(DEC-2013) Movie Era Characters - Thoughts and Favourites

[GoktimusPrime]

When it comes to "characters" from the movie universe... there aren't a whole lot who stand out since very few of them ever got characterisation in the stories which otherwise tended to focus more on the humans. The Autobots too often were portrayed as sidekicks for Sam and the US Army, and the Decepticons were villainous/monstrous set pieces offering little for audiences to empathise with. Heck, I felt a greater emotional connection with "Handles" from the latest episode of Doctor Who than with any Decepticon from the TF movieverse!

So drawing from this rather limited pool...

Who are your favourite characters in this era, and why?

> Bumblebee: yeah, I know he's one of the most over-merchandised characters in the films, but I'm just looking at this purely from the movie/story perspective and ignoring the toys/merchandise. Needless to say that Bumblebee was one of the few Transformers characters who actually got any form of character development, so it's not like he has a whole lot of competition.
> Optimus Prime: see above.
> Sentinel Prime: I liked how they took the idea of introducing Sentinel Prime, which had me thinking he'd be like an Emirate Xaaron or Alpha Trion style mentor character for Optimus Prime, but then turning that on its head by making him a traitor. Not too shabby.

Which characters were disappointing or over-used?

Shockwave
The Fallen
Ravage

Who would you have liked to have seen more of in the Movies for being under-used?

Dispensor.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Who are your favourite characters in this era, and why?
*Optimus Prime - thank you Peter Cullen!
*I liked Wheelie in DOTM but could have throttled him in ROTF
*Ironhide wasn't bad
*Sentinel Prime turned out to be an engaging character

Which characters were disappointing or over-used?
*Skids and Mudflap - for shame! Especially Skids, his second alt-mode suited his heritage but turning our fav theoretician into a racially-insulting stereotype was unforgivable.
*Que was pretty mediocre - glad they changed his name from Wheeljack at the last minute.
*Most characters were disappointing in that they were not particularly fleshed out

Who would you have liked to have seen more of in the Movies for being under-used?
*Pretty much EVERY DAMN TRANSFORMER IN THE FLICKS! Seriously, I know ya gotta have a lot of humans, but even minor human characters had more lines than your average big name TF.
*Would have liked to see more of Shockwave in particular, a bit more of Jolt would have been good as well.

[Bidoofdude]

Characters I liked:
-Optimus Prime. He was great, especially in the first one. Could listen to his speeches all day.
-Shockwave. Although he didn't get much screentime, he was a total badass and homages his older incarnation well enough.
-Megatron. A real direct representation of his actual character, especially in the 2007 film. Despite becoming The Fallen and Sentinel's b*t*h I think he was really cool. Merciless and brutal.
-Jetfire. A funny, yet appealing character with a nice background. Pretty cool to donate his body to Optimus in ROTF. Shame he didn't return or something in DOTM. He would've made a great asset.
-Sentinel Prime. The voice fit, the character was good and pretty original. A nice history as well.

Characters I didn't like:
-Starscream. Don't get me wrong, Starscream looked kinda cool as a jet, but I could never really see what his motives were. I could never tell if he was actually with or against Megatron or the Autobots, that being one of his signature traits across many incarnations.
-Bumblebee. BB was okay in the films. An energetic kiddy kind of bot, whom we, the audience, could follow along with from his point of view. What bugs (No, just no BD ) me was how he was too much of a focus point and took up too much screentime, compared to other characters, which IMO deserved to be fleshed out a lot more. I like him, but I don't want him shoved in my face for a good part of the film.

Disappointed and/or underused:
-Some more seekers and identifiable Decepticons would have been nice, though DOTM had some nice alt modes for the Decepticons.
-Shockwave definitely needed more screentime to show off more of his sheer amount of invincible badassery.
-Cybertronian Altmodes. Too unidentifiable as any kind of vehicle, even if they were alien.

[GoktimusPrime]

Characters I liked:
-Optimus Prime. He was great, especially in the first one. Could listen to his speeches all day.

I liked TF1 Optimus Prime as he was pretty much true to the G1 character insofar as being an altruist. He'd rather sacrifice himself to destroy the AllSpark, and even cried out, "No, Sam!" when he used it to destroy Megatron. Then in ROTF he did a complete about face and became more like Dai Atlas insofar as being utterly merciless towards opponents in battle. The way he executed Scavenger in cold blood was just as morally dubious as the way Dai Atlas killed a retreating Predaking. Although at least Dai Atlas was consistently merciless... ROTF Optimus Prime really was not the same character as TF1 Optimus Prime.

-Shockwave. Although he didn't get much screentime, he was a total badass and homages his older incarnation well enough.

I didn't think Shockwave was much of a homage to his G1 incarnation at all.
G1 cartoon Shockwave = the sycophant ("Cybertron will remain as you leave it")
G1 comic Shockwave = treacherous evil Vulcan ("I could tear your head from your body and reduce your remains to molten slag, Megatron")
DotM Shockwave = uh... beast master? ("Driller-bot is hungry")

-Jetfire. A funny, yet appealing character with a nice background. Pretty cool to donate his body to Optimus in ROTF. Shame he didn't return or something in DOTM. He would've made a great asset.

Jetfire is an example of how Bay doesn't know how to time his jokes properly. Having Jetfire fart a parachute in the middle of an important exposition is just distracting and detracts from the story. Could you imagine if this happened in other movies?
The Empire Strikes Back: "No, I..." <farts> "...am your father."
The Fellowship of the Ring: "In the common tongue it reads 'One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to bind them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness..." <faaarrrt> "...aaah... bind them. Phew."
Gone With The Wind (heh): "Frankly my dear," <fart> "...I don't give a damn."
Dead Poets Society: "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives..." <fart> "...extraordinary!"
Titanic: "I'm the..." <fart> "...king of the world!"
See, there's a reason why other directors don't do this -- because it would make all those epic and important story moments silly! The key to good humour is in the timing and its delivery.

An example of some good humour from RotF would be:
"Freshman!"
"Yeah?"
"Is that your car in our bushes?"
"No, uh, it's a friend of mine's, he's just... went to go get you a tighter shirt."
"There isn't a tighter shirt. We checked." <fist.bumps>
See, now that's well timed and well delivered!

-Bumblebee. BB was okay in the films. An energetic kiddy kind of bot, whom we, the audience, could follow along with from his point of view. What bugs (No, just no BD ) me was how he was too much of a focus point and took up too much screentime, compared to other characters, which IMO deserved to be fleshed out a lot more. I like him, but I don't want him shoved in my face for a good part of the film.

Yeah, but at least Bumblebee's appearances served the story. There's nothing wrong with a character absorbing screen time so long as the time is well spent to tell the story. It's not as bad as say G1 cartoon Wheelie and Daniel or Jar Jar Binks who just waste their screen time doing crap that's completely inconsequential and irrelevant to the actual tale. I do agree that Bumblebee's screen time could've been much better spent. Some actual characterisation might've been nice.

-Shockwave definitely needed more screentime to show off more of his sheer amount of invincible badassery.

I was looking forward to seeing more of his personality. The movieverse DotM prequel comics set up Shockwave as being much like his G1 comic namesake - cold, cruel, logical and verbose - as well as being one tough dude. In the movie he didn't show ANY of those qualities and left most of the fighting to his pet. And when Optimus Prime did finally come to fight him, he went down faster than the integrity of the plot-line.

-Cybertronian Altmodes. Too unidentifiable as any kind of vehicle, even if they were alien.

^Yup, totally agree. Although to the movie makers' credit, they did address this weakness in ROTF in DOTM; Megatron finally had an Earthen alt mode, and the Decepticon minions who came through the Space Bridge quickly started scanning vehicles to transform into.