They were talking about this idea back before TLK was coming out and all the plans for the cinematic universe got scrapped.

They wanted to take pretty much inspirations from all generations (ie the beast wars concept art that came out) and implement them into the movie universe.

They were headed in the direction that Transformers themselves changed their own design aesthetic over time. And that throughout the war their bodies changed. To me it feels they were kinda trying to do that with bumblebee, if they had connected it to the bay films. But when TLK went to hell, this concept was lost and they were back at square one so the G1’d the whole thing. It also explains for the lack of Megatron, who apparently, was going to show up in the film but they couldn’t decide on whether he should have Bay’s original design or a G1 design.

Point is, it is a cool concept that unfortunately I do not think we will see come to fruition.

 

It was going to be a G1 inspired design like Prime was but still frozen in the damn, and it was even in the footage for test audiences. It was taken out for the end scene with Prime and Bumblebee and any reference to it was removed. Not sure why it wasn't included with the deleted scenes.

 

Probably because they wanted to distance the Bumblebee film from the other five since it's a reboot.

 

I get that, but you would imagine that they would include it in the DVD deleted scenes, as seeing a G1 style Megatron in live action is probably what a lot of people would want to see.
Especially when they showed the 07 Megatron in the motion comic that everyone seems to have thankfully forgotten about.

 

Maybe they’re holding off and saving it until the next film? Then again, it would be kind of weird for Megatron to be held at Hoover Dam again after they established it’s a reboot. So, yeah I don’t know what they’re planning. Hopefully we’ll get the scene someday.

 

The image you have of the motion comic is actually pretty much what Megatron looked like in the early screening. A person who saw the early screening confirmed that. As you can see, he kind of has a bucket head, but he's predominantly the '07 design, and thus probably the main reason he was cut from the film.

 

He looks more like the TF: Prime design to me - '07 Megatron is spikier.

 

Do you think transformer designs should be more alien like?

No. The franchise was never really built around alien designs and, in going that direction, ceases to not be "Transformers". There are certain things built into the DNA of the line and one of those things is Diaclone. Strip out the Diaclone and you're left with something not immediately recognizable. It's why there are those who still to this day have a hard time with Animated or the nose-less Prime series - the designs just don't say TRANSFORMERS - they feel like something else. Cyberverse is probably about as far away from Diaclone as you can get while still retaining the feel of TRANSFORMERS.

The movies have their fans - but a great big chunk of the movie fandom is new fans that weren't invested in the franchise at that point. I don't think it was the designs that pulled in the new fans, though. Had they been more Diaclone, I think people would still have gone to see big robots slug it out on the big screen, regardless. Now the movie designs are endearing to those fans and what defines the franchise to them. But overall, I think it's safe to say that Hasbro has come to realize that the Diaclone DNA in Transformers needs to be respected rather than "innovated" away from.

 

The Quints are not Transformers themselves.

Rack N' Ruin are clearly meant to resemble conjoined twins, nothing alien about that.

Kinda missing the point of Beast Machines if you think Jetstorm looks prominently more extraterrestrial than anything else from the show.

Sky Lynx is one of the examples of G1 itself being nothing more than a bunch of toys with similar 'things turn into robots' gimmicks all being lumped together under Hasbro's Transformers branding - in this case, he was a one-off Tomy product Hasbro had licensed the rights to. The original toy itself didn't get a release in Japan as Sky Lynx until the mid-2000s because by then Takara had merged with Tomy and thus gotten the rights to the toy itself.

 

A lack of respect for Diaclone is why Beast Wars was such an abject failure.

 

The idea of Transformers in and of itself is alien. They're aliens from an alien planet. So making Transformers built around alien designs sort of makes sense. That's an interesting thing regarding Sky Lynx, though. Huh, I actually wonder what Diaclone fans thought of Transformers. What was the initial reaction and reputation of Transformers in Japan?

 

First off, Beast Wars still follows Diaclone to a degree. The faces look largely like Diaclone faces and the silhouettes are more or less Diaclone robots with organic suits. But I'd argue Beast Wars succeeded on the strength of its media. Beast Machines more or less proves my point, when they went very alien and went more obtuse in their media tie-in. The fact that Hasbro does an about face starting with importing Car Robots and then committing a half of a decade to ultra-Diaclone-ish designs also proves my point, with Armada having the highest sales since G1.

Only two of these got toys until recently. And Sky Lynx isn't an alien design. He's a dinosaur-former, more or less, in line with other Diaclone/Micro Change beast formers.

 

Alien and faithfulness

 

A downside to the more alien-like designs are that they tend to be less relatable. I'm not saying it's impossible to make the audience connect with something that looks inhuman...but they really have to work at that goal.

I think the alien-looking designs worked for Bay's particular approach. Someone like Blackout isn't supposed to be a character, he's supposed to be a menacing threat to the average American soldiers. He's more of an obstacle than a person who has his own goals and motivations. Like, you could replace him with a generic UFO or something and the effect would be the same. For that purpose, it's a great design. But if they ever wanted to use Blackout as a proper character, that design would be problematic. They'd either have to redesign him, or really emphasize his personality through strong writing and voice acting.

It's interesting that Barricade felt a lot more like a proper character when they made him look like a human cop (and gave him a more-humanlike build). It's not that TLK Barricade is a better or worse character that 2007 Barricade...he's about the same. But giving him identifiable features (like his brass knuckles and body-cam) gives a feeling for his personality, and also gives the feeling that he has a history and a life outside of what we see on screen.

 

We have no idea what "more alienlike" would even look like when it comes to robots from another world, they are made up. Any look for them is alien. Aoe optimus is literally a human silhouette wearing armor and that is still alien.

 

I like variety with some looking more human (like the Autobots) and others looking more alien (like the Constructicons).

 

More alien like designs means in my way more 07,rotf,dotm designs or just more bayverse complex designs

 

Now you see I’m torn on this. On one hand, they are aliens so part of me says yes, on the other hand I don’t want them to be unrecognizable from the characters I grew to love. That’s part of why I hated the Bay designs so much. A happy medium is what we got with the BB movie.

 

To me what you like is same old boring