Franchise Original Sin / Transformers

• The biggest complaint about the majority of modern Beast Wars material is the attempts to connect it to The Transformers, with the preferred option of treating the G1 era with a mythic, mysterious reverence being ignored. Despite this, attempts to make more direct connections went all the way back to the original cartoon's most well-liked episodes, including "The Agenda" — generally considered one of the best episodes of its entire run, where Ravage showed up alive and well and the entire plot is about definitively confirming that the conflict of Beast Wars is an extension of the original cartoon's conflict. And even then, the idea of the original events being mythologized was a bit odd to begin with, as the given time was only 300 years later for a race known to live for millions. However, the surprise factor, the added significance to the show's events, a pivotal scene of the characters walking amazed among the giant, ancient, sleeping bodies of their ancestors, and Ravage as a secret agent with a Russian accent were cool enough to forgive the oddities. However, Ravage also poked a hole in the whole idea that the G1 cast was gone and couldn't exist in the Beast Era. This opened the floodgates for every other comic writer to reveal that, among other characters, Grimlock, Razorclaw, Rodimus, Cyclonus, Skywarp, Divebomb, Arcee, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Ironhide, Silverbolt, and Prowl (twice) all made it over, and pretty much every other Beast Era character to share a name with a G1 character somehow was that character even if it seemed like otherwise. From that point onward, the last generation proceeded to take over any given Beast Era story, pulling focus away from the well-liked Beast Wars cast (except for Fun Publications and IDW's 2021 stories which keep the focus on the show characters with the G1 cast turning up for brief appearances at best) and turning the original scene from gazing at their millennia-old ancestors to looking at people who were still alive and well and who most of the cast already knew. From that point on, it was only a very small step to doing a story where the Beast Wars cast fought in the mythical Great War... which was exactly what eventually happened.
• Many of the criticisms that fans raise about CGI Transformers cartoons (small casts, few environments) were present in Beast Wars. Creating new character models was expensive, so the cast was kept small, and as a result the writers focused more on character development and plotting to great acclaim. Over the years, many shows emulated this model to varying degrees of success. The difference now is that the formula is familiar and the technology is no longer groundbreaking or revolutionary as it was in the '90s. It became especially noticeable during Transformers: Robots in Disguise which relied on Monster of the Week plots for much of its run and recycled character models to populate its cast. Also, Beast Wars did a good job of explaining it with the simple answer that the cast was comprised of two small spaceship crews who were stranded on a prehistoric Earth, meaning the lack of other characters or environments was well-justified... not so much in shows that take place on modern Earth and involve groups of characters that really should number more than a Five-Man Band or two. Compare the lush cityscape and massive Continuity Porn crowd shots of the 2D Transformers: Animated with the recycled models and locations of Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015).
• Fans of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye tend to see the comic's later arcs, especially Lost Light onwards, as a step down from the first few years, but a lot of the problems to crop up were there from the beginning. Snarky and self-referential dialogue, absurd plots, messy treatment of relationships, slow-burning arcs, and a habit of focusing too strongly on a core cast that displaced a lot of potentially interesting characters were all present—but James Roberts had yet to obtain Protection from Editors, and also had enough time to make sure his plots paid off. In later arcs, the dialogue became a World of Snark, the "Megatron's redemption" arc became a Plot Tumor, the plots moved from "quirky soft-sci-fi" to "flatly ridiculous", and most of the non-core cast was either written out or killed off. It didn't help that the oncoming end of the IDW continuity meant that Roberts had far less time than he seemed to be expecting to resolve dozens of hanging plot threads, resulting in the final arc having to take a lawnmower to the Kudzu Plot.
• IDW had a habit of completely rewriting characters to In Name Only levels arguably as early as Thunderwing in Stormbringer, their second miniseries (from a Noble Demon leader to an insane Generic Doomsday Villain), and continuing with things like Galvatron as a separate character from Megatron, Fortress Maximus as violent and aggressive, and Jhiaxus and Scorponok as Mad Scientists. Japanese characters were particularly susceptible, with Dai Atlas and Overlord being majorly reworked from their prior appearances. This also had precedent in other fiction due to various trademarking issues, with Red Alert literally being a renamed Ratchet and various Beast Wars characters sharing names with older figures they had little in common with. But most of the time, these rewrites were welcomed as efforts at Cast Speciation (most of the above characters were faction leaders who couldn't easily coexist with Optimus and Megatron), and oftentimes the rewritten personalities proved popular in their own right. Overlord in particular went from a generic Big Bad to a gleefully violent and disturbingly powerful Blood Knight, earning him a following that surpassed his Japanese counterpart. On the other hand, the rewrite of Star Saber in the pages of More than Meets the Eye as a psychotic Knight Templar religious extremist with basically no redeeming qualities, where his prior incarnation had been a Super Robot Ideal Hero, proved far less popular. Unlike many other Japanese characters, Star Saber had a decent-sized cult following that wasn't happy to see him rendered unrecognizable, and unlike prior rewritten characters, he didn't even maintain the allegiance of his original version. It didn't help that his personality wasn't interesting enough to win over new fans of him, leaving fans of MTMTE bored and fans of Victory disgusted.
• In fact, Star Saber wasn't even the first example of a previously heroic character reimagined as a straight up villain, with Sentinel Prime being rewritten as an enforcer of the corrupt pre-war Cybertron. However, Sentinel was a relatively minor character apart from being Optimus's predecessor, with his major appearance going on to influence his counterparts in Transformers: Animated and Transformers Dark Ofthe Moon. Star Saber, however, was the Big Good of Transformers Victory, making it more apparent he was being forced into a role he wasn't made for.
• Later figures in the Masterpiece line became rather controversial for their "cartoon-accuracy at all costs" mantra, even to the point of having to design extremely complex transformations to get the characters just right or short-selling things from the toys or continuities besides the cartoon. But really, the novelty of having a character who actually looked like they did in the cartoon was a major selling point in the line's early days (most characters hadn't had a toy of their original designs since the 1980s), and even the very first Masterpiece figure MP-1 Convoy (Optimus Prime) cheated and complicated its transformation in the name of that accuracy (for instance, instead of using the truck's actual grille, it folds out a fake one). However, it was still clearly designed as a toy foremost, and the "cheating" mostly served to make him look more streamlined. Compare this to MP-44, the third Optimus mold, where literally every truck part on the robot mode is fake in the name of matching the cartoon's proportions. It also doesn't help that at this point, most fans are spoiled for choice for figures that actually generally look like their favorite characters, forcing Masterpiece to double down on extreme cartoon-accuracy with mixed results.
• Bumblebee, especially in recent years, has been accused of being a Creator's Pet, to the point that virtually every Transformers medium has included him as the main character, often to levels accusing him of being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. These accusations began after his popularity skyrocketed following the success of Transformers (2007). The thing is, barring a period where he simply could not be used due to trademark reasons (and even then, he maintained a steady presence in the comics and had a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in Hot Shot), Bumblebee has always been heavily involved in the franchise since the very beginning, where he had the second-most appearances in the original cartoon behind Optimus Prime, serving as the Kid-Appeal Character the same way that nearly every version since has done—including being the best friend of the main human protagonist (Spike for G1, Sari for Animated, Raf for Prime, etc.), playing a supporting role in Prime's inner circle, and going toe-to-toe with a lot of Decepticons much larger than him. However, a lot of those previous iterations didn't have the tendency to shine at the expense of the rest of the cast, either having spotlight adventures of his own or acting in a supporting capacity that allowed his fellow Autobots to have their own adventures, not to mention that he was treated more or less as an equal rather than a hindrance. It also doesn't hurt that the G1 iteration, who was The Baby of the Bunch with a bit of a Deadpan Snarker in him, was quite popular. The later Bay films, as well as a good chunk of IDW's first universe and several cartoons, tended to place Bee in a position where the focus was squarely on him; Revenge of the Fallen had him guarding Sam more so than the film dealt with the fallout of Optimus Prime's temporary demise, he was given a significant amount of Character Shilling and made Autobot leader in the IDW series when it was demonstrated he wasn't the most qualified for the position, and Transformers: Robots in Disguise focused heavily on his struggles to grow into a leader of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits at the expense of the constant bickering between Sideswipe and Strongarm and Grimlock's desire to be less klutzy. It hasn't helped that most versions of Bee since the movie tend to be based on the Bayverse incarnation (being rendered The Voiceless thanks to Megatron and using his radio to "talk", having a muscle-car alternate mode, becoming a leader when Prime is absent), but even that iteration of the character at least had the distinction of being the first Bee in 20 years thanks to various trademark issues, and even the concurrently released Animated version put a different spin on the character, being a Small Name, Big Ego Motor Mouth who learns to temper his impulses and put aside his ego. But as time went on and Bee was thrust further into the spotlight, almost always in a Bayverse inspired form, the issues became more obvious.
  • Hasbro did seem to catch onto this habit, as Bumblebee ended up being the first casualty in Transformers (2023), getting killed before he even got to do anything.
• Killing off Optimus Prime has ended up becoming, as TFWiki.net satirized, an overused cliche more prone to groans more often than not, especially when compared to the hysterical reactions when it first happened in The Transformers: The Movie. As to how Optimus's death in The Transformers: The Movie managed to hold up whereas so many others didn't; first of all, the manner of death was dignified - sacrificing his life by dying in mortal combat against his Arch-Enemy Megatron, as opposed to the far more contrived and/or unoriginal circumstances surrounding future deaths (most infamously, in the Marvel comic series, essentially killing himself over harming non-sapient video game NPCs). And second, at the time it was not yet known whether or not it would actually stick, with him only being revived at the tail end of Season 3 of the show, as opposed to future Transformers media such as Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and Transformers: Animated in which he would be resurrected shortly, or even immediately afterwards, leading to accusations of cheapening his death for mere shock value.
• Transformers Film Series: The series may have pulled the franchise out of an early grave, but its reputation took a nosedive after the first movie. In truth, the flaws that later killed the series proved to be more than meets the eye, hiding in plain sight in the first film.
  • The main character, Sam Witwicky, was never a particularly well-liked character, but his use in the first film is generally seen as the only one where he was tolerable. While he had a lot of This Loser Is You traits, this was counterbalanced by his vague attempt at a character arc and a few sincere moments that implied those traits were a passing thing. Later films not only had him keep those traits, but seemingly had him get worse, and gave him nowhere near as much of a clear arc in favor of him being a Pinball Protagonist, putting his increasingly unlikable personality in the spotlight. Eventually, the later films got the hint, and he wound up disappearing after the third film, replaced as protagonist from the fourth film onward by Cade Yeager, and implied in a photograph cameo in the fifth film to have been Killed Offscreen.
  • Optimus Prime in the first film was involved in a few surprisingly brutal action scenes, including driving a sword through Bonecrusher's head, but these moments were fairly brief and mostly counterbalanced by his many thoughtful speeches that gave the impression that he wasn't just a killer. By the second film, though, said speeches are a lot rarer and seemingly every fight Prime gets in has at least one person having their head ripped apart while delivering lines that make it clear that he is reveling in it. The series didn't exactly improve in that respect from there, to the point that this version of Prime has become the biggest Memetic Psychopath in the franchise. Tellingly, when Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was released in the Knightverse continuity, Prime was given an arc that gave him a more justified and cynical distrust of humanity as a result of being stranded on Earth for so long before he realizes his selfish attitude and changes into the hero the world knows him as.
    Optimus Prime: Give me your face!
  • The Transformers film series has gained a reputation as Lowest Common Denominator blockbuster series that was largely an action driven flick for teenage boys, but all of those problems could be traced back to the original film. Specifically, the first film had all the aspects that the later installments were heavily criticized for—humans overshadowing the robots, numerous amounts of product placement, heavily sexualized female characters, plenty of racial stereotypes, the robots straying so far from their G-1 designs that they looked impossible to discern onscreen, the United States military being played as an unstoppable force capable of taking out Decepticons without Autobot assistance, and big-budget action sequences filled to the brim with slow motion and explosions. At the time, fans were far more forgiving back then because the spectacle of seeing the Transformers brought on screen for the first time since Transformers: The Movie made those complaints a bit easier to ignore, along with hinting that those flaws would be shed in later installments through Sam Witwicky's Character Development. However, as the sequels progressed, the film's creators doubled down on those very flaws and undid much of the development for cheap laughs from its characters—angering longtime fans who felt that Bay and the writers were treating the robots as a joke (Skids and Mudflap come to mind) and hurting the brand's reputation despite having saved it from falling into obscurity after the controversies of Beast Machines and The Unicron Trilogy.
  • Megatron was seen as undergoing Villain Decay in his film appearances, which was rather shocking for the series main bad guy, but Megsy wasn't always the most competent villain around, or even the top dog in the Decepticons. Nostalgia may play a part in it, but Megatron was never the most effective bad guy in The Transformers, and was known as a General Failure whose own incompetence (or that of a certain treacherous lackey he never bothered to kill for his betrayals) frequently cost him victory, and even becoming Galvatron subjected him to mockery for being absolutely insane. Not that his Marvel comic counterpart was much better, spending more time fighting other Decepticons for leadership than actually fighting Autobots. However, he was still Megatron: Leader of the Decepticons, and the character never lost his threat factor or menace, and always proved himself to be the superior commander towards even the most treacherous of his minions who tried to stage a coup against him. In this series, fans couldn't overlook the fact he was being subservient to both The Fallen and Sentinel Prime, neither of whom were Eldritch Abominations with the powers of chaos itself like Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie, nor the fact that Starscream was surprisingly not The Starscream in this series outside of supplemental stories, making Megaton look much more pathetic by comparison. It was also more noticeable because he decayed even within the films; in the first, he was The Dreaded who defeated Optimus Prime in their 1-1 fight, but the next film he needed two more Decepticons backing him up to do so again, and was easily defeated in the third with barely any explanation. Fortunately, his return as Galvatron undid that decay, making him a menace once more.
  • The film's use of non G-1 designs were subject to heavy criticism by fans in later installments for the robots not looking like their original counterparts enough to be recognizable. Again, the first film and even other series later on did just that, but it still kept many familiar elements (such as Prime's helmet, window pecks, and grill abs) and color schemes (again on Prime and Bumblebee) from their original designs to make them stick out, not to mention that for what changes the characters did undergo, they still had a robotic look mixed in with the parts of the vehicles they turned into. As the series went forward and the robots' designs changed, they started to take on a more organic look, not only making it impossible to tell what they turned into, but making it much harder to tell who was who in the middle of the series' big-budget action sequences. Tellingly, when Bumblebee came out, it went out of its way to restore those old designs while updating them to fit with the film's aesthetic, proving it could be done in a modern setting.
  • The later films have been criticized for their needlessly sexualized portrayal of women, most notably through Bay's use of the Male Gaze. However, although the female sexualization started with the first film's female lead Mikaela, most audiences were more forgiving since she is an actual character. As noted by Lindsay Ellis, Mikaela was written sympathetically with actual depth as a Wrench Wench trying to atone for her criminal history, while also contributing to the plot and actually saving Sam or Autobots more times than she needed to be saved. Subsequent Love Interest female characters like Carly in Dark of the Moon and Tessa from Age of Extinction were still used frequently as Eye Candy and Damsels in Distress while having none of Mikaela's charisma or Hidden Depths. Not to mention, the titular race, which is used to explore themes of humanity, had a grand total of four female coded members (three of whom are essentially the same character and Demoted to Extra from the source material) despite each film introducing more cybertronians, making the films increasingly seem like a boys-only affair that saw women as even stranger than giant alien robots. Thus, these criticisms overshadowed discussion of the female representation, even though there were prominent female characters in later films who weren't sexualized or incompetent.
• Simon Furman has always had problems accepting the idea of Transformers being a gendered species, having always headcanoned them as an asexual genderless species who only use gendered pronouns for dealing with other races. This means he will write them as such unless mandated otherwise. While he's usually good about not letting it affect his stories, it means he stumbles when it's time to female Cybertronians to show up and he feels the need to justify it, such as in The Transformers (Marvel), where he attempted to explain it in a one-shot story for the UK printing called "Prime's Rib!" where Optimus had Arcee built to appease angry feminists. That one got a pass because of how tongue-in-cheek the whole thing was and the franchise was still relatively young at the time. But as the franchise grew more popular and began more extensive gender diversification, Furman's views began to conflict more with canon. This culminated in Arcee's introduction in The Transformers (IDW) where she was born with a male body and was driven mad from a sex change from Jhiaxus. This came off as unintentionally offensive to trans people and got him in hot water with fellow author Mairghread Scott, though the two eventually worked it out. Later stories would retcon the finer details to change the anger to trauma from Jhiaxus having abandoned Arcee as a failure, but the poor introduction would follow Arcee to the comic's end.