Heh. This is one of my major issues with explanations like, "Because this is more real". It isn't. It's just as silly and absurd as any other form of "explanation" or hand-waving that was done in G1. At least with vintage hand-waving they had the excuse of "Oh, it was in G1; it was the '80s; we were all on crack; we had a tight schedule; Hasbro made us do it".

But I haven't seen it explained either why they don't just trans-scan all the time, if they have the ability at all. Aside from the fact they'd be Trans-Scanners now instead of Trans-Formers.. In fact, let's make this a separate thread.

I suppose the "obvious" answer is that they can't do it all the time because it's an expensive operation or something. But if that isn't explained, how is it any different from when they don't explicitly explain mass-shifting?

Now I personally don't think these things need any explicit explanation of any sort. It's pretty damned obvious (to me) that Soundwave is CHANGING SIZE AND MASS, just as it's obvious from their behavior that they don't trans-scan anything in sight if they want. I don't need a scientific white paper explaining the presumptive physics of how any of these abilities work. But if that is the case that the reasons are so obvious... why is any explanation needed at all for mass-shifting and not trans-scanning?

Mass Shifting opponents like myself aren't looking for the tech answer to mass shifting...I don't care about the science behind it. No one really should. It's a story issue. What I want is an explanation as to why the Decepticons feel the best use of this mass shifting technology is to turn three big soldiers into one still photo camera. What I want is an answer as to why that isn't a laughably inefficient use of resources.

Villainous characters who make laughably inefficient judgment calls like that don't exactly earn my respect, and they make the heroes look less heroic if they give the heroes even a modicum of trouble, because, seriously, Optimus, they've got three guys turning into a camera...kick their asses already!



Trans-scanning, as an action a character takes, is not laughably inefficient. You land on alien world, you want to hide, you find a piece of the alien's technology of a comparable mass and you scan it, adjusting your body so that you can disguise yourself as an identical copy of that object, making use of all that object's abilities (such as flight) in the process.

I don't know how that technology works, but it makes sense the characters would do that.

Hmm.. in what way would mass-shifting be used more efficiently? I'm basing the question on the assumption that this is just miniaturization and not enlargement. It may be more efficient to transform into say another jet plane but that makes it a bit harder to stay hidden and undetectable, so miniaturization seems more tactically useful.


Right, but the question is: why not just do it all the time? I mean the production reason is most likely: "We don't want and can't afford to make a giant Teletran-1 prop or a giant spaceship stage to go with it, or think it's extraneous because of <reason>" but the question is, if trans-scanning is so quick and easy, why don't they just do that all the time in lieu of transformation? Transformation to one specific altmode just becomes a laughably unnecessary halfway point.

It probably takes loads of energy or some crap. I wouldn't look too much into it, for the simple reason that none of us know for sure.

There are many ways. My favorite suggestion being Madhammer's notion of keeping an infinite amount of alt. mode kibble on you at all times, allowing you an infinite number of transformations. All you have to do is grow/shrink your robot bits and required alt. mode bits and you could turn into, literally, anything.


They enlarged as much as they miniaturized...All the 'Cons (including a fully combined Devastator) riding around in Astrotrain in the movie springs immediately to mind.


We don't know how much of a drain the Trans-scanning process is on the characters themselves, although Bumblebee did manage to perform it twice in the movie. There could be many reasons, though...the primary one being that the process requires you to find an object of near equal mass, which for characters like (staying with the movie) Starscream and Blackout would not be very easy.

However, since keeping the alt. mode for the duration of story doesn't seem like a waste of resources the way Mass Shifting does, it's easier for me to suspend disbelief that they wouldn't change alt. modes continuously.

I don't really consider a story's permitting of mass-shifting to suddenly blow the cap off of reason and equate to permitting infinite amounts of kibble. I suppose I understand why you see it that way. I just don't agree. Conceptually, it sounds the same as arguing, "Well if they can mass-shift, why don't they just enlarge to Unicron-size and defeat him?"

Enlargement, I'd regard as.. somewhat separate since it seemed to consistently serve the same purpose: carrying someone else. Bumblebee riding inside Wheeljack on Cybertron, or in Ironhide. People riding in Skyfire. When Scourge asks Starscream why he possessed Astrotrain, Starscream specifically replies that Astrotrain has "more cargo space" than Scourge does. In bot mode, they are all depicted as being roughly the same size.

So while there were animation errors aplenty, this suggests that there can be certain "rules" that some of the writers even seemed to try to follow. Carrying/transporting stuff may be a special ability.


If it was a long or difficult process that took more time/energon I could more easily suspend my disbelief as well. The way I've seen scanning depicted was like in Hearts of Steel and a maybe another source: the process seemed to be as quick and easy as transforming. But it seems to just be a personal version of what Unicron did to rebuild TFs from a distance with some laser beam.

But then if we shouldn't criticize trans-scanning (because we don't know in what ways it can and can't be used) why does mass-shifting get to be criticized? The infinite kibble thing is a great joke, but there isn't any greater basis on which to critique one than the other.

But that is what I'm arguing. The characters consistently make use of ineffective and silly Mass Shifting when there's really obvious uses for the technology that the characters just completely ignore.

Ahhh.. okay. But what I'm arguing is just because they can mass-shift at all does not imply that it has no other constraints or restrictions. More to the point, why assume that trans-scanning has restrictions preventing its free/arbitrary use while assuming at the same time that mass-shifting has none?

Three soldiers becoming a camera, Glue. That's just not an effective way to wage a war, regardless of Mass Shifting's restrcitions.

And Movie Frenzy clearly demonstrated that your CD player soldier is much better off becoming a four foot robot instead of a twenty four foot robot.

Ehh, they seemed to get rid of Reflector pretty quick! Kept him 'round long enough to entice sales of an exclusive toy and that was that. Although, that point is also debatable in that it's purely up to imagination. You have a camera that turns into three soldiers instead of just one. Would you prefer to have 2 extra giant robot warriors, or 2 extra cameras? (Hmm.. I suppose each of the jets could then have their own camera, but... )

Dunno how movie Frenzy was used, but I've never really thought that smaller robots like G1 Rumble/Frenzy were any less effective as soldiers just for being smaller.

Except they're soldiers first. It's not a "chicken or the egg" situation.


How about three extra tanks and you steal a camera?

"Enlargement, I'd regard as.. somewhat separate since it seemed to consistently serve the same purpose: carrying someone else. Bumblebee riding inside Wheeljack on Cybertron, or in Ironhide. People riding in Skyfire. When Scourge asks Starscream why he possessed Astrotrain, Starscream specifically replies that Astrotrain has "more cargo space" than Scourge does. In bot mode, they are all depicted as being roughly the same size.

So while there were animation errors aplenty, this suggests that there can be certain "rules" that some of the writers even seemed to try to follow. Carrying/transporting stuff may be a special ability."

... how about Hoist riding around in Huffer? Octane in Sandstorm?

Anyway, we don't know the constraints and drain for each of these things. Mass-shifting has been described as difficult to do because it requires more energy, or it is something innate (depending on the continuity). I like the idea that it is an unconscious part of transformation, not something that can be learned or applied willy-nilly.

Trans-scanning I just assume is more draining to do rather than keep your form. And, in addition, the Transformer would be forced to adjust to a new body with new abilities. Hence why Bumblebee only scanned a car rather similar to his initial form. He wouldn't be forced to relearn everything all over again.

For example, why didn't they just all get new Beast modes in Beast Wars? Surely the Maximals could've gained from having a second flyer in the first season (until they get Airazor, of course). Maybe getting a new Beast mode is difficult, but it's almost definitely difficult to adjust to having a whole new body. Take, for example, Cheetor's adjustments to having a Transmetal body. If I recall correctly, he screwed up quite a bit getting used to the jets.

See, to me that's not a mass-shrinking issue but a choice-of-alt-mode issue. One could say in G1 that since Teletran was deciding what the alt modes were (according to whatever scheme, or lack thereof, it uses), the camera mode wasn't really Reflector's or Megatron's choice.

I also think there may be too much application of a human perspective here. Why is a tank necessarily of greater importance to the decepticon cause than a camera? Cameras and tape recorders can sneak into places a tank can't sneak into, to say nothing of 3 tanks sneaking into.


I don't recall those specific incidents but they don't sound like too major a stretch of the imagination if we're still talking about the function of "transporting/carrying". Now if you guys had said "Galvatron... riding in Cyclonus's COCKPIT!!" I woulda said, "... kay yeah, that one was way pushing it."

REALLY at this point, i don't think there is any Realistic reason for the Transformers to have kibble at all. Frenzy and Bumblebee multi- scanning in the movie is proof of that (well that and frenzy's nonexistent kibble).

As has already been discussed adinfinitum - why would SoundWave have any kibble at all? His entire Altmode ie "kibble" would end up essentially being the size of one of his eyes. At what point does he need a 20ft tall "PLAY" button in robot mode?

But IMO, this whole discussion falls into the same category as Jazz being black, or the fembots. They take on these unrealistic traits (gender, race, kibble) because its what WE as an audience expect and identify with.

Once you start exploring NanoTechnology in a scienceficional universe (or heck in real life) its clear that the T-1000 is the most realistic TRANSFORMER ever filmed. (or maybe the T3 if she didn't suck and stuff).

But we expect our TRANSFORMERS to have kibble so that we can identify them and tell them apart from random Terminator Style bots. or the Wooshy bots from the end of AI.

As for instory reasons for Transcanning: Habit. They pick an alt-mode most comfortable and start to associate to their new "alien" terrain through that alt-mode. BB and Frenzy show us that its not too difficult to change if there is a reason to leave your comfort zone but why would say, Ironhide need to turn into a mobile Taco kitchen? At that point, whats in it for him?

The tanks are just an example. The point is there are a lot of better options for alt. modes out there. News vans, tanks, police helicopters, -- even three guys into three cameras is a marginally better use of the technology than three guys into one camera.

The choice of better alt. modes is particularly apparent when you consider how easy it would be for a Transformer to carry the equivalent of a camera in his eyeball and be able to take pictures of stuff just by looking at whatever they wanted, rendering the need for a camera moot, except for sneaking into stuff. Which bring us to...


Sneak in, yes. But in order to remain effective once you're in, you need to remain small. Soundwave's robot mode wouldn't really fit into any human structure worth getting into. He'd be unable to transform without destroying the place. So Mass Shifting only serves to hinder your cause at that point. A small robot like Frenzy is much more useful in those situations.

... selling more repaint exclusives?

The "Trans-scanning" ability is something that was newly introduced in the movie and something that we didn't see in other Transformers stories.

Pre-movie Transformers needed computers to scan alt modes for them and rebuild them - such as Teletraan-1's "trans-scan beam-o-matic™", AUNTIE's repair drone (which looked a lot like Optimus Prime's Combat Deck robot), CR Chambers, stasis pods etc.

So in previous Transformers incarnations, they would need to be completely rebuilt in order to acquire a new alt mode, something which would certainly expend a lot of energy and resources. Pre-movie Transformers were typically rebuilt if they were mortally wounded or resurrected.

The problem with gross external mass shifting isn't so much the science behind it, but the aesthetics - to most audiences it requires too great a suspension of disbelief. There will ALWAYS be mass-shifting (all those robot parts have got to go somewhere in alt mode!) in Transformers but what most audiences find difficult to accept is gross external mass shifting. To believe that a 6 metre robot can transform into a hand gun or cassette player requires the audience to massively suspend disbelief, something which most audiences would have difficulty doing - especially a general movie going audience. Remember that in order for the movie to succeed it needed to be acceptable by a general audience of people who have NO prior knowledge of Transformers. Most ordinary folks would find the imagery of gross mass shifting to be ridiculous, even with ample amounts of exposition to back it up.

And to Bay's credit we did get gross external mass shifting with the AllSpark Cube - but that's meant to be some mysterious divine artifact (like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones) so as a plot device audiences can suspend disbelief - and it only happens once. For a primary cast member like Megatron to be performing gross mass-shifting back and forth between robot and gun mode during the movie would be demanding a lot of suspension of disbelief from the audience. To be honest, the movie already does ask a lot as it is insofar that the audience needs to accept that these robots - with all those thousands of complicated robot parts, can transform into vehicles with those robot parts somehow mysteriously vanishing into subspace (because it's not like the inside of Bumblebee is full of robot parts like the toy is).

I for one am glad that they're not always trans-scanning new alt modes, because that would mean waaaaay more versions of the same character to collect!! Bumblebee trans-scanned once in the movie and we already have 5 versions of that character (70s Deluxe, 08 Deluxe, Cyber Slammer, FAB, Ultimate). Then there'd be the repaints/variants of all those versions - you'd end up with this many versions of Optimus Prime within ONE year's worth of toys alone!


wuaaaagh! (@_@)

No.

Tacos.

...

But about the "trans-scanning" thing... since in the movie all the Autobots are shown scanning while in their *identical* protoforms, I'd assume that it's not something that can be done constantly. Like, they need to be converted to a protoform by an outside source first (purging their old mode, and ending up looking like Prime... ), then they can scan.

And Bumblebee's double scan can be attributed to it just being a upgrade to an existing mode.

...and/or a plot hole...I mean why was that concept car driving down the SAME EXACT TUNNEL THAT BB was in! (BB is Bumblebee BTW, not some Blotty Predacon repaint that no one gives an F about...lol.)

And as for mass shifting...well, even in a hypothetical strict G1 remake live action movie, I'd rather Megs be a tank. Maybe have a joke at the end with him being turned into a gun, and he's defeated because of his 7 inch robot mode...

My personal theory:

Trans scanning came from Mr Bay. It's simple...he was given the movie project and of course his high school jock mentality was "this sucks!". He needed to make this look cool and do able for him.

Anybody seen John Carpenters The Thing? Bay sure as hell did...and just like how the thing trans scanned (before killing and mutilating) his victims. From there it was able to be the vary thing it scanned. Well that sure applies very well to transforming robots. This consept fit perfectly and was very believable.
What? you actually wanted big robots to pilot a ship? Thank gawd Bay said NO to this. Instead these aliens can transform into a planetary entry form.

Megatron was the ultimate Thing, or did we miss the homage to the Carpenter film.

As to why only Bumble Bee and Frenzy trans scanned the most: G1 fans! and Bay being nice. There really is no science to this.

Think about it, if most G1 winners tried to petition to have Primes flames removed imagine whine fest we'd have if Bay said "I think Prime needs to fly at some point, you see that A10 wort-hog over there?!" G1 fans would lose it..."No Prime cant be fighter plane...that's not G1" and then the death threats would double. To bad cos Hasbro could have made a killing character resales.

Bumble bee only scanned to an up-dated version of his car mode. Frenzy; well who cared about him...make him a cell phone, a cheap boom box, front grill of a cop car.

So that's my answer to this mystery.

I only hope that Bay really ignores the G1 babies and has all the characters trans scanning all over the place. That would be cool.

Get over it guys. Scanning for alt modes has been something that's always existed in Transformers. Always. Pre-movie it was done by an external computer typically hooked up to a ship or stasis pod. In the movie, they have in-built scanners and nano-technology that allows them to reformat themselves. That's it. Why did Bay do it? I can think of two reasons... introducing Transformer starships and pods etc. would:
1/ require a lot more exposition eating into movie time
2/ more money in order to CG animate said ships/pods, eating into the movie budget
'

Agreed. Even if they had them piloting ships it would have to be totally reinvented... there wouldn't be any lights inside that ship which means youd see nothing - maybe some ambient light, but you wouldn't see much - it would make the dark interiors of the Axalon and Terrorcrasher/Darksyde look like a lighting show. Also they wouldn't be sitting in seats operating control panels like humans do - as machines they would be directly interfaced with the ship. Slotted into the ship as part of the ship... there would be no control bridge, rooms, corridors or anything like that. It would just look like a big engine, kinda like the machine-city in The Matrix but on a far smaller and compact scale.


Well, it's also the writers being nice. And to their credit they did write the story with plot devices that made the rescannings plausible - Bumblebee wanted to impress his new friends and Frenzy needed to continue his mission objective.


Hasbro wouldn't have allowed Bay to make Prime into anything but a truck. Aaron Archer was initially skeptical about Prime's flames but Bay explained that metallic red is a nightmare of a colour to photograph and that he needed to make the truck blue in order to save money on principal photography (and film stock is expensive - I knew a guy who made a short 10 minute film, cost him $6000 in film stock). Hasbro said that they at least wanted Prime's chest to be red, so a compromised was reached by introducing the flames. Yes, Bay is a personal fan of the flames, but it also allows Prime to have a red chest while being a primarily blue truck and saving Dreamworks Blotloads of money.


You know, in the time it took you to dis out BB, you could've just typed "Bumblebee." Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of using an abbreviation? (and an ambiguous one at that)

Anyway, that's not a plot hole. It's a coincidence, but not a plot hole. A real plot hole would be how when Prime is scanning the truck, the truck has the Autobot insignia hood ornament, yet when Prime first forms into the truck he has NO Autobot insignia on his grill. I think the idea was for the CG animators to put the non-insignia grill onto the truck that drives by, but they put it on the truck that is forming (ie: Optimus Prime) instead! Oops!

I don't think that the parts are vanishing into subspace. All matter is made up of atoms with a lot of empty space between them so I think the TF's are folding up their robot parts by compacting the space between atoms. The downside with this method is that they still weigh the same but that's not really noticeable with an alt-mode as big as a car. It's not like it has to be carried around like a stereo.

Lol...just ripping ya.
I just think your joke is kinda lame and played out...sorry.
Anyways all abbreviations are ambiguous...BB could be "big butts" or "burly bandits"...

It all depends upon the context... so if we're talking about the movie, it's probably Bumblebee, not BB the Predacon bomber (and definitely not Max B the cyborg wolf...)

So yeah, maybe the car isn't a real plot hole, but the grill thing really isn't either. I think that should be classified as a technical goof.

That sounds like a form of mass-shifting (at an atomic level).


I disagree. The Sector Seven driver's gun smacking him in the head as Jazz confiscates his gun is a technical goof (much like Star Wars' Stormtrooper smacking his head against the opening door) - but the grill thing is a visual plot error.

Why would there be a normal truck driving by with an Autobot insignia hood ornament?? And when Prime first forms into his truck mode, he has no Autobot insignia. But then for the rest of the movie, the Autobot hood ornament is there! Furthermore, the shape of the grills between the two trucks is different - on the bypassing truck it's a narrower grill whereas on "trans-scanning" Prime it's a broader grill. Yet for the rest of the movie we see Prime's truck mode featuring the narrower grill! Buh?! (o_O)

If I drove a truck, I'd put an autobot symbol hood ornament on it. Then I'd ram it straight through that fourth wall. SHAZAM!

Eep!! *ducks under theatre seat* (mm... Transformers 3D fresh...)

Not really. Mass-shifting involves the TF storing most of their atoms in subspace in order for them to shrink down and decrease their weight to the same amount as that of the object it transforms into. With atomic compression, they're still made up of the same amount of atoms, they're just compacted together more tightly and their weight remains the same.

that would allow Transformers to change their size, but as you said so yourself, it doesn't allow them to change their mass.

<--this human is REALLY strong!

"Can link up interdimensionally to a black hole and draw antimatter from it for use as a weapon."
If Cybertronian technology can move antimatter "interdimensionally" it does not seem absurd to reason that they can probably move ordinary matter by the same or comparable means.

What does that have to do with the movie TF's?

Without "Mass-shifting" that 3-ton robot Soundwave turns into a 3-ton micro-cassette player. So when he transforms into his alt-mode and sits on top of a table, the table breaks. And I'm thinking he'd also get really hot because of all the energy released when compressing the atoms into a smaller volume. Same reason stars get so hot.

Again, what does that have to do with the movie TF's?

Hornet: discussion of trans-scanning led to discussion of mass-shifting led to discussion of atomic compression led to image of human holding Megatorn. Get it? Good.

I'm sorry, I missed the part where this thread was about movie TF's? Or the part where it was on topic in the first place.

All I was doing was expounding on your comment in the first place, Mr. Topic Cop.

You certainly did.

I don't post much, but I think I'll throw in my 2 cents. As a huge TF fan from G1, I can honestly say that mass-shifting, even if possible etc and so forth, doesn't belong in a live action movie. And the reason is simply is looks bad effects-wise. When I saw the movie in theaters, the crowd was very lively. The scene where BB reverts back into the Camero after the Barricade fight drew gasps of "That's awesome" because they hid nothing, and it worked and was believable. But when Frenzy turned into a cellphone 1/4th his size, the crowd gasped "What the hell?" and "That's stupid."

And they were right, it looked like crap that something could just shrink like that. Its a cheap effect, which thankfully wasn't used for any important characters, but the audience and ultimately the fans aren't stupid. It just looks dumb. Now imagine if Soundwave, a 40 foot robot, shrunk into a cassette player in full view of the camera, it would look like it was straight out of Willy Wonka, and would effectively shatter all the work put into the effects, rendering them pointless. One might as well have them Transform by pooling into liquid metal and reforming.

A good point is brought up about the need for stealth and intel, but that can just as easily be used with tiny robots. The Sector 7 videos depicting Reflector and Laserbeak I thought were very cool, and I thought it would have been neat to have included such tiny machines in the film.

But seriously, why bother designing Soundwave's hands to perfectly work and be functional and not clip the polygons or cheat in any way to get the effect, only to make his Transformation a comical magic act. As for Trans-scanning, I see zero difference between the movie's take and Teletran 1. If they wanted to change forms in G1, I see no reason they couldn't if they really wanted to, save for some lame storyblock like low energon, so to me anyway, its a moot point.

I didn't have a problem with that moment at all. Judging from how far Frenzy's head flew when Sam kicked it, Frenzy's head must've been mostly hollow, and couldn't have had much more mass than the cell phone.

Winnah.

I think it was a cheat. No need to over-analyze it IMO.

You know, if Animated is going to be marketed the same way as all the other superhero cartoons on TV, I can't help but feel that the toyline will have variants of the main characters like the Batman, JLU, and Power Rangers toylines.

*ahem*
What does this have to do with movie TFs?

The movie proposed the concept of trans-scanning, now Animated can exploit it in order to fill the toyline up with variants of the main hero, just like how all the other superhero toylines operate.

They might as well already be doing liquid-metal transformations when they turn into the thousands of fragments. And the "nanite" explanation of trans-scanning is pretty much liquid metal.

And let me clarify, this discussion was about technical viability and not whether something looked good on screen or not. It was also supposed to separate the trans-scanning from mass-shifting, but it's clear what was really on everyone's minds..



... Well, we're all allowed our own opinions, and you're in the majority (which views have been made clear numerous times). But to me, that's like saying you don't see any believable difference between a Ford truck being built by an assembly line and a Ford truck turning itself into a Lamborghini unassisted.


Actually.. trans-scanning, or something similar to it, showed up in the Hearts of Steel comic and possibly other continuities and sub-continuities prior to the movie. Although HoS, they didn't really appear to trans-scan anything. They just conveniently reconfigured their body parts without any direct source material in most cases (except for Starscream and the jets using that human's plans for flying machines and following the same design).

ahem

Madhammer must have missed the portion of the discussion where we distinguished between individuals scanning at will and relying on a larger Teletran1-type machine to scan for them
(not that i ever want to side with Hornet or anything)

In Beast Machines, all Transformers have built-in DNA scanners for beast modes.

Regardless of when it first appeared, trans-scanning can be used as an excuse for Hasbro to make multiple variants of the same character. Since Animated is being marketed as a superhero cartoon, and toylines based on superheros are notorious for being filled up with variants of the main hero, Hasbro could reasonably get away with it more than they did in previous lines. They're already making two versions of both Prime and Megs, maybe other characters will take on different forms, even if it is for just a single episode.

And before you bring up TM's and TM2's, please note that Hasbro couldn't introduce those characters without changing the aesthetic of the entire toyline.

... Why wouldn't Hasbro be able to make multiple variants of the same character without trans-scanning? They couldn't make G1 cybertronian Bumblebee, Wheeljack, or Jazz? And red cybertronian Bumblebee is pretty much freebie cybertronian Cliffjumper..

I was gonna say, Hasbro can do whatever they want with no justification at all from the media ("media" = the cartoon or movie in question). Look at Movie G1 Jazz / Starscream, for example. What is that about? It has nothing at all to do with the movie, but Hasbro made them anyway.

And they've totally never did that, with the multiple Optimuses in G2, the THREE cheetors in Beast Machines, or the various multiple size class releases that still happen.

No, they needed to wait for Trans-scanning first.

Ahhh...now I see, this is regressed anger over the movie designs proper. Look, I'm sure this has been said thousands of times, but we're dealing with fiction. Giant robots that transform into earth machines for basically little to no reason. We'll never prove the science that makes mass-shifting, trans-scanning or transformation in general a viable possibility, but we do our best. Fact of the matter is this: What makes sense on the broadest scale possible is what the movie went for. If there was one legitimate gripe with the G1 universe, its that the Transformers themselves are too human. The writers of both the comics and show barely regarded them as machines aside from their gimmick. But that's the fact, they're machines, not animals. The fresh eyes that wrote the movie realized that and made changes appropriately. Did they NEED Teletran 1 to scan for them? Why would they, its a machine, and so are they. What they can build a machine to do, they can no doubt modify themselves to do.



I agree, its totally silly and absurd. How would it not be if it were done by Teletran 1? Its the same crappy concept to achieve the same blatant goal: Figure out some absurd reason for aliens to not be a car one minute, and be a car the next.

But to get back to the general topic, you claim to be bothered by the fact that its not explicitly explained in the film. Aside from the obvious answers like they don't feel the need to explain to a teenager their intimate inner workings when there's a war on, the real answer is its just a cheap plot device to squeeze in the gimmick. It would be equally cheap if they had the Arc as well. In a way, cheap shortcuts like that are the ultimate homage to G1.

As for the designs (which I love and think are far superior to most incarnations), it DOES go back to what looks good on film and is even remotely believable. Making a car have only 20 moving parts and somehow form a perfectly blocky robot would be impossible and raise just the sort of questions I wouldn't want to ask. And if possible, the robot would be just as hideous as the G1 toys. Does anyone really want THAT Prime walking around? But, add a few thousand dissected pieces and you start to have actual clay to work with. You don't need cheap camera tricks or a complete separation from reality when everything actually works. And the biggest word of all: ARTICULATION. Were some designs hit and miss? Sure, we all know they could have made a better Starscream, but they're aliens, they should look alien, and I think they've reached the perfect mix between that concept and tradition with Prime, BB, Jazz and Blackout. Add in some fun designs like Brawl and Bonecrusher and I see little to complain about. There's only so much painted metal paneling on vehicles, you can't multiply it drastically and keep reality, audiences just won't buy it, and ultimately that's the bottom line.