I didn't have a problem with most of the movie designs until "Age of Extinction". It may be old-fashioned but I like when there are vehicle parts as a part of a Transformers robot mode. Hood good chest trunk arms door wings that kind of stuff. Just about every design in Age of Extinction lacked any of that kibble it made it difficult to identify the Transformer as helicopter Guy car guy or whatever. I like the little visual clues in robot mode to tell you what this character turns into and maybe give you a little idea of a character's personality.

 

I'll never understand why some fans on multiple sides of the argument act like one's opinion about Transformers designs is absolute fact. We all have our own opinions about designs.

Personally, I like a wide variety of designs. I like G1 designs. I like Beast Wars designs. I like the 2007-RotF-DotM designs with the Constructicons, Ironhide, Shockwave, Sentinel Prime, Laserbeak, and others. I like the AoE-TLK designs with their often more visually expressive facial designs (AoE Autobots, Lockdown, Galvatron, TLK Megatron, Quintessa), knight-inspired robots, and alien oddities. Most all of it is good in my book.

The thing is any design choices are going to be complained about by a vocal group of fans. First trilogy designs? Too alien or too much dull, grey scrap-metal. Then when the later movies made the main robot cast more human, fans complained they weren't alien enough. Damned if they do. Damned if they don't.

As long as I enjoy the fiction itself, I am good. My favorite Beast Wars episode features one of the creepiest designs in existence my book: Transmutate. The design has always creeped me out, but I'm fine with that because I love the episode Transmutate appears in.

 

1. So you're saying it was free to watch all five Transformers movies in theaters, it was free to get the DVD's and Hasbro was giving away movie toys for free? That's the only way you can make the argument that it's not our money is if we didn't spend any on the products we were given. It most certainly is our money that pays for these movies. Again, it's there's in the since that they made but once I'm spending my money to see it then it becomes my movie and I do not have to be satisfied with the movie I paid to see. This argument only works if the movies were free to watch. Can't really complain that much if you don't spend any money on it.

2. Again, I don't doubt that they put a lot of hard work into them, I just think they could of done better with a different director. In fact they did do better, if you look at some of the early concept designs before Bay had them change everything to the garbage we have now. The early version of Ratchet for example actually freaking looked like Ratchet. There were also early designs for Starscream though I only seen his head not a full body, but originally he was suppose to have a head design that actually freaking looks like Starscream. There were even some toys that used that concept head and a G1 color scheme. Still wasn't the best but it's amazing how much better he looked when I could actually tell it was Starscream. Unfortunately most of the actual good designs never made it passed the concept stages because Michael Bay wanted them changed. No one is even complaint about the animators, we're complaining about the designs that Bay demanded. It would of been fine if the animators were left to do their own thing without Bay's interference.

3. Wow you really aren't listening are you. How many times do I have to say it, geewhiners are a minority. Those are the people you're talking about who will never be happy. The vast majority of the complaints have nothing to do with wanting an exact recreation of G1 designs. I'm fine with redesigning the characters into something new as long as they are at least some what recognizable and the new designs make some kind of logical sense. The majority of the movie designs do neither. Here's a great example for you, Beast Wars, geewhiners hate it just because truck not monkey. It's my personal favorite series. I don't give a shit that Optimus is a monkey because it makes sense for the story and he still looks like Optimus... at least till Beast Machines then his design is terrible. But all three of his Beast Wars incarntions to me are better than G1. Silver bolt oddly despite looking nothing like Silver bolt at least looks like he can transform, looks strong, and I actually like him better than G1. I also like BW Scorpinok more than G1 but that's mostly cause I don't like Headmasters. So quite conflating me with geewhiners. Not every critisim is "because it isn't G1".

4. Everything you just said is wrong. They don't make any logical sense. It would not be a simple copy of G1 because again no one is asking for an exact copy of G1, just something that is some what recognizable as a Transformer. And the designs aren't unmistakable. Do you know how many times I've walked by Bionicles and other toy robots thinking they were movie toys only to get closer and realizes it wasn't even a Transformers toy line. Any other Transformers designs that have come out for the past 30+ years are unmistakable. These things are not. Again, Terminator, Star Wars, Pacific Rim, ect. the Transformers movie designs do nothing to stand out from these other franchises. The only thing they stand out from is Transformers because they don't look like them. They're called Transformers but everything that makes them stand apart from other robots was stripped away.

Terminators only have to fight humans so it doesn't take much to make them look imposing when they're fighting against things weaker than them. Transformers have to be able to fight other Transformers who are just as strong if not stronger than they are. Terminators also don't transform and thus don't have designs that look like their own transformations could kill them.

 

Yeah, just like people who think that if a real life battle tank caterpillar tracks are one big assembly of non-covered moving parts it means that one can stop a tank with a rifle because this area must be very "vulnerable". Nevermind the area in question being made of metals harder than bullets and will be simply glancing shots off so nothing short of an actual anti-materiel ordnance will work despite the apparent lack of protection there.

The beauty of engineering is that if a machine is made of materials harder than whatever dangerous objects are likely to be flying around then there might not be even a reason to add any excess weight in form of plating.

 

I think I may of figured out a way to show you exactly what I'm talking about in terms of armor. Though I have no idea how to copy and post links using my tablet so you're going to have to a little bit of work yourself.

If you Google the term "Blitzwing Dissection" the very first image that comes up is fan art, not mine, of G1 Blitz wing except half of his body has the outer shell removed exposing the inner workings of the robot.

The left half is just a normal Blitzwing with his armor fully intact. Can you see how much stronger that makes him look than the other half of his body?

The right half looks like a Bayformer.

Imagine this cut in half and mirrored to make a symmetrical robot. Which one actually looks like a Transformer? The only vehicle kibble left on the right half is the wings from his jet mode and the treads from his tank mode, everything else has been stripped down. That skeleton can't possibly transform with 90% of his vehicle modes missing. He doesn't look like he would last long in a fight with all his inner workings exposed like that. The left half however is more realistically functional.

Sure he looks like a brick and I'd be totally OK with an updated streamlined version that isn't so blocky as long as it doesn't end up looking like the right side of that anatomy picture.

 

I really wasn’t much of a fan of the movie designs

 

Bad is ultimately subjective of course. Personally when I think of the Bayverse designs, I describe them as "overwrought." Like scale back about 6 layers of armors and half as many random pistons and gears. Also, they should be less ugly.

 

They all have hideous bug faces on top of exploded piles of shards. That style made the IDW comics unbearable for a few years too.

 

Well, they had so many individual pieces that it limited how much screen time the bots could have due to cost and time, IIRC. That's a pretty bad strike against the design.

 

@NGW Eh. There are franchises that have gone on for just as long or even longer then ours and people still bitch endlessly. Just sayin.  

Look at how people reacted to the designs of the new and upcoming tmnt cartoon, just as an example.

@WishfulThinking Do you have any idea how hard it was to not make a monty python's holy grail quote at your mention of fizzy elderberries?

Something I do keep forgetting to mention, but I like Bay Bumblebee. He just seems so sweet and likeable and there's something utterly adorable about him. I'd pal around with him.

 

That doesn't make them bad designs, just designs unsuited for efficient use with our current technology.

 

Well the movies are called Transformers, they're suppose to focus on actual Transformers characters. Most of them fell more like props or set pieces than actual characters due to how little they're actually on screen.

It still bothers me that Bumblebee is getting a solo movie when the first film was already pretty much a solo film as he was the only Autobot who actually had a descent amount of screen time. Jazz had so little time on screen I felt nothing when he died. They spent no time developing him as a character so there was no emotional attachment to the character.

Oddly enough Ratchet is even worse, some how being in four movies and still having so little screen time that I don't give a crap about him. Animated and Prime were the best Ratchets, though they basically had the same personality. And I think Prime having the same writers from the movie is what the movies could have been if Bay wasn't involved.

 

I liked the movie designs for the first three movies, but like Autobot Burnout said they changed Megatron's head based on fan reactions and the fans got Bay to cast Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. SaberPrime made a good comment about yes it’s our money, because we paid to see the movies in the theater and buy the DVD’s. If no one paid to see the movies or buy the DVD’s or toys, where would Transformers be at today?

 

Areas highlighted in blue are armor. Areas marked in red are possible weak points. And I'm being generous here by marking the obviously exposed joints, tires, and his windshield. He still looks pretty sturdy compared to this...



There is the GIANT HOLE in his chest that some how you were unable to see. Just like before the armor is marked in blue while the weak points are marked in red. You notice how there is a lot more red on this one?

In the legs alone G1 Optimus the most obvious weak point is the knees which ironically are well protected by those kneepads on the movie design but his legs are pretty much exposed everywhere else.

The chest has the windshield which I don't think would give much protection but there again, with the one exception of the actual windows G1 Optimus has a totally solid torso while movie Optimus has a giant freaking hole in what little armor does exist. The arms, you probably can't even see it but I did mark red spots on the elbows and shoulders where his joints are in the G1 design. Being that small they're not likely to take damage but again I was being generous. Movie design however has very obvious danger zones all over his arms.

Oh I wanted to point something else as well... if they don't need armor for protection... Why do battle masks exist? Bumblebee clearly has Yellow armor, his battle mask also has it which suggests that his face is an obvious vulnerable weak point. There's no reason for battle masks to exists if they don't actually need them.

Those areas are made of small parts, parts that seem to easily break off. The larger more solid chucks seem more sturdy and less likely to take damage.

Also those images are both of Masterpiece toys which are made to be as screen accurate as possible... which G1 is while movie still has issues mainly that back pack which seems to be quite a bit larger than in the movie and the forearms which were actually a bit more rounded with more gaps in them while this toy shows his forearms as solid blocks. So I'm also making him look like he's more solid than he really is by using the toy instead of the CGI model.

 

My biggest complaint with the designs is that they were too "busy". So many weird angles and spikes and things going every which direction. At some point, one robot becomes hard to distinguish from another. Sometimes that old adage that "less is more" really does make sense.

 

I honestly hate the Bayverse design, and the faces are the worst. Optimus Prime's mouth is practically on his chin, Bumblebee has a ballgag, and Megatron, uh...is a little...um...Georgia O' Keefe? Hound was John Goodman with a dreadlock bot beard. I don't think Starscream had much of anything that could be considered a face.

That was just for starters. The individual character designs might have been distinct enough, but they rarely got the screentime for the mind to really process the complicated designs. They start to blend in with each other. The Brawl I saw in the Studios Series figure is not how I saw that character onscreen, because we only saw little blips of him in robot mode. It didn't help that most of the characters were just silver of grey.

 

For me the first movie designs were pretty good, the autobots and barricade had very G1 silhouettes. The second movie went wrong the weird origami ball bearing robots & the twins' cartoon faces. Starscream salivates, which was somehow even worse than Bumblebee peeing on noted actor John Turturro.

Then the third movie has robots with facial hair and an suv that turns into the freaking predator. All was lost.

 

Like the movie designs if you want; more power to you. I dislike them because, as others have said here, they are indistinguishable from one another unless you're staring at them dead on. i recognize the need for greater complexity when bringing these designs into the real world, but for all their real-world complexity, they lost a great deal of detail, particularly in form and color. Most of the designs are monochromatic with a splash of gray or black for the joints. The more recent films helped this somewhat. But that brings me to the next major issue: they don't resemble the characters that they claim to be, save for Prime to a narrow degree.

If the Bay films version was your first introduction to those characters, great! But for those of us who knew them, it would be like looking at a family member who had been mangled in an accident. One of the major grievances fans of a property have against movie designers is when they film version of said franchise fails to create recognizable designs for the known cast. It's one of the big reasons Masters of the Universe fans couldn't connect with the live action movie: the majority of the characters only vaguely resembled their counterparts, let alone all the additional unknown characters added for the film. Imagine if instead of Hugh Jackman, the X-men films cast Martin Short as Wolverine. That's how I feel about the Bay movies.

A design can be good by its own merits, but bad when it fails to accomplish its task. A designer must figure out not only what might look good but what's appropriate for the project. I think the Bay Transformers designs stand on their own as cool robot designs but fall flat as recognizable characters and fail miserably at representing icons.

 

Very funny thing about your statement, Martin short was more physically the right height for the character of wolverine then hugh was

 

Haha I'm glad you caught that. It was a subtle point on my part: focusing on one detail at the expense of more important details. Short is the right height for Wolverine but wrong in all other respects. The Bayverse bots are technically Transformers in all respects, but they are unrecognizable representations of icons.