The Random Transformers Thoughts Thread

[GoktimusPrime]

Interesting way to skew statistics

If you look at the list you will notice that of the 13 Decepticons, 5 of them use almost the exact same mold. This would put unique figures down to 9. If you categorise cassettes as 1 unique figure (I know they are different but the engineering and size for them pales in comparison to the large bots) then have 5 unique figures. That is not much when you look at the remaining decepticons which (bar Dirge) would likely all be unique figures.

Then look at the Autobots. Bluestreak, Prowl and Smokescreen are one unique mold. Ironhide and Ratchet are one. Red Alert and Sideswipe another one. Every other autobot is unique so that is 9 unique figures.

Therefore 5 unique molds to Decepticons and 9 unique molds to Autobots. Almost double the amount in favour of Autobots. That doesn't even get into the proportion of mold uses to total MPs which would really blow things out with the seekers.

All I am saying is some unique mold Decepticon love would not go astray.

Okay, let's look at this purely from the number of unique moulds then.

Autobots = 9*/33 or 27% have been done as MPs
Decepticons = 7**/18 or 39% have been done as MPs
So when we only look at the unique moulds, the Decepticons still proportionately fare better than the Autobots.

If we don't adjust figures proportionately then this would actually skew facts -- it'd be like saying that Japan has more unemployed people (4.6M) than Australia without adjusting for population (1.3M). But of course, Japan has a population of 127M people whereas Australia has 23M, so rather than looking at unemployment numbers we look at unemployment rates which are proportionate to the population. Japan's unemployment rate is 3.2% whereas Australia's is nearly double that at 5.7% of our population.

Similarly yes, there are 9 unique Autobot moulds vs 7 unique Decepticon moulds. But when we make adjustments relative to the number of unique Decepticon moulds available from the early G1 run, then proportionately speaking things actually look better for the Decepticons. Even if TakaraTOMY were to release the rest of the early G1 figures as MPs, the Autobots would still outnumber the Decepticons. It's simply because there is simply a larger pool of Autobots to draw from to make MP products out of than Decepticons. TakaraTOMY can't exactly travel back in time and convince Hasbro to create more Decepticons back in 1984-85.

------------------------------------
*Autobot unique moulds
Optimus Prime
Bluestreak/Prowl/Smokescreen
Jazz
Hound
Ironhide/Ratchet
Mirage
Sideswipe
Sunstreaker
Trailbreaker/Hoist
Wheeljack
Brawn
Bumblebee
Cliffjumper
Gears
Huffer
Windcharger
Jetfire
Omega Supreme
Blaster
Grapple/Inferno
Skids
Tracks
Perceptor
Beachcomber
Cosmos
Powerglide
Seaspray
Warpath
Grimlock
Slag
Sludge
Snarl
Swoop

**Decepticon unique moulds
Megatron
Soundwave
Buzzsaw/Laserbeak
Frenzy/Rumble
Ravage
Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker/Dirge/Ramjet/Thrust
Shockwave
Astrotrain
Blitzwing
Bombshell
Kickback
Shrapnel
Bonecrusher
Long Haul
Hook
Mixmaster
Scavenger
Scrapper

[GoktimusPrime]

My Beast Wars standee which was used to promote the debut of Beast Wars on VHS. It's a bit worse for wear, but considering that it's made from really fragile foam, I'm happy that it's still relatively in one piece.

[TAAUBlaster]

That's really cool Gok! You just don't see a lot of that type of promo material these days.

[GoktimusPrime]

From here

I don't collect Animated - it's the one iteration of Optimus I really don't like either in personality or aesthetic so I always overlook these guys.

Yeah, Animated - much like the live action movie toys - significantly deviates from the orthodox Japanese mecha style of Transformers (not surprising considering that G1 is directly descended from Japanese robot toys), which many fans either love or hate. Animated is basically the Yin to Bayformer's Yang, because the line was conceived around the same time that the first live action movie was being developed. Initially it did look more mecha-like and was called Transformers Heroes.

The rationale goes that when the first Bayformer movie was being created, Hasbro saw (and approved) of the more alien and photorealistically highly detailed looking movie designs. At this time nobody knew if the first live action film would succeed or tank, and just in case it was the latter, Hasbro decided to completely reformat TF Heroes with something that was the antithesis of Bayformers (and thus stylistically distancing itself from the film franchise). And so the decision was made to deliberately make Animated with stylistically simplistic and unrealistically cartoonish designs.

Story-wise Animated is pretty plain. There is practically no character development except for Prowl. Sentinel Prime has character development in one scene of one episode, but then later completely reverts back to his former self (so really, he hasn't grown at all). It's about the same level of story-telling quality as Transformers Prime (again, bugger all character-drive). The G1 cartoon doesn't have much character drive either (that's why many G1 fans preferred the Marvel Comics which were more character driven). The only real character driven Transformers story I've ever seen on TV was Beast Wars.

[UltraMarginal]

Why do all the characters need to develop? How many people do you know who are the same person they were 10 years ago? I would expect, a lot. they may have changed physically but a lot of people don't learn from their mistakes or experiences.
I don't see why there is always a complaint about consistency in characters across a series.

[Jaxius._]

Why do all the characters need to develop? How many people do you know who are the same person they were 10 years ago? I would expect, a lot. they may have changed physically but a lot of people don't learn from their mistakes or experiences.
I don't see why there is always a complaint about consistency in characters across a series.

Perhaps people want something more emotional than a wall?

[UltraMarginal]

Perhaps people want something more emotional than a wall?

yea, that's a fair point but there can be emotion in a story without everyone developing to be a born leader or stop being a dick of a character over the course of a series. it's the oddballs that stay oddballs that make stories interesting.

[SuspectimusPrime]

yea, that's a fair point but there can be emotion in a story without everyone developing to be a born leader or stop being a dick of a character over the course of a series. it's the oddballs that stay oddballs that make stories interesting.

It's for these reasons why my fav Autobot from the G1 comics was Blaster and one of my fav Decepticons from the same comics was Ratbat, respectively

[GoktimusPrime]

Why do all the characters need to develop? How many people do you know who are the same person they were 10 years ago? I would expect, a lot. they may have changed physically but a lot of people don't learn from their mistakes or experiences.
I don't see why there is always a complaint about consistency in characters across a series.

Not all characters need to develop, but there should be a central character or cast of characters that develop. This character or characters is/are called the protagonist, and it is through the protagonist's journey that the audience connects to the story via an emotional investment. Even the IDW comics focus on a core set of characters who act as the protagonists, they don't develop everyone. Characters like Chief Justice Tyrest, Star Sabre, Dai Atlas etc. have no real development, but they either act as antagonists or as a secondary supporting character. Through the character's journey we learn about who they are, not what they are.

"Thorough characterisation makes characters well-rounded and complex. This allows for a sense of realism.....In contrast, an underdeveloped character is considered flat or stereotypical."
(Ref: English 250 Fiction Unit: Characterisation 1 - Character Development)

If we look at the death of Starscream in TFTM, it's not much of an emotional tragedy. At most it may be disturbing because of the graphic violent nature of his death via being reduced to cinders, but there isn't an emotional tragedy because G1 cartoon Starscream was little more than a caricature (and a pretty incompetent one at that). As an underdeveloped character he doesn't feel real nor does his death. Compare this with the deaths of more fleshed out characters like Scorponok (G1 Marvel), Dinobot (BW), Rewind (IDW) etc. and it's a whole different ball game because we've been made to care about these characters. They feel like people to us. When I spoke with Chris Ryall at SupaNova he told me that this was one of their explicit goals with writing Transformers at IDW. Season 3 Blitzwing is actually one of the few characters who actually underwent an interesting personal character journey (actually becoming more like Thundercracker, whose character was never true to his original bio in the G1 'toon).

There are certainly challenges when it comes to character development, and especially in a toy franchise like Transformers when Hasbro is pushing writers to introduce new toys into the story. In effect, you're working with an ensemble cast. Time is another constraint. Movies usually cannot cope with character development in an ensemble cast due to the limited amount of time afforded to it. This is why so much of the Lord of the Rings was omitted in the film adaptation, and in other areas things were just creatively changed to flesh out other characters (e.g. Arwen is far more fleshed out in the films as she was nothing more than a set piece in the books). This is why Christopher Nolan refused to "seed" Justice League elements into his Batman films. He had zero interest in laying out the groundwork for any future JL or crossover films because he only wanted this stories to focus on the character drive of the Batman character. And it worked especially well in "The Dark Knight." Attempting to shoe-horn in references to Superman or other DC characters would have, according to Nolan, distracted the film from its core purpose of focusing on the story of Batman. Marvel has arguably struck a better balance by having 'stand alone' character movies like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor etc. that allow the story to focus on the central character... people often wonder why the Avengers never show up in these films (oh look, Dark Elves are attacking London... where are the Avengers?), but from a story-telling POV it's so that the plot doesn't get bogged down with too many protagonists. It allows the story to just focus on the central character. Having too many central characters becomes a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth." Even with most of the Avengers showing up in the third Captain America movie, the story still attempted to focus on a few core characters - Captain America, Iron Man and Bucky. Removing Thor and Hulk helped to make the ensemble cast smaller and less distracting, although some would argue that Civil War isn't as strong as The First Avenger or Winter Soldier in terms of character-drive. Characters like Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye and even Spider-Man were really there as supporting characters -- none of these characters underwent any emotional developmental journey. There was even a "mini journey" in the story with Black Panther, but I'm sure that he'll be more properly fleshed out in his upcoming stand-alone film. Heck, look at Deadpool... he was basically a caricature in the Wolverine movie and fans hated it. The new Deadpool film treats him as a character where he goes through a personal journey (and literally drags the audience along with him!), and consequently has been better received by fans.

If you look at stories like "To Kill A Mockingbird," the protagonist is not Atticus Finch - the lawyer trying to defend an innocent black man (Tom) in a time of intense racism in America - but rather his daughter Scout. It is through the eyes of this naive child as she witnesses the world around her and undergoes the journey of discovering the meaning of social justice that really drives this story. She becomes the eyes for the audience to emotionally connect to the story, especially for many young readers today who may have never personally witnessed or experienced racism (and certainly not institutionalised and deep-seeded racism that was seen in 1930s America). The audience experiences emotional connections in scenes such as when Scout and her brother are bullied by other children who call their father a "nigger lover", and the children's faith in the judicial system being shaken to the core when Tom is found guilty of a crime he didn't commit and later shot dead. The atrocity of witnessing a gross miscarriage of justice simply because of the colour of a man's skin has a deep emotional impact on Scout and Jem, and thus the audience experiences the horror of the situation through them.
RE: Catharsis

And this is the thing; without central character development there is no mechanism for catharsis. This is also why the Original Star Wars Trilogy is widely regarded as being superior to the Prequel Trilogy, because the Original Trilogy was more character-driven than the Prequels. Irvin Kershner, the director of The Empire Strikes Back, was initially hesitant in directing a Star Wars film. Lucas really had to twist his arm to do it, and even then, Kershner said that he would only do it under the condition that he be allowed to focus the story on the characters and not other things like scifi, space ships etc. And Empire is arguably the most emotionally driven Star Wars film in the entire Saga, and an enduring favourite among fans. IMO in a good action story, it is the story that should drive the action, not the action that drives the story. TESB is a good example of a film that has story-driven action. As awesome as the Luke vs Vader fight is, the real climax of that scene is the one that strikes at the heart of the character, "No, I am your father." This line was so critical that during filming, David Prowse actually said a different line but was dubbed over later by James Earl Jones giving the iconic and correct line (Mark Hamill knew what the real line was so he was able to react appropriately to it, but was sworn to secrecy even from other members of the cast).


A serial is actually better able to develop a character-driven story than a cinematic film since it has more overall screen time than a movie. IIRC it was actually Simon Furman's suggestion to have the live action movie's plot focus on an Autobot Mini Car, which is why Bumblebee became a more central character. The idea was to take what is a small and underwhelming character and put him on a journey towards greatness. Much like Luke Skywalker moving from farm boy to Jedi Knight. But of course, the execution of this concept turned out to be entirely different. Across four films Bumblebee has journeyed from being an immature brat to becoming... an immature brat. <slow.clap> He keeps changing his appearance in each film, but the character has remained stagnant. Forrest Gump goes through more change than Bumblebee!

Real People
Alright, perhaps some people IRL don't change. Do you think that their lives would necessarily make for interesting stories though? Most of the more successful biographies have been based on people who underwent change, or focuses on moments of their lives when they underwent change. And in some cases - especially in movies - they will outright lie to make the protagonist look like they went through more interesting changes than they actually did in real life! An example of this is Fearless starring Jet Li as the Chinese martial artist Huo Yuanjia. In the film, Huo is portrayed as being a morally deprived butthole whose selfish acts lead him into acts vengeance culminating in the death of his family and then exile. He then goes on a journey of personal redemption and returns to become the famous folk hero that history remembers him for. This never happened in real life. Historical accounts show that he was always a fairly upstanding man who never did any of those horrible things that the film portrays (Huo's family have openly criticised the movie for painting in such a negative light). Also, the movie shows Huo finally facing off against three top fighters from different countries in three different bouts. In real life he fought one bout against ten Japanese martial artists simultaneously... and won. The real fight was actually more interesting than the movie version, but by narrowing down to just one main antagonist at the end, it allowed the movie to tell a more emotionally intensive story for the audience.

So what's wrong with having stories that aren't character driven?
There's nothing necessarily wrong or "bad" about having non-character driven stories per se, but here is where we find the difference between a short story and a story. A short story is one where none of the characters change. The word "short" doesn't actually refer to the length of the story, but the length of a character's development (or lack thereof). So the strength of a good short story doesn't come from its character, but rather its dramatic structure: exposition, complication, crisis, climax, then resolution. Short stories need to be dramatically driven rather than character driven. An example of a good short story is "The Bicentennial Man" by Isaac Asimov, which later was used as the basis for his full story "The Positronic Man" (which was adapted into the Robin Williams film, "Bicentennial Man"). So there's nothing wrong with a short story, but it needs to still be driven by drama rather than character. And action alone isn't necessarily drama. It is the drama that drives the narrative. Again, action is merely a story-telling tool.

Oddball characters
Nothing wrong with having oddball characters either. Even Beast Wars had lovable weirdos like Waspinator and Inferno. Even IDW has oddballs like Whirl and Swerve. But again, these aren't protagonists which drive the story or drama. These are 'aside' characters which help to punctuate the intensity of the story by providing comic relief, and that's fine. But these 'aside' characters shouldn't exist in place of a main character. This is why Jar Jar Binks is so widely disliked by Star Wars fans, and similarly Daniel and Wheelie by G1 cartoon fans. There shouldn't be scenes (or entire stories) where the audience looks at these characters and wonder, "What are you even doing here?!?" Like Swerve making a quick aside about how he may have soiled himself inside Ultra Magnus' shoulder - okay, that's funny, but it's a quick joke. It's not like say seeing Bumblebee chucking childish (and often violent) temper tantrums which actually becomes the narrative.

[Paulbot]

Looking at TRU today and it's remarkable how many exclusive and highend TF items are in the stores these days. Sure the pricing is a bit off-putting for us online savy folk, but ten years ago we wouldn't have ever expected to even have so many chances to buy in store.