What makes the movie designs realistic? If you look at modern combat vehicles you don't see a lot of exposed mechanisms. What you do see is a lot of blocky panels of armor to protect the operating systems from combat damage. You'd think if that vehicle was your body, and you knew you'd get shot at, you'd want some armor covering your guts. In my mind the G1 aesthetic is more realistic in terms of designs that would withstand the rigors of the battlefield.

I don't like the bay movies because the stories are nonsensical and the robot characters are nothing more than weapons platforms to make pretty 'splosions.

 

They get negative criticism for being vapid, poorly scripted, action-over-plot drivel. Justified criticism.

I dunno - the sleek, updated G1 designs of Classics/Universe/Alternators, perhaps?

And as for confusing the characters with one another, the fact remains that the Movie-verse designs do not sufficiently allow for instant character identification in a chaotic battle.

 

No, not defending them at all. My sarcastic response was to BluRayHiDef's beyond ignorantly stupid question. If there is one thing that drives me absolutely nuts on these forums, it's when people drop that insanely ******ed weak argument of "oh, if you didn't like the Bayformer designs, you must have just wanted G1 on the screen". To me it's nothing but trolling, and I'm sick to death of seeing it.

I agree with everything you just said. I absolutely wanted & expected updates, but I expected that little thing we know as instant character recognition as opposed to getting the generic exo-skeletan insectoid bots that we were given instead.

 

I'll give you some examples.
During the tackle fight between Barricade and BB, I have trouble seeing which limb belongs to which robot, bc they're so close up, and blurry, that it's hard to make it out.
Allegedly in ROTF during Demolishers rampage; Optimus Prime and Ironhide or both holding onto Demolisher. I can see Optimus Prime clear as day. I have never, ever noticed Ironhide. I only know this bc someone here on the forums said that a while back.

Also ROTF, my roommate would confuse the protoforms for Megatron, and was wondering when he got the clone army.

 

You know, it's for reasons like these why I occasionally despise people. There's no need to be rude. I will ignore you from now on. You're such a Decepticon.

 

I think a lot of critics let their hate for Michael Bay get in the way of watching the movie and they have to analyze every single flaw in the movie. I swear every person I know whomhas actually seen the movies agreed that they are great movies. It seems like most of the time I agree with critics until they review a Transformers movie. They picked out every flaw in ROTF and DOTM and ignored all of the plot holes in the new Star Trek movie. Why? Because of a bias against Bay.

 

My theory is that there is a lot of media or critics, general audience as well, that dislike Michael Bay's vision as a director.

ROTF had a lot of sick jokes that really didn't do bayverse any good. DOTM was placed to recover from that. TF1 was amazing & DOTM was too.

 

Because people are assholes.

 

Um, not so many Transformer fans?

 

I enjoyed Beast Wars, Animated, War for Cybertron, and Transformers Prime so I definitely wouldn't call myself a G1 or nothing fan.

My problem with the designs were:

Too many parts. Only so much the human eye can follow so when you throw too many parts into a design it starts to become a jumble.

Some of the bots really needed more color in robot mode. Yea it might be an old cheat to tell who is who by what color they are, but when the action gets to be a tumble of robots or the dirt is flying and the camera is shaking a few cheats don't hurt to tell who is who.

Lack of symmetry to some of the designs. For whatever reason humans just really find symmetry to be visually appealing so when a character like Megatron was so asymmetric with his little gimp hand it just doesn't look very appealing.

Some designs seemed to be weird just to be weird. Sometimes I had to wonder if the robots were really all the same species given how random it seemed to if you'd have a human looking face, a bug face or what a robot would do for legs.

Not enough visual links to the past. When I go to see a film based on something like a comic book or cartoon I expect enough visual ques to know who is who without the film having to tell me. Lots of room to try different things or enhance a look for live action but I still expect to know oh it's Spiderman, oh it's Batman, oh it's the Joker.

If Starscream can not smirk then it just isn't Starscream no matter what they call him or what his alt mode is.

It's kind of bad that they really managed a great blend of past and updates for live action with Prime but the other robots just didn't seem to have that same effort put into finding the best mix of old ideas and new ideas.

 

Yes but they still let him direct three films and put him in the Transformers Hall of Fame  

 

I'm not 100% happy with the films because they choose sex jokes over Character development. In DOTM, if they had Megatrons story and Shockwaves lines instead of Sam going insane and Jerry Wang acting like he was rapping Sam, it would be my Favorite film. I'm not saying I didn't laugh at it but I would rather they put in serious development instead of Jokes. Until TF films become more serious, I will always like the Dark Knight more. And I'm a big TF fan.

 

Really, there's no need to get butthurt about this. Your comment about G1 designs were leaning a bit toward negative and biased. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the designs prior to the movies, but that's no reason to insinuate that G1 designs (or any other designs for that matter) were inferior to anything. What's a good design and what isn't is based on perception. I for one loved the complexity of the designs. I'm a sucker for alien designs.


But yeah, that's just my two cents. The movies definitely aren't Oscar-winners, but critics shouldn't be making such radical connections to the real world(i.e.,9/11, that article claiming the movie was pro-war and racist etc.) In my honest opinion, that's taking hate way too far. The Transformers movies are nothing but films about robots beating the snot out of each other;I doubt Michael Bay has a hidden motive for these movies.

 

I swear you and I are like on the same wave length 90% of the time. Except you're better at wording shit then I am.

 

there are trolls, and then there's intelligent people and then there's intelligent trolls, those are the ones incharge of the movie reviews and what not

 

Seemed pretty clear to me that Ironhide shot Demolishers wheel off.

 

I never he knew he was there. I'll have to watch that scene again, and see if I spot him.

 

Yeah me too?
iv'e never had trouble see which robot is who I was able to see each one of
them just fine,
but maybe thats just me 

 

Because they absolutely deserve it.

So people who don't agree with you are trolls, because what they say upsets you? Bravo.

 

Good acting? yes.

Fantastic action sequesnces? yes.

A plot? no.

Character development? no.

Fact is the movies get so much hate because it doesn't matter how good the acting and action is if there's no plot or characters behind it. Micheal Bay would be great as a special effects artist or stunt supervisor but as a director he doesn't have a clue what the hell he's doing.

I really hate big budget special effects movies like Transformers because that's all they are is special effects. The actors might as well not even be there because the plot doesn't make any sense and the characters are badly written. It doesn't matter how good the actor is if the dialog sucks and doesn't make any sense it's going to be crap. Frankly I don't think big name actors should even take roles like this because it's beneath them. Special Effects films are for actors no one has ever heard of to be able to show their talents. Even if the movie is a piece of crap you can still see good acting some times.

Now that's not the say all special effects are bad, just when the special effects are the stars of the movie. With Transformers, in the first movie, the characters with the most screen time don't even speak. There's no actor behind the special effects, it's just giant robots smashing stuff.

I've seen movies that were intentionally made just to show off new innovations in technology for special effects that had better plots and characters than Transformers. Movies like that I expected to be horrible but watched just to see the new special effects they were trying to show off. I can't remember the name but one such movie was a CGI cartoon that was said to have the most realistic animation at the time and they were right. There were times during the movie when you couldn't tell it was a cartoon. Even though the movie was made just to show that off it still had a plot to it and characters you could relate to. Something that Transformers is seriously lacking in all 3 movies.