It's my favourite because its so interesting seeing how the world has turned on the Autobots, and it was fascinating seeing an Optimus Prime who was so mentally defeated and in a dark place where he wanted revenge/justice for how humans had began to treat them, less like people and just like machines that could be built. Plus Lockdown had great presence. He should definitely come back in the rebooted universe with a similar look.

 

Why? AoE Lockdown was just a giant black painted robot with a silver face that looked like a shoddy knockoff of Destro. You literally could just replace him with some other morally ambiguous character like Detritus or Doubledealer and get the same result.

AoE Lockdown simply pales in comparison to the original Animated version that established the character in the first place, since Ani. Lockdown only showed up once per season (so three appearances total) and yet he is by far the most influential character in how he indirectly set up the ending of the Great War, how Ratchet and Prowl ended up on the comatose Omega Supreme on janitor duty, how Sari came to exist, the Starscream clones, Ratchet and Optimus finally bonding, Prowl maturing and eventually becoming Yoketron's true successor, the Lugnut Supremes, and Prowl ultimately sacrificing his life to save Detroit.

What does AoE Lockdown do? Hired gun who kills a bunch of robots, can't even spit out what he's even dragging Prime off into space for, and then dies like a bitch. There is also the whole thing with 'The Seed' but that doesn't really even matter in the bigger picture because TLK forgot that Transformium existed.

Even as individual characters AoE Lockdown is a sham. He doesn't have character, going from 'mysterious' statements are only come off as such because they're actually just vague sentences that don't actually refer to anything (a hallmark of bad writing) to being about as much of a two-dimensional villain as any given Decepticon in the bayverse as a whole. And he hauls around a giant armada of prison ships...why? What the hell is the functional point of hauling around a goddamn space zoo? Does he charge admission? Is he really alien robot P. T. Barnum (which would be far more interesting than what's actually in the film)? With so many different alien species, diets, environmental considerations, and security concerns, on top of keeping just the ships themselves functional, how the hell does Lockdown even manage and fund the supply chain that would be necessary to keep what is basically his own private menagerie along for the ride like a WH40K Rogue Trader (which, again, would be more interesting than the actual character in the film)?

Compare that to Animated Lockdown where his whole thing about collecting trophies is basically an addiction to upgrades, which one of his three episodes is about with regards to Prowl being tempted by. Ani. Lockdown's very appearance is monstrous and piecemeal, an asymmetrical mess of colors and detail frankenstiened together. Complete with a hook hand. But the even more morbid twist is that he's grafted parts of other robots to himself, a very literal robot Frankenstein of his own creation. His very design reflects his character, which itself belies his actual origins as an Autobot - and more importantly the fact he isn't actually THAT evil. He extends an offer of partnership to Prowl (which despite sounding genuine in his phrasing is itself twisted given Lockdown indirectly ruined Prowl's life in the first place) and he's perfectly willing to work with Sentinel Prime (essentially second in command of the Autobots in full) despite wearing the Decepticon badge. He's strictly in it for the money and modifications.

AoE Lockdown tries to be more than that and fails. Why exactly does he have such a problem with the war? His entire viewpoint makes no sense for somebody self-employed as a bounty hunter since, y'know, I'd think that would be a rather profitable profession in the middle of a conflict where people want other people dead. This is even exactly how Ani. Lockdown is introduced, doing wetwork for Blitzwing against the individual the Decepticons think killed Megatron. It would have been even better for AoE Lockdown to straight up admit he doesn't care about what he's doing because his clients are paying quite a premium on his nominal fee to bring in Prime alive. The whole 'clearing the chessboard' comment makes more sense to come from somebody who is aligned and fully supports the Quintess-sorry, THE CREATORS, as opposed to what Lockdown actually is which is nothing more than the hired help doing somebody else's dirty work. People in his profession generally don't give a damn about the ultierior reasons for their actions, they're just in it for the payment.

 

How can they make it a prequel when the designs are completely different.Nothing connects and I’m sick of hearing bumblebee turned into a camaro excuse.

 

I think you got the wrong thread.

 

Oh yes and I was wondering where my comment was.

 

Age of Extinction was the movie that made me start to hate the Bay movies. I remember before it came out, I decided to become a transformers “expert” in preparation so that I’d know more about the source material and be able to appreciate it better. This backfired once I realized how little the Bay movies tried to adapt anything. To this day, I still haven’t seen Age of Extinction and The last Knight since I watched them in theaters, and I don’t know if I will again unless I do a review or something.

 

I also want to add that the film title had my favourite font for the series.

 

Bro this is the kind of shit talked about earlier in the thread. All he did was say how he liked Lockdown and you post some long Charles Dickens sized rant about how his opinion of Lockdown is wrong. You’re not going to change his mind, he probably still likes AOE Lockdown regardless. What do you have against people liking and saying good things about stuff you don’t like?

 

Some people get passionate about others having a difference of opinion. It’s not a healthy thing to have.

 

Trust me, you wont win this.

 

No! You don't get it! It's obvious, transformium can be anything, and in TLK it combined and transformed into a forgotten memory! Jeez how long you been on these forums and you still don't understand that Transformers plotholes can be neatly filled in by literally anything you just thought of! Pay attention!
 

 

Oh I got dissed for promoting the ignore feature. Darn. Anyways. Lmao. In all honesty years ago Burnout and myself would get into it back in the day, and one day I took a step back. And realized something amazing. Why am I adding all this unnecessary never ending stress of a movie franchise about transforming cars to my life.
Realizing you cannot change people’s opinions no matter how hard you try, with no matter how logical an argument you come up with is a big step. Some people just won’t agree. And that’s fine. I just don’t need to honestly see it. No hard feelings to the guy either. I’d just prefer not to see shit I don’t want to see.

 

There’s way too much pointless argument on the internet and the world is already stressful enough. There is nothing wrong with having a good discussion with others and having disagreement so long as the conversation doesn’t turn into mudslinging. Unfortunately this tends to happen a lot. So it’s better to just block off the stress then deal with it.

 

Agreed. Disagreeing is whatever but being a dick about it and having to show how you’re right no matter is concerning.

Well I’m not trying to win anything and even if I were why wouldn’t I? I don’t make bad assumptions and big stretches in a debate, let alone feeling the need to aggressively condescending and borderline bullying others for their different opinions.

 

he doesn't though?

 

Especially when most of the time, you are not likely to change someone’s opinion on something. So it makes the mudslinging even more pointless.

 

To try and understand how anybody actually could think AoE Lockdown is a good character, especially when compared to the original who is quite literally the single most important character in all of Animated. Sure it was a bit long winded but I laid out my reasons in full for why I think this - the first word of my post is after all asking why.

I mean, these are discussion forums are they not? You may not like how I do it, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed asking questions to understand other people's opinions.

Because it's one thing to like something, but it's another to like something and actually be able to postulate why. Its this last part that seems to generate an absurd amount of consternation among a select group when they are challenged on defending what they like.

 

Shizuka never said Lockdown was a good character, only that he "had great presence". But even if he did say that - it definitely feels like there is more to it than wondering how he could like a character.

 

I found this picture of the last time Autobot Burnout went up against movie Lockdown!

 

Probably doesn't help that 2014 also was around the time I started developing a deep disinterest in supercars due to excessive overexposure in the media (I was watching a LOT of Top Gear at the same time).

The fact Lockdown's original toy was a colossal piece of shit did greatly amuse me, I must admit, because it was exactly all that character deserved.