I don’t really agree with your points here. Just because there are more named bots doesn’t mean that they’ll be actual characters. Also drones and alien ships are/can be cool.

 

Just because everyone does it doesn't mean Transformers should do it. With Marvel movies, I'm pretty tired of that trope as well. Final battle with a bunch of nameless monsters. Guess who wins? Or right, not the nameless monsters. It's just a bunch a slicing and dicing with little weight. Makes the villains feel really weak as a result. I much prefer battles with named characters as presented in Bumblebee and the '07 movie. It's much more exciting to see two equal forces going at one another than seeing the good guys slaughter a bunch of drones over and over again.

Edit: I'll note, this wouldn't be a huge issue with me if both sides had equal amount of named characters or the scenes with nameless drones were kept at a minimum, but seeing how there are just 3 named villains and a shit ton of good guys, they'll probably rely heavily on the nameless drones in the final battle.

Hah, see if that were to happen, I'll take the nameless drones then. Could you imagine if one of the nameless drones was able to kill Mirage or something?  

 

I'd love to have the generic evil Transformer troops be a serious threat for once. Killing named human/Autobot characters, blowing off Transformer's limbs, overwhelming them like a swarm of wasps. I think the closest we ever got to that was Bumblebee and Hound vs the Vehicons in AOE, I didn't like the way it was shot, but the concept for the scene was awesome - but then the Dinobots come in and just just easily kill them.  

 

I wish someday we'd get a saving private Ryan d-day type war scenario in a transformers film.

 

I mean, it can be done in movies. A bit harder because of too many people cooking in the kitchen so to speak, all with their own self-interest conflicting with what's right for the franchise but it can be done.

That said, like I mentioned earlier, I'd love for them to make a deep dive into the lore with a heavy sci-fi influenced TF anime show, where they'd have the time and room to really explore and have fun with it's premise, bonus points if Hasbro can keep from rebooting the damn thing. TF really needs a long-form continuity separate from the main lines to just let run free, maybe with it's own specialty toy line. But rebooting the various series seems counterproductive to a lasting fanbase.

I mean they're the Dinobots. In every continuity, that's what they do to grunts with no name tags.  

Hasbro would block something that dramatic but I'd welcome it. It probably wouldn't be to everyone's taste tho'. Given some of the fans reaction to the violence in the Bayverse that might be a bit too much for them.

 

Yeah, it's a problem when the named characters are literally so indistinguishable that even the people who own the franchise can't tell the difference.

It's on record that Hasbro didn't make a proper Stinger toy for the AoE lineup because they didn't think anybody would want one. Reps from Hasbro legitimately said that at I think Botcon 2015 or 2016.

 

Its pretty easy to tell the named bots and cons apart in the Bay films, regardless of their (usually lack of) character or prominence in the narrative. I’ve always found the “they look like scrapped home appliances being flung at each other” comments to be pretty disingenuous. You can not vibe with the robot designs/color schemes without underselling the creativity in the art direction and CG that ILM worked hard on.

I don’t like the designs at the beginning of the Bee film for example (found them too cartoony and derivative for my tastes) but I’m not gonna act like they’re trash.

As for Hasbro, I feel like no one is more out of touch with their respective franchises than the company execs overseeing them lol (this goes for any franchise really). They often say the strangest shit.

 

To be honest, the antagonist of the movie are also established as huge army, unlike Transformers, where the enemies are more or less... on the same weary state after long years of war, which only some of them survives.

I mean, if the Decepticons can make all those fodder, why bother with attacking Earth? They clearly have the manpower or whatever to not invade the earth and live somewhere else. There's literally no reason to attack the earth, unlike those let's say, Chitauri army (MCU), or the Nazi (Last Crusade), etc. Just ask for the Alspark politely, Megs left in his merry way alongside his newly created fodder and make a new life somewhere else, and left the Autobots to watch the humans discussing Texas sex statutory laws.

 

It's not a game or a zombie movie to have mindless fodder for the characters to fight off, especially in TF. It's just higher stakes everytime a character is fighting a known foe (for e.g. blitzwing in BB movie) and looking at the environment Marvel has created of the heroes having to fight 50 billion drones against the heroes is honestly just lazy and boring. Star Wars literally has the word "wars" in it so its expected the imperial and rebel forces to go to "war". If TF ever does a cybertron prequel with many decepticon and autobot drones it'll make sense cause they were in a war. If you have an army it already shows that you have some form of dominance and edge over the battlefield.

Ah surely movie audiences could have figured out the differences between grindor and blackout, Also underselling the creativity ? Yeah ILM worked extremely hard for the CG but they probably got compensated well for it too, the giger-esque and colorless nature of the decepticons didnt really help the average movie understand what was going on. I still to this day think that they should have given the decepticons more variety in regards to colours, cause starscream,megatron and soundwave are all mainly silver (wont help the average movie goer to differentiate them).

Yeah, I completely agree on this point ! Its not even the company execs overseeing. Hasbro literally shot themselves in the foot by re-signing with goddamn paramount. They honestly should have looked for another movie studio to create future films for TF. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura is the Avi Arad of Transformer movies and I still dont know why they signed with paramount after the Snake eyes movie blowout.

 

That entire scene in AOE is unhinged. I still can’t believe that made it into the film, though come to think of it every film has some awful cringe scene like that.

 

The way I see it, a certain part of the property takes a royal dump on the rest of it and some people cheer up for it. So, maybe if they stopped cheering for it, it would finally change? Maybe?

Taking this chance, to respond to @Autobot Burnout as well.

Imagine if Starscream looked as we know him from G1, perfectly and immediately recognisable, but acted nothing like we know him. Completely different character. That'd be an even bigger problem. Same goes for any character. You are so subconsciously familiar with those characters, that I'm sure that you'd be able to tell, the moment they speak a line that feels out of character. And that's all because of how clearly the Sunbow cartoon defined them.

Therefore, no. It has never been just about adapting the G1 design aesthetics more faithfully.

G1 and especially the Sunbow cartoon, defined these characters to a degree that we all feel like we know them. It's far, far, beyond their appearance. We're just taking too many things for granted. Especially when it comes to the Sunbow cartoon and G1 as a whole. And giving way too much credit to the little spinoffs that take what that cartoon created and established, draw it with comically exaggerated proportions, switch around a couple of character names and sell it as "all new, all different product" and people go nuts, while they come and go with minimum impact to pop culture.

 

well that is true! However as long as it isn’t super out of character there’s a bit of more leeway with characterization with transformers….compared to other franchises

Most of the characters have super basic personalities

Optimus has various different origins and personalities between his cartoon, comics, games.etc

they’re all still the inspirational… father like..heroic Autobot leader even though they act very differently when you see/read them
but they all still look like G1 Optimus(mostly)

g1 supplied designs and very baseline personalities(most of the cast didn’t even get that tbh)…anyone adapting transformers can really get away with anything

it isn’t like let’s say….a comic book movie with decades worth of stories and depth involved with the character to stick to

 

And yet, Marvel at least succeed at raising the stakes, and it's completely logical that the fight scene will have fodder, considering that the big fight:

1. Chitauri Army (Avenger), is a VERY BIG ARMY

2. Ultron Drone (Age of Ultron), considering how Ultron can replicate himself, and the drone even took one of the named victim.

3. Thanos's main army, which is again, is VERY HUGE, and only won by a sacrifice.

In every "big " fight scene, it's completely logical and fine to use nameless fodder. You don't see Spidey fighting through an army of nameless Vulture copy in Homecoming, because it's not needed.

Same, that scene is really pointless and doesn't add anything, it's not even pointless in funny way (like how Antman's friend tend to ramble), and if it's for personality introduction, then it means the boyfriend is creepy, especially the way he provided a card for response, means he has already done it more than once.

 

And yet, if you were reading the G1 comics at the time, and then watched the Sunbow show (or did the reverse), that's pretty much what you'd have. Wildly different interpretations of a lot of the characters due to the differences in the medium and artistic intent, even if they looked very similar. Variation in character incarnations and reuse of names has been around since the beginning of the brand (to say nothing of all the variations from more minor tie-in media like colouring / activity books / storybooks and toy bios from that same time), but since G1 really started seeing a resurgence and a more immediately visible influence on 'new' versions of Transformers, I think we've come to expect reverence for the G1 mold to a degree we didn't have previous to, say, TF: Energon. I think that "well they don't LOOK like so and so" is an even more recent thing, probably from the classics line or the movies themselves. I get that it can be a bit jarring for someone who grew up on a certain incarnation of the brand (Though, lets be fair, the folks who were exposed to G1 and G2 in their original runs are in at least their early 30s now, and many have aged out of the brand and not returned), but its something very easy to get over by just accepting its a different character with the same/similar name, or that whatever media is something new and doesn't even have those extremely visible callbacks to begin with. I sincerely believe that continuously going back to the G1 well will bring diminishing returns, that that sort of creative stagnation will eventually doom the brand.

 

There's literally almost 40 years of comic book storytelling, that's also, surprisingly consistent between Marvel, Dreamwave and IDW as far as characterizations and mythology go. Possibly even more than some individual cases of well known comic book characters that have been adapted to film.

I think there's much more nuance than meets the eye and the Sunbow cartoon did an, as of yet, unparalleled job of spotlighting and defining an army of characters through small actions and few bits of dialogue. Sunbow Prime was far from the one dimensional pompous speech-giving leader he has ended up being portrayed as. He had a ton of wit and energy to him. Small nuances like that, have completely faded in time. Thinking about it, I don't even, ever, remember him giving grandiose speeches for no apparent reason, like he's been doing all the time ever since the 2007 movie.

G1 only supplied very baseline personalities in the later seasons, where it truly got out of hand with how many toys and gimmicks it was mandated to introduce.

I feel like this is a variation of the nameslap argument, by which, "it's ok to keep doing something detrimental, because, it was ok once before, in a different occassion". That's kind of neither here nor there, for me. And Dreamwave, as well as IDW comics and the Cybertron games, for examples, have proven that it's not too difficult to merge contrasting aspects between G1 cartoon and comics into very cohesive results. I don't understand why initial incosistencies that spawned out of the limitations of the time should branch out into a myriad of more inconsistencies. That's not the opposite of stagnation. That's not freedom of creativity. That's chaos.

Instead of taking the chance of moving past the limitations of the time in which the franchise began, and attempt to deliver a definitive modern take on Transformers, we use it as an excuse for poor adaptations and cheap on-brand knock-offs.

G1 is not a subtitle of The Transformers. It's not yet another spin-off, or "a different take", or a reboot or whatever you want to call it. G1 is the brand. G1 is Transformers. Beyond that, there have been some reboots and spinoffs, that mostly just take bits and pieces of G1 and regurgitate them with funny exaggerated proportions to make it seem like "new and different product", but make no mistake. There is a certain identity and lore and aesthetic to this brand. And it's every bit as worthwile, as anything else being taken seriously and adapted successfully in our era.

Trying to act like there aren't any corners to the sandbox, is what has led into an era of identity crisis, with constant start/stop little mediocre spinoffs that the general public has never cared about. To average Joe, Transformers is a fondly remembered 80s cartoon that they adapted into big dumb hollywood movies. Everything inbetween has been proven vastly for TFW uber-fan consumption and largely forgotten.

 

I think you're going to have to sharpen the point on what is or isn't 'detrimental' for the purpose of this discussion, but in short I have no issues with any part of the brand being subject to criticism, analysis, and calls for improvement. I do not think we as consumers have to accept anything (though I do believe if something isn't to our tastes, for now at least we have the luxury of being able to wait for something else that will be). I think we're actually closer to being on the same page than you might be thinking.

I'm saying that wild reinterpretations of Transformers, and a movement away from g1 in more and more aspects, is a good thing for the brand long term. It's not about nameslaps and an appeal to past mediocrity, it's about creators having the mandate to take the characters and concept to new places. "Good" is somewhat subjective, but Beast Wars and Animated are two of the most well regarded takes on Transformers, and they're also two of the most different (at face level, at least) from sunbow g1.

You talk about bringing forward an authentic, modern take on Transformers, and I agree with you that every incarnation of the brand needs to do that, at its core. But the world we live in is different from the world of 1984, technology is different in more ways than the capabilities of the animation industry, and ultimately, you can't go home again over the exact same narrative ground. You yourself point to the knockoffs and poor adaptations. The core of Transformers is emotional, and philosophical, and mythic, not aesthetic, and a revival of the brand needs to bring THAT from the old days, rather than character names or shapes or altmodes. Those are, at the end of the day, windowdressing (albeit extremely effective windowdressing) for the stories that got their hooks into us. Those stories have a lot of content that's more or less timeless, and CAN be updated, with care and mindfulness, into a modern lens.

I disagree with you that G1 IS the brand though, and this is what I pointed to when I talked about the time before Energon. G1 laid the foundations, definitely, and established the core of the brand/concept that others then built on, and that I think every subsequent interpretation needs to understand and utilize to truly be Transformers. But at the same time, G1 wasn't the brand during Beast Wars (though Beast Wars would eventually tie itself back more explicitly to G1), G1 wasn't the brand during Armada and Energon. Hell, G1 wasn't even one thing in the age of the G1 cartoon/comic/storybooks/toy fiction running concurrently with eachother, and when Furman took the Transformers in a fairly different direction after taking over from Budiansky.

I don't think that sandbox you allude to has corners, or at the very least, it stretches out a lonnnnnnnng way in a number of directions. I don't really think the brand has much of an identity crisis, either. I think it is what it's been since Beast Wars came out (and maybe since the first days), a collection of stories and interpretations that not everyone is on board to explore. Your perception of the average Joe isn't necessarily a wrong one, but I think it wrongfully ignores the success (even if not peak performance) the brand had during the pre-movie years and the beast wars era.

 

I would disagree with the notion that G1 alone is the brand and that they couldn't mix-n-match things. Take for instance your Starscream example from earlier - people want to see the G1 guy and the BBM rendition was great. However, if they were to use Starscream alongside a Megatron, there's a few different versions of the character they could use as a basis for personality. The G1 original is of course a cultural staple of 'incompetent backstabber' which works for Starscream being mustache-twirling evil and very much a product of an 80s villain group, but alternative takes on the Megatron/Starscream relationship are possible. There's the Armada Starscream route where he's regularly abused by Megatron for a more sympathetic angle. Hell, maybe switch it up and have a Starscream who regularly tries to ursurp/kill Megatron...because Megatron orders him to do this and he's actually extremely loyal, to take a page from Pink Panther where Inspector Clouseau flat out orders his manservant to try and ambush him every night when he comes home so that the Inspector is always on the lookout for a new threat - though this is how I've always viewed the logic of G1 Megatron keeping somebody as traitorous as G1 Starscream around, as a reminder to stay vigilant against actual competent threats.

Contrast this to how Starscream is portrayed in the live action movies - or rather, how he's not. Specifically, he's barely even there despite being in the same second-in-command position as he always is. The only truly 'Starscream' thing he actually does at any point is the 'Cowards live' line he says at the end of ROTF after Prime rips off The Fallen's face.

Contrast that to how much we get out of Shatter and Dropkick playing off each other in BBM. Even though they don't get a lot, it's still really well done and establishes how the two of them think differently despite being on the same side. When they approach the S7 dudes, Dropkick very clearly just wants to blow them all up but Shatter quickly realizes they can trick the humans into being allies and she starts spinning bullshit, while Dropkick doesn't seem convinced of the idea.

One of the cut scenes even builds upon this, with the two having some banter, even Shatter outright talking down to her partner, while Dropkick is more interested in trying human weapons.

Character reinventions can work, but the difference is they have to be written well, which has never been the strong suit of the bay films.

 

Nameslaps. Period.

Maybe it would be, if we were at that stage of having already successfully, firmly and clearly re-introduced the core things to the wide public. Instead, there's a million different Starscreams and Bumblebees every week. That shouldn't need explanation on why it's catastrophic for getting new audiences acquainted and invested.

Those "new" places, are new only to us uber-fans, that know what's already been established, inside and out, and probably kinda tired of it as well. Creators can create anything new, but this isn't a new franchise.

Beast Wars is, probably my favourite cartoon in all of Transformers, and I recognise it as a sequel to the original run, that exists within the G1 continuity family. And I also like Animated. Wildly different examples and both respectful of what came before, while trying to do something different. And while Beast Wars is kind of a paragon, for what, I feel like many people, here, are asking for, on the other hand. Truly different, without shitting on G1. Animated, one the other hand, as good as it is, is just G1 with exaggerated proportions and a few twists to the established lore, at the end of the day. It's just a spin-off. It could never be the main thing.

Exactly. We now have the means to tell this story, the way it couldn't be told in 1984. But...

That. That's exactly what all those "all new and different" regurgitations do. Why not just go all in, for once? Without pretending "it's new and different" because it has a larger jaw.

Actually, I agree here, and that's the most important part of the discussion. Although, I do believe that, the aesthetic, is an extention of understanding that emotional, philosophical and mythic core. But you're making an excellent point here.

With care and mindfulness, indeed. "Treat it like it's Shakespeare to you", paraphrasing Kevin Feige.

I think therein this paragraph, lies a misunderstanding of what G1 is. I don't consider Beast Wars and the beast era, as a whole, to be outside the G1 sandbox, as different as it might be to the initial G1 cartoon/comic books. When G1 is discussed, some people immediately think that it's about returning to a more "boxy" design aesthetic but it's not about that. The UT might be the first honest reboot of the franchise, but still, aesthetically, it's far boxier in design aesthetic, than, probably anything, ever. So, is it G1? I don't think that's how it goes. And it's far more nuanced than that. You actually got it right in your previous paragraph. And the creators of Beast Wars did, as well.

There's a point (and it's been reached and surpassed long ago, unfortunatelly), that, if you were to take away the logo, some names and Prime's head design, a viewer wouldn't be able to tell if what they're watching is derived from or is an adaptation of Transformers, or GoBots, or whatever else franchise featuring robots. Long before reaching that point, you've already lost all connection to the IPs identity.

As far as media goes, I am not aware of a franchise with more different start/stop, completely different aesthetic interpretations of the same things, running at the same time, and a movie series that barely resembles the source material only when it makes a mockery of it. You literally, practically, couldn't get further from what someone would call "a solid vision" for the IP.

Oh, G1 is the brand, but that's what spin-offs are for. Trying more experimental ideas, and then integrating what works, in the core brand. Like, exactly what they've been doing with the comics, where you see Hot Shot, or Bulkhead appear. That's great, that's healthy. Do it more like the comics.

Well... Perhaps shockingly... I agree.

I agree with this as well.

 

What are we arguing about this time? Don’t feel like reading the previous pages of essays.

 

Never mind, same old.