I just want to ask...does scale even really matter much? The Decepticons in particular prior to Bumblebee deform their alt modes so much, display so little of their alt modes that...does it even matter? Take Bonecrusher for instance. If you only ever saw his robot mode, could you even tell he turns into a Buffalo MRAP? Could you even tell that Starscream turns into an F-22? If you weren't intimately familiar with certain tells in a jet silhouette, I doubt you would.

Shatter and Dropkick cheat like MOTHERFUCKERS. An AH-1 Supercobra measures a little bit over 45 feet minus rotors. Shatter's Harrier measures in at a little over 47 feet. How the FUCK do they compress into muscle cars?

Basically what I'm trying to say is that...Bayverse transformers aren't meant to adhere to any sense of logic. They were intended to fulfill certain visual aesthetics...Autobots are "normal" looking Transformers who wear more alt mode parts on their bodies. Decepticons are meant to look EEEEVIL and monstrous.

But if we were to think about it logically, having a jetformer's robot mode smaller than the actual jet itself makes sense. The wings are thin compared to the rest of the robot, and they could conceptually fold to be really, really small. When you don't consider the wings and just the fuselage, there really isn't a lot there to form body, arms, and legs. As a result, if you want to think logically, the wings amount to really nothing in the scheme of transformation. The bulk of the robot is then fuselage...and there really isn't THAT much there to work with.

 

The other way if Scale really matter is, giving them another alt mode, like say, smaller jet plane, or unmanned drone type (like Soundwave in Prime).

 

Combat jets are problematic. Some of the smallest light combat jets (F, FA) are still anywhere from 35-40 feet long. Jets of the combat variety have to be big to carry enough fuel, have enough aerodynamic capabilities to support carrying ammo, fuel, and also to survive certain amounts of punishment. Scale is absolutely problematic if you want to have any TF character be a combat jet.

There's not a lot of "combat" drones either. The vast majority of them are still in very preliminary testing or development phases. You're really only going to see MQ-9 Reapers or Avenger UCAVs for the time being. Compounding this, some UCAVs are designed to be flying, guided bombs themselves. It'd be pretty fun seeing Transformers characters taking the alt mode of a one use, disposable alt mode, yeah?

 

Then it's probably no other choice other than going "f*ck it with the scale", or as some on this thread has said, folding a lot since jet alt mode tend to be... thin?

 

Or make most of it go in the Seekers' arms - like KOTM Rodan. I'd give them longer, wing-like arms, so most of the robot mode is the wingspan, rather than the body; hell, I'd even give the Seekers feather styling.

The feather styling would also serve a practical purpose - the "feathers" double as throwing knives, which the Seekers can use in close-quarters combat, like Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2. I can definitely see the Seekers being more about ranged combat than other Decepticons - also, it's nice to give the Decepticons different fighting styles. Megatron principally fights in close-quarters combat using his physical strength, the Seekers prefer ranged combat, whilst Soundwave uses his... sound waves to disable an enemy.

The one design element on Bayverse Starscream I actually like is the "bird legs" - because it feels apt for the Air Commander to have bird-like features. I actually kind of hope, in the reboot series, they do give the Seekers avian features - it fits their role in the Decepticons surprisingly well.

Shatter and Dropkick are a weird case - their aerial modes are really the same size as their car modes. So there's a decent argument in saying, as @MattDallas did earlier, that they simply scanned jet/helicopter alt-mode templates and rescaled them to fit their own size. That could be a possible explaination for scale issues going forward.

Beast Wars vibes there, if that's the case.

 

That awkward moment when you realize Beast wars solved the alt mode scale problem by simply straight-up ignoring it.  

Which, TBF, they weren't in disguise so there was no reason to be in-scale with real animals.

 

That's true to some extent- at the same time, some modern-day animals' prehistoric ancestors were pretty large. For example, in the case of Rattrap, there was a prehistoric rat the size of a bull:
1)Giant prehistoric rat as big as a HUMAN lived in the Amazon rainforest 10 million years ago | Daily Mail Online
2)https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2008/01/south-america-large-rodent-discovery-animals/;
3)#79: The Ancient Rat as Big as a Bull.

In the case of characters like Waspinator, they definitely cheated scale-the largest prehistoric wasp found was 7 centimeters long, and I'm sure a T-Rex was much bigger than a prehistoric gorilla.

 

Also, I think the alt. mode of Laserbeak from Transformers Cybertron was actually one of Soundwave's bombs...

 

I'm the one vaguely assuming?

Sure.

How can you be so sure that designs caused that movie to bomb, and not the incoherent plot?

It seems odd that the general audience wouldn't mind those designs for 4 movies then suddenly decide they hate them when the fifth movie comes around.

 

....Are they really? I honestly never paid attention to that...holy shit if they are!

Honestly I think it's best for the movieverse that scale isn't really adhered to. Starscream is a big jet that turns into a medium sized 'bot just because of aesthetic reasons. It really doesn't have to make sense when there is effectively space magic in play here.

Haha holy shit...

 

Dude, the designs for the bayfilms have been some of the most heavily criticized aspects of the film by the general audience since the first film back in 2007, just as much as the relatively poorly developed plots. You're just straight up ignoring a full decade of documented criticism purely because all you can see are the box office performance numbers.

Yup, K-Class - from the IDW continuity, basically they're kamikaze (obviously) troopers the Decepticons forcefully reformat to turn into bombs. Usually they're either super dedicated to the cause or, more likely, convicted penal colonists.

Amusingly, the main K-Class Decepticon from IDW; Fulcrum, actually failed to transform out of fear and long story short, his explosive charge was defused without his knowledge, so all he does is turn into an inert bomb.

I'm still waiting for MMC to make a figure of him.

 

Haha fuck me. Like I needed more reasons to never give a single shit about IDW's bad fanfiction.

 

So he is basically a YEET bomb?

That'd make one hell of a BotBot figure!

 

The general audience? Or critics and fans who didn't like the change? Cause there's no denying the latter two were vocal about their dislike for the designs, but the general audience? Is there really any proof that they despised the designs?

 

One thing I would like regarding scale: can humans not have this strange superiority complex that when coming up against 30+ foot giant robots, they think they can boss these things around and not just be flicked away or crushed underfoot?

There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity when dealing with these things up-close.

 

I think that makes sense. The Autobots are not conquerors, they're guests. They're the aliens, they don't own the Earth, so naturally for the good aligned autobots they need to play by the rules that humans set. The Decepticons? Aside from TLK it's clear they don't play by the rules, and what you think should happen, well, just does through the course of all the movies. Shatter and Dropkick only cooperated because they benefited more from cooperation than domination.

 

I, for one, really liked gun!Megatron and radio!Soundwave action in G1 comics. I'd love to see it used in some way in live-action movies.

For the scale debate, I don't think that the potential for interesting designs should be a slave to the scale constraint. Car transformers being bigger than the car itself wasn't that big of an issue for Lockdown in AOE. Same with aircraft transformation for Blitzwing and other Decepticons in Bumblebee. I think that at some point you stop paying attention to such things.

 

Almost nobody wants mass-shifting back - it was a dated, shitty concept that doesn't work. It's much better to find suitable counterparts for alt. modes that keep in the spirit of the original alt. modes while ditching the mass shifting.

Soundwave? A news van, FBI truck, Internet providers' van, Predator drone, stealth bomber... the list goes on and on.

Megatron? A tank is basically a big gun on treads.

Reflector? Get rid of him, because we don't need him.

Shatter and Dropkick are a weird case - their aerial modes are really the same size as their car modes (they transform from their jet/helicopter modes to their car modes and do not change in size at all). So there's a decent argument in saying, as @MattDallas did earlier, that they simply scanned jet/helicopter alt-mode templates and rescaled them to fit their own size. That could be a possible explaination for scale issues going forward; it's a No-Prizey explanation that kind of undermines the "in disguise" aspect, but it's an explanation.

 

Now hold on, Reflector is still a viable concept - granted just what Reflector is can be confusing given that's the camera mode only while the actual robots are Spectro, Spyglass, and Viewfinder - but next to Soundwave they're pretty much the only Decepticons actually dedicated to a reconnaissance role (in addition to the fact they were the de-facto choice for generic decepticon foot soldiers that weren't seeker clones). If anything, making the Reflector team into a set of aerial recon drones fits with their original purpose (especially when you consider things like the SR-71 Blackbird and the U-2 Dragon Lady literally exist to do nothing but take photographs tens of thousands of feet above targets).

 

I fully agree with you here. Reflector is an ideal Decepticon to have reimagined as a trio of Decepticon spies.