Yuku free message boards

My version of a Transformers movie would go something like this. Now, I can't guarantee it would be any better or worse than Bay's version, but if nothing else the characters would look and behave much like their G1 counterparts.

Oh, and I have absolutely no problem with including human characters, for the following reasons:

- These "Robots in Disguise" would kind of need someone to hide from. Otherwise, they'd just be vehicles with no drivers; if not for ease of commuting and the occasional Headmaster partner, there would be no need for vehicle modes in the first place.
- Humans provide a sense of scale to the war. It seems like the most common size for a Transformer is the mid-sized car-mode type (Jazz, Prowl, Stunticons, etc.), and the TFs who are the most comparable in size to an average human are cassetticons like Frenzy and Rumble. Without Frenzy and Rumble in a scene, it's hard to have a scale to relate to.
- The Transformers are aliens with a culture that was ancient during Earth's Ice Age. Yet whenever they're left to their own devices on Cybertron and interact with one another, their behavior and culture are indistinguishable from a human's -- to the point where they're sometimes depicted as orally drinking Energon from glass containers the way humans would. Seems like the only time the Transformers are ever truly represented as having an alien midset is when there's a human around to provide a culture clash. They're all, "oh, those wacky human customs," and then they exhibit those same customs when there are no humans around. I call shennanigans.
- One thing the Bay movie did well was show the human response to what the TFs were doing. After all, if the Transformers are running around Earth and adopting the alt modes of normal vehicles, shouldn't people ... y'know, notice? And while the act of transforming is so second-nature to the TFs that they think nothing of what's involved, that ability is the most awe-inspiring part of the franchise; it's why the robots are there. To a human, the sight of a vehicle transforming into a robot right in front of him can be amazing, terrifying, brain-bending, or all of that at once. For instance, I thought Sam's reaction to his encounter with Barricade was well-handled, because he reacted much the same way I might have.

I'm not knocking the idea of Transformers interacting with each other without humans, or even sprawling Cybertron/space opera stories where every imaginable Autobot or Decepticon shows up. Heck, I thought the Stormbringer miniseries was amazing. But I have no problems seeing humans show up in TF fiction, and in fact I think they're a necessary part of the mythos.