I think it's hard to make the that complaint because we don't know who 95% of the transformers are.

In general, i think this complaint is partly due to audiences not really being given characters names in a succinct way (or at all) and partly just a hangover from TF1 where the blurry cg/ shakey cam combo made it difficult to see what was happening in fight scenes. The Bee-Barri fight is a pile of shite when you watch it now.

 

Yes, reason #2.
I don't know how expensive it is to cast voice actors, but very few robots are called by their names. The first movie is a prime example of at least referencing names in captions.
I wouldn't call the fight between Bee and Barricade shit though.

 

Never had a problem myself..... never even knew this was an issue with the films!??? Maybe the answers better glasses or something??

 

I have never had a huge problem telling the Autobots apart, but the Decepticons get hard sometimes. My real issue is understanding Bumblebee without subtitles. I almost never understand him and it really subtracts from his character because once I watch with subtitles, I find him really funny. Anyone else have this problem?

 

For me it's 2 things:

1. They're not really focusing on the named Transformers as much as the humans, atleast for me. And to be fair that was before I immersed myself into other aspects of the franchise. But I still have to keep a mental checklist & be conscious of who & where everyone is as opposed to knowing from sight alone.

2. Body language. Unique characteristics are done moreso through vocals as opposed to movements. They become easier to identify by ear than by eye because of this. There are moments where I have to try & see who's lips are moving so I can match a face to the voice.

 

Most of the characters in the movie 'verse are just name slaps and then the name is expected to provide the personality. While the TFs have always suffered from too many characters/not enough development, most other versions can make at least some stand out.

 

In the final AoE battles you could blink and miss Stinger in the midst of all the other genericons. For a character who was supposed to 'replace' Bumblebee it was a very tepid effort in making Stinger stand out.

 

One of the problems with these movies being their own universe. To have any personality you have to remember some other Transformers continuity where the character had a personality. Without connecting Shockwave to G1 all you have is a robot standing around with a cool gun.

Not that G1 had much going on personality but at least you'd get an over the top voice actor that would impart some personality on a character without any character growth. You don't really get much on Rumble's background but the voice gives you an idea of what sort of jumped up little thug Rumble is.

 

Indeed...thank you, Mr. Welker.

 

This is Megatron...



This is baricade



This is starscream...



there is a reason why people keep calling bayformer "pile of scrap metal" as they are overly complicated (just look at megatron and starscream, if not because of those red eyes, you wont able to find thier head in all those mess), which doesnt transfer well during action, especially the 1st movie where you have trouble telling who is fight who.. even with slow motion.. plus most of the decepticon are silver gun metal which further add into the confusion...

 

Uh, I'm pretty sure I can see where the head is based on the images you just posted.

 

I'm not sure how they're overly complicated. They look like alien robots. And can't tell who is fighting who? Yes because it's so hard to tell the difference between a robot that's red and blue and flames on it and a robot that has tank treads on its feet and a lobster claw shaped cannon on its right arm.

 

I feel if they looked more like the toys then they'd be more identifiable. Just check out the Dinobots. No spec of color on them in the film, but their toys just had so much personality & fun. They brought life to those designs. I'd be more interested if they did that more often.

 

While I never had this complaint I can see where it's coming from.

The fights do move very fast and the Decepticons are mostly dark, greyish colors.

We can tell the bots apart easily because we know who they are before we've seen the movie from the toys etc.

 

I honestly do understand the complaint to an extent even though I like the designs (except AOE Optimus and Bumblebee). It also comes down to screen time and character development as well. Before I was a big Transformers fan I saw ROTF in theaters as a general moviegoer. This came days after seeing the first film for the first time. There were times when I couldn't tell who was an Autobot and who was a Decepticon. I actually felt sad in the Egypt battle because when Long Haul died, I thought he was an Autobot.

Now I know the characters inside and out and follow production extensively so it's not even remotely an issue anymore. The general audience doesn't do that.

Although, ROTF was probably the main film for this kind of complaint to happen due to the amount of random Transformers. I didn't have a problem telling them apart in the first film.

 

I have never, EVER understood this complaint. I could understands this argument from a PERSONALITY perspective (ie much of the Autobots act the same. But tbh, most humanes act the same, you guys just don't realize it), but from an asthetic perspective, this claim is absolutely ridiculous. For one, the Autobots are different colors, ranging from bright red to sterling silver to blue with red flames.

Secondly, they all are different shapes, sizes, and proportions. To touch on a few, OP is tall and lanky with legs that stretch for miles, bulky forearms, a large chest, and windows for pecs.
Bee is short but built, with door-wings, kind of a body builder physique and who sports calf muscles and heels.
Hound is a fatass.

And it is not limited to these three. Ironhide, sideswipe, the wreckers, crosshairs, the twins, ALL have VERY distinctive and unique designs.

Now i could KIND OF understand this complaint for decepticons. They all have grey, kind of washed out colors (which is NOTHING unique to bay. At least he gives them different designs. Other generations would simply make them the same design but different colors... And sometimes not even that), but nonetheless they have distinct designs. Starscream is a giant dorrito with arms and legs. Megatron has sort of an armoured gladiator look. Blackout is HUGE, with a huge upper body and tiny lower half. Brawl had a similar design to Bee, but bigger. The fallen looks like a skeleton. Barricade had long arms with a short torso.

Point taken, even with cons they look different. And in motion this is no different; it's more if HOW you shoot the scene than the bots themselves. Take tf1 for example, with its terrible shaky cam, when you can barely tell what's going on. However, in the newer movies they've done away with that, and even in the forrest fight there is no difficulty telling who is who. As a 9 year old with the attention span of a fly, even i could tell what was going on, yet grown men and women can't? Come on, get out of here.

 

I remember in the DOTM trailers that people saw Starscream die.

For the life of me I couldn't see how they could make that determination.

Years later I still can't but as it turns out they were right

 

I think the problem comes in because of color.

The Autobots are generally pretty lucky in the color department. Prime usually has a lot of blue and red in his robot mode so even when things get busy just look for the red and blue bot. Bumblebee has a good deal of yellow in his robot mode so just look for the yellow bot in the midst of the over the top action.

It's the robots with the sameish colors that seemed to bother people the most. Then toss in the robots that don't get a lot of screen time for their designs to stick in people's heads. Perhaps even a bit of some of the Decepticons share an alt mode and robot mode so people could say hey didn't that helicopter robot get killed in one of the other movies or hey is that the same police car robot that hasn't been seen since the first movie? People that keep up with every tidbit of movie related news will know all the who's who and what's what, but everyone doesn't share our level of passion for all things Transformers.

Just look at how humans actors can be confused for other actors so even in our own species we sometimes get it confused.

 

Except the movies are so desaturated, the action so fast and blurry, and the characters so dirty and scraped up you can't make out their anatomy. Can you even tell Optimus has flames when he's being shot from a dutch angle facing away with his foot taking up half the screen? Or when he's out of focus in the background flipping aorund in smoke and debris? What about when a robot that's half snake springs into frame so quickly without an establishing shot with a face that's only a face in that it has two eyes and never shown in full before being damaged to a point of unrecognizability?

The designs aren't actually the problem, it's just how hard to follow the movies are in general. My point way back about how inhuman characters have to have extra effort put into them to appear real and sentient? Same goes visually. You can have super complictaed, abstract designs, but they have to be filmed in a way that you can always track them. The audience can't be expected to follow an unknown design without immediate anatomical markers during dusty, rolling, dizzying action. I can easily make out all three of those examples, Megatron being the easiest due to more bulbous, smooth surfaces. But when they're being shot from below with a shaking camera, debris and dirt everywhere, and moving so fast and spastically no, it may not be able to make them out very well. Hell, in ROTF, my friend was confused as to what exactly was pinning Sam down during his interrogation by the doctor, because he didn't know Megatron had these crazy, spindly hands where each finger looked completely different. He was confused when Megatron talked about grabbing his flesh (,':}) because he couldn't keep track of each design's little details and distinctions.

Far, far too much of the movies are blink-and-you-miss-it. The AOE Autobots are about as distinct as can be, but once the action hits it's easy to forget who's who without, I dunno, Drift ever being refered to by name? Or Crosshairs only being refered to by name once by Drift, who's heavily accented voice is echoing and unclear in the scene it happens?

Ask any animator, 3D or 2D, and they'll tell you how a character is animated is just as important as what they look like.

 

I don't know if I qualify but I am training to become an animator. One thing they taught us in all forms of animation was to make sure your character stood out from its surroundings. Using both color and design, animators have to insure the character doesn't blend in.