There's a lot of things I don't understand about these movies, but the one thing I fail to understand at all is how pitifully inaccurate literally every single character is in these movies. I'm not specifically talking design wise, which are also innacurate, but more the personalities.

Now for the first one it kinda made sense, this came straight off the heels of the Unicron trilogy (Which also took names of G1 characters and slapped them on random characters,) so I don't really expect super accurate adaptations of these characters. That being said, Starscream has basically been consistent in almost every single adaptation of himself, in this one he's about as loyal as they come (Then again he did only have like 5 seconds of screen time.)

When it comes to the other movies, this is where that excuse dies out, as this was when the G1 revival started to kick in. Now there are a lot of characters worth talking about: Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee (Who throughout these movies becomes inconsistent with himself), Starscream again, Hound, Drift, Sideswipe, Devastator, the list goes on. But the funniest one to me is Soundwave.

Soundwave is literally the most simple character to get right. Give him the red visor, mouthplate, make him blue and give him a robo voice. Somehow, the movies fail to all. I dunno who was responsible for creating movie Soundwave, but I'm assuming they either had never heard of Soundwave, or had a massive hole in their head or both.

Ultimately the question for me is why these characters are so horribly inaccurate, what is the point of it? Although my assumption is just that whatever remnant of a brain Michael Bay has left in his head found it too complicated to figure it out or get the right people to do it for him.

I mean this is the same guy who doesn't like the Dinobots, who I'm pretty sure anyone with a functioning brain would consider the greatest thing ever made.

EDIT: The intro and actual bulk of this post contradict each other. Intro saying I'm talking personality while the bulk is about design. So I figured I'd type a TL;DR version here:
If a character has:
1. certain defining features nearly every single major version of set character
2. A version of set character most people are familiar with and is the most iconic one.
The movies should probably try to adapt that."

 

If I had to guess, I’d say the design philosophy for the films was centered around making aesthetically striking robots that would look good on the big screen rather than recreating the iconic aspects of the Transformers characters beyond superficial nods here and there. The character writing likely followed a similar directive. As the films tended to be more plot centric rather than character centric, the robots only needed to fulfill particular roles in the story as it carried them along.

 

Maybe, still a dumb philosophy though, especially now with the Bumblebee movie Soundwave design being a thing

 

Bottom line: New universe, new take.

 

Inaccurate to what?

These movies aren’t direct adaptations of any Transformers series.

Rather, they’re their own thing with nods to different series (which is one of the things I actually love the most about them).

 

Here was the problem with a lot of the Decepticons - they were using real military vehicles for his alt-mode, which are very limited in terms of what you can do, because these are active service vehicles and have to come back in good condition. So what you can do with Starscream is very limited.

Also, most of the Decepticons were nameslaps because Bay and the writers had difficulty choosing which characters would go in the film - because, really, after Megatron and Starscream, with Decepticons, except for Soundwave and Shockwave, they all just become interchangeable. Given the long production run on the toys, Hasbro were really insistent that the character list be decided upon and sent, so they could get to work.

So Bay and the writers wrote down a list of vehicles they wanted in the film, looked through the Transformers backlog and picked names they liked, and gave those to the characters. The film had already been delayed a year and the staff knew that time was tight - Paramount would have reacted badly if Bay and the writers asked for another delay.

What else could they have done in the situation they were in?

 

It's called Artistic License, something which pop culture is unfortunately increasingly lacking.

Whether the designs are GOOD, on the other hand, is another debate...

 

I don't really giving characters either zero personality or a generic stereotype can really be considered a new take.

These movies, to me at least, should be like what the MCU is. It takes the general ideas of a certain character and puts them on the big screen.
Please explain to me how a psychopathic Optimus Prime is a nod to anything.

The military thing is a fair thing, still don't think anyone would have any issues with a slight hint of color in the robot mode that wasn't there in the alt mode, and it didn't really stop them from creating a semi average Starscream look, but it works.

The other thing you mentioned is fine too, but it's not really something I ever argued. Because I think Brawl and Bonecrusher are fine for what they are. I'm arguing more characters who are well known like Soundwave or Shockwave and them being for whatever reason not adding in some of the defining features of for example, Soundwave (Though he's far from the only one).

 

"Inaccurate to what?" is exactly the question here. There are a lot of reasons to dislike the Bay movies and a lot of reasons to dislike the designs from them but "inaccuracy" is the most shallow and disconnected one. By the time 2007 rolled around there were at least four big, distinct continuities (styles) between G1, BW, RID, and the UT. Don't forget dozens of other little guys like Machine Wars. The people assuming (and who are still hung up on it thirteen years later) that these would be "accurate" designs really had and have no foundation for that argument.

We all know what "accurate" means too, just "make it look like the first one cuz that's the best one". People like to forget that in 2007 the last big thing was the UT, which was REALLY big, even if the shows weren't too good. There was more precedent for the movies to look like Armada if they were going to be "accurate" to anything. Hasbro was not shilling G1 at this time: Classics was purely a stopgap measure because the movie was pushed back. The last big thing for G1 guys was Alternators which turned Shockwave and Grimlock into cars, among other things. Accuracy was not a concern.

It's very easy in 2020 to look back at all the creatively bankrupt G1 worshipping in TF media and convergence on total homogenization since 2010 and call the Bay movies a throwback or an outlier, but there really was no reason for them to be "accurate" to anything when the first one came out.

 

Artistic license is what it is, I guess.
The designs are a mixed bag for me. I like knight Optimus, Jazz, most of the first movie Decepticons, Shockwave, Lockdown and Hot Rod's designs just fine.
However nearly all of them I don't like the designs for the characters, Hot Rod for example looks nothing like Hot Rod in my opinion should look like.
And then the other half are just complete dogshit like the ROTF Destructicons.

Pretty much everything said here has been talked about in this thread before, so I'll just leave it with this.
MCU didn't have to be accurate either cause no one cared about Captain America, Iron Man, Thor or Black Widow 15 years ago. Look how that all turned out.

 

That's a false equivalence. The MCU is a connected series of popcorn movies. The gimmick is that it's like watching a TV show on the big screen. Faithful designs are not its key to success, in fact there are dozens and dozens of characters I could point to who have been "movie-ized". Why is Scarlet Witch a chick in a red jacket with vague red energy powers instead of a totally reality-warping chick in a leotard and an M-shaped headdress? Why is the Grandmaster Jeff Goldblum instead of a blue-skinned alien with mental powers? Just two examples off the top of my head.

You need to provide an example of a series that failed because of inaccuracy to one specific source material among many in order to have a comparison instead of just assuming a certain big blockbuster series is successful because of its perceived accuracy.

 

Well you could argue that being accurate isn't the key, but it certainly has something to do with it.
Also comic book designs are fucking goofy as all hell. These changes, unlike the changes the Transformers make, make sense.

Also I don't see why I need a comparison to a failed series as a comparison.

 

So the argument has shifted now, first the MCU succeeded because it was totally accurate, now they needed to make things inaccurate for the sake of success.



I don't know about you but if Wanda here was drawn by the people who worked for Sunbow she would fit right in the Transformers cartoon as a villain of the week. There is not a massive gulf between "woman in silly costume" and "bright and colorful Stay Puft robot truck man".

Because your assumption that the MCU is successful because of accuracy has no proof and you just negated that point yourself by admitting they had reason to change the designs.

 

Well, I don't know what to tell you, but that's exactly what it is. Blame Hollywood, but that's how they did it. *shrugs*

 

I literally never said the MCU is succesful because it's accurate, don't blame me for you jumping to conclusions. Hell I never even argued success to begin with.
Also uh, the bright and colorful Stay Puft robot truck man has shown to actually work well in live action. This one movie proved it, you may have heard of it, it's called Bumblebee.

 

What was your intent with "MCU didn't have to be accurate either cause no one cared about Captain America, Iron Man, Thor or Black Widow 15 years ago. Look how that all turned out" then? I apologize if I misunderstood.

 

I think it's a good example of a franchise that respects it's source material but also does new stuff.

 

Some people tend to criticize the designs in the movies, but that’s not really the problem. The problem is the characterization of the designs or lack there of.

Example: Shockwave. Who is Shockwave? What does he want? Why is he even on earth to begin with? What’s he like personality wise? Do you get answers to these questions? No you don’t!

Movie Shockwave is just turned into another big dumb generic movie monster prop like the other 90% of the decepticons and just has the name slapped on the design for more marketing value than actual characterization. When you really think about it, most of the robots in these movies have little to zero personality and are about as interesting as a tumbleweed blowing in the wind.

Now look I understand that these are movies and the movies have limited time and budgets and you can’t give every character or robot a massive amount of screen time. But when it comes to big name characters and fan favorites like Shockwave, Devastator, or Grimlock and the Dinobots. They should at least have some decent personality traits.

 

My thoughts exactly. I remember how it was reading the first issue of MTMTE and actually seeing Transformers with so much personality after having grown up with these movies.

 

Because Bay wanted to do his own take on the brand, and he wasn't required to make them look or act like their G1 counterparts. Especially back in in 2007. We're talking about a pre-MCU, (mostly) pre-'80s nostalgia era where most "nerd" franchises were trying to distance themselves from anything that might be considered too dated or "geeky". Bay is known to not really care about "nerd stuff", so his goal was to make the Transformers movies as cool and hip and relevant as possible, not to faithfully recreate the '80s cartoon.

Without Bay, I suspect we would have seen more G1-faithful movies around 2010 or so. The MCU played a big part in letting Hollywood know that they could go more geeky and still have big hits. But Bay obviously wasn't interested in doing that, he wanted to do his own take. Which I personally think is fine, there have been plenty of other unique takes on the brand.