-in media, like the IDW Comics and the DOTM video game, was better written than most of the movie's themselves.

 

I'd have to disagree. Mohawk and Nitro Zeus may have had distinct personalities but they were really seemingly one note at that. Plus, in order to get across the message that they have these "personalities," their lines were all really forced and exaggerated. The fact that Mohawk's lines seemed to be all stuff like ,"Aw yeah, FOOL! I'm a real gangsta!!! Imma bust a cap in yo ass!!" really didn't help make him seem like an actual person who would say those things. It's not even just the dialect he uses, just the tone of his voice. He's always yelling. Although the word choice he uses also doesn't seem realistic. I think I've only ever heard someone say "mo'fo" if they're somebody's 50 year old white mom trying to act like a gangster as a joke, rather than an actual "gangster" saying that.

Shatter and Dropkick, however, spoke with more subtlety in their lines. They sounded a lot more like they were actual characters, and not just actors reading words into a microphone.

 

Don't think there's much denying that Shatter and Dropkick are simple, but simple is a hell of a lot better than a stereotype or just background noise.

 

I was trying to use repetition to make my point - appearance aside, Bayverse Soundwave was closer to G1 Soundwave overall than quite a lot of other incarnations, being a lieutenant to Megatron who acts as the Decepticon's spymaster and has Ravage and Laserbeak as sidekicks.

And personality and role are just as important, if not more so, than appearance! Again, the 1998 Godzilla was strongly disliked more for how he acted, than how he looked. Plenty of fans would have accepted a horizontal Godzilla - I know I would have done - but the fact he spent most of the film panicking and trying to flee from the military, something which no Godzilla has ever done, was the reason why the film was so hated.

Conversely, Godzilla: the Series, whilst still using the Emmerich design, gave the title character a lot more of the Japanese Godzilla’s traits, such as the classic atomic breath, as well as making him a semi-heroic figure in the Showa style. End result: the series is widely acclaimed, even by people who hate the '98 film.

 

For me it was the concept the crew had that a realistic adaptation made an upgrade in cynicism, leading to the Autobots being treated with hostility and persecution.

 

Cade- He was such an abrasive ass to everyone.

Leo- Primus did I hate Leo, he's easily the most obnoxious character in the whole series.

The "humor" being crass and childish (look Devaststor has testicles! Har har har!) and fit more at home in lowbrow trash like Family Guy or Brickleberry.

Each film trying to one-up the previous one in terms of secret conspiracies.

Sqweeks- Pointless BB-8 rip off.

The Twins and Drift- For the tasteless "wiggers" (they were robots imitating white street kids imitating black street kids, apperently) thing and Drift's cliche Samurai motif that was no deeper than Samurais wear armor and have a code of honor.

 

I don't mind most human characters in TF fiction but going just by the Bay films (Sam, Cade, the parents, etc), I can totally see why some fans want a "no human characters allowed" policy across the franchise.

 

The characters. Every aspect of it. Hideous designs that got worse with every movie, especially the 'Cons. Their designs in the first three movies were essentially shredded metal parts that were melded together, kind of like Frankenstein's monster.

Their personalities were not distinctive enough from one another. All of them were basically battle-hardened soldiers who were prone to resorting to violence if things didn't go their way, to the point that they were actively threatening their own allies.

Character development-wise, the movies did not impress. Characters were more or less the same as they were in the movies in which they appeared in. Speaking of appearing in movies, characters like Jolt and the Arcee sisters were barely allowed to do anything of any relevance during their film debuts, were basically forgotten by the next movie, and, like just about every other Bayformer, were basically used as set pieces.

New characters kept getting introduced but were barely given any screentime or relevance to the story. But worst of all was the lack of individuality. Without distinct personalities, personal goals outside of their cause, unique designs, or richness in characters, I found it hard to root for any of the sides; humans, Decepticons, or Autobots. Their was a lack of grey area; it was as simple as "Decepticons are all destructive, uncouth bastards and Autobots are all fearless noblemen".

If they dedicated more time to the characters instead of the action, the movies would be much more enjoyable. Any bad film can become decent if the characters are diverse and complex, but the Bayverse lacks anything resembling characters.

 

E v e r y t h i n g

 

The inconsistency, it made the audience feel like they really didn't care, so if they didn't, why we?
Which is awful considering that departments like the animators and score were so good that they had to suffer the consequences of an awful screenplay

 

'The worst aspect of the Bay movies' is in the thread title.

 

In my opinion, the worst thing about the Bay movies is something completely different than anything mentioned in this thread (and it's also an issue with Bumblebee).

The worst aspect about the Bay movies is that, like Bumblebee, they tried too hard to appease thousands of hardcore fans and hundreds of film critics, rather than focusing on the fact many tens of millions of general audiences came out in huge droves for four of them. 90+ percent of the time they tried appeasing fans, it resulted in a huge backlash from the fandom, and the fans ended up hating the movies even more so.

Did getting rid of the Twins make the fandom like the movies more? Did giving the movies a more serious tone appease the fandom? Did replacing the widely despised insectoid, alien scrap metal designs with more rounded and human-like robot designs (which are actually closer to the source material by the way) please the whining fandom? Did getting rid of Kurtzman/Orci/Kruger, who were ripped apart by the fandom and critics, help things out? The answer to all of these questions is, "Hell. No."

I'm not saying I didn't appreciate some of the things the production did to make things a little more fan friendly and Transformery. I happen to really like the newer designs as one of many examples, and there were other things fans hated that I loved. I'm just saying that such efforts 1) didn't result in a good portion of vocal fans liking the movies more; quite the opposite, 2) didn't please the critics, and 3) didn't result in general audiences liking the movies more. The last point is by far the most important.

Getting rid of Kruger entirely resulted in a mess of a writers' room and two movies that felt like both a repetition of previous movies and disconnected from the previous movies. At least the first four movies each treaded some new ground and ran on it, even if they followed a common formula. Getting rid of Transformium and the KSI transformations (which I love by the way) resulted in Megatron showing up with no on-screen showing or explanation as to where Galvatron went.

There were lessons to learn from the Bay movies, but I think the production learned the wrong ones. The preferences of millions of general audiences should not be Shrekrificed in the pursuit of critical and fandom approval. That's not to say there weren't a number of improvements that could have made to the Bay movies, but I would rather have a Transformers movie or series of movies that tries to be its own thing from people who really mean it rather than a safe, fan-pleasing movie or series of movies that just checks all of the fandom boxes off.

The truth was the first four movies were closer to best case scenarios than worst case scenarios, realistically speaking. The production not realizing this resulted in a messy writers' room, a fifth film that minimized the threads from AoE, and a solo film so simple and predictable and nostalgic that it made less than The Last Knight and was only profitable due to a much lower budget.

Oh, and the film's also should have introduced Shrek! Duh!

 

He is a somewhat dirty director, he likes to move the camera too much in his shots, and the photography of his films is very bad.

Besides that he likes to put his hilarious and sexual humor that only he likes, and he also loves to show things from the army.

It's all so artificial/superficial (like the women they show on screen) that their movies seem like a 2-hour trailer. Where we don't see pauses or character development, it's all fast and explosive.

 

Imagine calling the fandom a whining one cause the movies sucked at being Transformer movies. The changes you mentioned are either service level, things that were "fixed" poorly or were a problem the movies themselves created.

You completely fail to mention the much more common issues people had with these movies like unlikeable humans that took up most of the screentime, Transformers that lacked any sense of character as well as lacking screentime, the reptitive plots, etc