What are the best Transformers fight scenes?

[King Atlas]

Can't believe nobody has mentioned this. There are lots of battle scenes and they included Omega Supreme.

The laser-rave fest "The Golden Lagoon". One of the few episodes of G1 I actually still love. They all look so sexy in gold, but are a bad excuse for lazy exclusives

[Lord_Zed]

"The Golden Lagoon" did make he usual ridiculous cartoon fight scenes plausible I must admit.

Going OT here but If I had to name my worst TF fight scene, I'd choose the one at the end of "Megatron's Master Plan", where the Autobots and Decepticons line up and shoot each other from a few meters away without hitting. That takes a special brand of ineptness.

In "The Golden Lagoon" they actually hit each other, only to have it deflected by electrum to wipe out some innocent flora or fauna.

[GoktimusPrime]

I didn't like Blaster vs Soundwave in The Headmasters. I know other people did, but killing each other with a single punch? Blah. But I especially hate fights where, in order to make a certain character look cool, the opponent just stands there defenceless and lets themselves get beaten! Two bad examples of this include:
+ Sixshot killing Ultra Magnus in The Headmasters
+ Blackarachnia kicking the crap out of Cheetor in "Double Jeopardy"
...utterly unrealistic. Not even an animal would just stay still while something else was attacking it... Ultra Magnus is meant to be an Autobot soldier and Cheetor had previously demonstrated enough ability to fight previously. It just seems that writers/animators get lazy, so rather than showing the opponents struggling/resisting, they just have them stand there while the attacker lays into them.

In this regard I think the fight scenes in the Bay movies are done quite well. I know some people have complained that the action scenes look blurry and messy, but that's how fights should look like. And it would be especially messy looking when looking at giant robots from a human's POV (which is how the first two movies were done -- DOTM used longer and wider distance shots (so the scenes can look fancier in 3D) and we sorta lost a bit of that "Giant effing robots" feel that the first two films had).

[lj7369]

I personally hated the end of dotm. Barricade, Shockwave,Starscream,Soundwave all gone... and then ripping megatrons head off. Cool nonetheless, it ended so abruptly much like the first live movie.

Stand it against the tftm opening 40 mins.... i know my preference.

[Paulbot]

Optimus turning the tide in TFTM will always be hard to beat.

The Hot Rod vs Galvatron fight from the end of TFTM too is a good example of Transformers transforming back and forth during battle, both using both modes for tactical advantage. There should be more like this, but it tends to be too rare sadly.

I quite liked the Autobots vs the Dreads in DOTM.

Blackarachnia vs Inferno in "Other Voices" was a lot of fun at the time.

And it's not quite a battle since Waspinator never stood a chance, but when Rhinox pulls out the Chaingun of Doom for the first time in "Chain of Command" it's still awesome.

[Sky Shadow]

I personally hated the end of dotm. Barricade, Shockwave,Starscream,Soundwave all gone... and then ripping megatrons head off. Cool nonetheless, it ended so abruptly much like the first live movie.

Stand it against the tftm opening 40 mins.... i know my preference.

100%. The Optimus versus Megatron at the end of Dark Of The Moon is a complete joke. Michael Bay does not know how to create a fight scene since it's never a battle of wits or clever banter or physically thoughtful in any way. It's just shoot, slash, throw your opponent, rip out spine, repeat. Just watching those fights makes me feel as if my own brain cells are being diminished rather than the character actually suffering the cranial damage.

[SuspectimusPrime]

Quite enjoyed these:
* Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Springer, Blaster + Dinobots vs Galvatron, Cyclonus, Sourge/Sweeps, Soundwave, Abominus + Predaking (Season 3, Call of the Primatives) - Really enjoyed the animation and the huge roll call, and also because the Autobots was fighting a losing battle. Not sure why they were fighting over a dead moon, but some senseless violence is always welcome
* Generic Autobots + Doublecross vs Snapdragon, Apeface, Combaticons + Terrorcons (The Headmasters, Death of Ultra Magnus) - Sixshot riling up the Decepticons was awesome, and not the best, but Doublecross' fight was funny

+ Sixshot killing Ultra Magnus in The Headmasters

I really enjoyed that fight for some reason. I think it's because I watched it as a kid and prior that fight, my only other TF-exposure was G1 Season 1 & 2 which did not have that sort of Japanese violence (or J-rock, which sounded pretty cool to me as a kid ).

But I especially hate fights where, in order to make a certain character look cool, the opponent just stands there defenceless and lets themselves get beaten!

I have one that strongly comes to mind:
* Cyclonus & Scourge vs Autobot Headmasters (TF The Headmasters) - Cannot recall the exact episode(s), but I really did not enjoy the way Cyclonus & Scourge were portrayed as bumbling comic relief and continuously got their arses handed back to them.

[GoktimusPrime]

I really enjoyed that fight for some reason. I think it's because I watched it as a kid and prior that fight, my only other TF-exposure was G1 Season 1 & 2 which did not have that sort of Japanese violence (or J-rock, which sounded pretty cool to me as a kid ).

You must have been overseas or had access to taped episodes from overseas if you saw it as a kid, cos The Headmasters was never aired in Australia (or available on video, laserdisc etc.). I was already a young adult when I saw The Headmasters... got the entire series on VHS recorded off laser disc which I swapped for the Beast Machines Dinobots (which were never released in Japan, so some dude in Tokyo wanted them). So yeah... I was already an adult and was pretty critical of that scene.

*sigh* I no longer have a working NTSC VCR... I really should get my Headmasters tapes converted onto DVD because the existing DVD version has some stuff cut out of it that the LD version has. I might be more motivated if The Headmasters wasn't such a cruddy series. (though I still prefer it over The Rebirth)

So did you watch it in Japanese or in that godawful English dub? (Billy!) I never saw the English dubs until I got the DVD... I watched a few seconds, then that was it. <shudder> Never thought that I'd see a dub that makes the dubbing in Macross Clash of the Bionoids look good. <extreme.shudder>

[SuspectimusPrime]

*sigh* I no longer have a working NTSC VCR... I really should get my Headmasters tapes converted onto DVD because the existing DVD version has some stuff cut out of it that the LD version has. I might be more motivated if The Headmasters wasn't such a cruddy series. (though I still prefer it over The Rebirth)

What is this stuff you speak off??

So did you watch it in Japanese or in that godawful English dub? (Billy!) I never saw the English dubs until I got the DVD... I watched a few seconds, then that was it. <shudder> Never thought that I'd see a dub that makes the dubbing in Macross Clash of the Bionoids look good. <extreme.shudder>

My dad grabbed a few taped episodes (in no particular order) dubbed in Cantonese from HK when I was elementary school, and then much later on I found fan-subbed torrents of the Japanaese originals. I'm quite sure those same files has the English dubs as well but I never bothered with them, having watched a few episodes of Masterforce with the fan-dubs In hindsight, I found the HK-subs quite good, both Magnus and Sixshot's voice actors were quite convincing. But yes, that period was very confusing as I couldn't figure out if Transformers originated from the Americans, Honkies, or Japanese.

[GoktimusPrime]

It's not hard for any dubbing of anything to be better than the English dubs of the Japanese G1 series. The dubbing on them is so bad that it just fails in translating the story, also, their English is _so_bad_!! A lot of words aren't even pronounced correctly it's damn hard to understand what they're trying to say. I remember watching the Masterforce dubs with Jhiaxus, who himself doesn't speak Japanese, then later we watched The Headmasters in raw Japanese -- he preferred watching The Headmasters! The voice acting was superior (I don't know if you can even use the word "acting" w/ the English dubs) and either way he wouldn't understand what the hell people were saying anyway! (i.e. choice between listening to terrible incomprehensible English, or comprehensible Japanese even if you can't understand it) I guess that when he was watching The Headmasters, he could just focus on the animation and guess the story through visuals and the acting (i.e. emotions, tone of voice etc.), whereas watching Masterforce dubbed - the bad English gets distracting... as an English speaker you can't really ignore it... we couldn't stop rolling on the floor laughing our butts off at it, so much so that we couldn't pay any attention to the story! It wasn't until I finally got Masterforce on DVD years later and watched it in Japanese that I started understanding what the hell was going on!