Subspace.

Not all that effing stupid, but I imagine someone somewhere will put String theory into it somewhere.

Subspace, compressing matter, they're all "grasping for straws" explanations.

The fact is that the writers and animators of the original cartoon didn't give it a second thought. They just did what they had to do to make a cartoon based on a pre-existing toy line. They never thought about subspace or compressing matter.

 

SHOCK!

Does anyone really think that a 30min toy commercial gave a crap why the fifty foot robot turned into a pistol?

No.

Do the fans put order to the chaos using actual logic?

Yes.

 

Subspace.

String theory.

EXACTLY! They didn't give a crap. They had a toy gun that transformed into a robot, which Hasbro decided to market as the leader of the bad guys. Thus the writers and animation team did what they could to make that happen; they shrunk the huge robot into a gun of varying sizes, depending on the situation.

They never intended it to have a scientific theory to explain it, nor did they waste time coming up with an "alien" explanation.

As it turns out, in the context of a 1980's cartoon it wasn't a big deal.

However, as PC pointed out, everything fans have come up with, compressed matter, subspace, string theory, is all retcon that happens to fit the G1 story, regardless of whether the original writers intended it or not.

 

We have to accept mass-shifting for what it is, a way for the G1 writers to easily include the "object-formers" in the TF cartoon. That's it.

It's not even a cartoon thing. I may be wrong, but I can't think of a single TF cartoon since G1 that dealt with a mass-shifting transformer.

On top of that the movie series aims to portray the TF story in a realistic setting. Which puts the final nail in the mass-shifting coffin.

Yeah, try to rationalize it all you want, in the end it was a cheap, lazy way for the writers to account for the difference in size between some robots and their alternates modes. It hasn't appeared since G1, be it movie or cartoon, because the story telling has gotten better.

 

As for the All Spark....it didn't bother me. This was suppose to be an artifact that gave life to an entire race of robots, and has/had the power to bestow life on previously lifeless machines. It's a mystical thing, the essence of a TFer's life force.

As such I suspect that it contains powers and abilities beyond the laws of physics.

Saying "mass shifting should exist in the movies because the All Spark mass shifted" makes as much sense as someone wanting the power to bestow life on a planet because G-d did it.

What's wrong with mass shifting? That can best be answered with an other question; Where does the excess mass go? There hasn't been a convincing answer to that question, thus mass shifting makes no sense, and should be left out of any fiction whenever possible.

 

.... E = mc^2

What's wrong with mass shifting? That can best be answered with an other question; Where does the excess mass go? There hasn't been a convincing answer to that question, thus mass shifting makes no sense, and should be left out of any fiction whenever possible.

 

.... E = mc^2

Ok....so how does that account for the disappearance of the extra mass when Megs shrinks into gun form?

What's wrong with mass shifting? That can best be answered with an other question; Where does the excess mass go? There hasn't been a convincing answer to that question, thus mass shifting makes no sense, and should be left out of any fiction whenever possible.

 

.... E = mc^2

Ok....so how does that account for the disappearance of the extra mass when Megs shrinks into gun form?

Converted to energy and temporarily stored somewhere. Converted back when transformed back into bot mode. If the mass difference is always the same, it adds to internal consistency.

Didn't DW come up with some shrinking on a molecular level theory to appease the fans a while back.

 

Whatever the case I personally didn't find the shrinking of the All spark all that hard to take or believe. It's just a scifi movie and in that respect it made sense to move the plot forwards. Also as said the AS was a mystical artifact that Prime said existed long before the Transformer race. All he really reveals about it is it has the ability to create new life and whatnot. Aside from that I don't think anybody ever understood it completely or what it was all capable of.

 

AS aside I'm good with no robot mass shifting anywhere in the movies. The success of the first film has already proved to fans and non fans alike that MS is not needed anywhere to make these characters work. That argued I hope that means a whole lot less Starscreaming when Bay decided to make Soundwave a Stealth bomber or global defense satillite.

SW would have need 6 dudes in yellow hardhats with a penchant for carrying around audio equipment int to sensative areas and then abandoning them there to do what frenzy did.

 

In any reality but a Sunbow cartoon SW would have ended up left out on the street or in somebody's trunk.

 

Mass shifting makes no sense and makes for bad stories. If you're not in an old school G1 set story it's better left out.

true but if soundwave were say a cell phone( instead of a walkman/boombox), like that real gear toy . then mass shifting makes a lot more sense. cause if he were the size of a cell phone the humans would just crush him (like they did that poor nokia). but if he could mass shift to the size of, say ,a human then he could be a real threat like frenzy was. and lets face it. a cell phone is capable of more things than a boom box and is something people wouldn't leave in their car or on the street.

That's one of the biggest gripes I have about the movie. They didn't include characters like Soundwave because they "wanted to avoid the problem of mass shifting," yet they take this gi-normous cube and shrink it down to a size small-enough to fit in Bumblebee's backseat, then to add insult to injury, they hand it to some kid and he runs around the city with it. So either Bumblebee and Sam can lift the All Spark when it is is giant 5-story cube, or it had to undergo some form of *ahem* MASS SHIFTING.

 

Ever notice the terms, Mass Shifting, Magic Shrinky and Movie Sucks, all have the same initials?

SW would have need 6 dudes in yellow hardhats with a penchant for carrying around audio equipment int to sensative areas and then abandoning them there to do what frenzy did.

 

In any reality but a Sunbow cartoon SW would have ended up left out on the street or in somebody's trunk.

 

Mass shifting makes no sense and makes for bad stories. If you're not in an old school G1 set story it's better left out.

true but if soundwave were say a cell phone( instead of a walkman/boombox), like that real gear toy . then mass shifting makes a lot more sense. cause if he were the size of a cell phone the humans would just crush him (like they did that poor nokia). but if he could mass shift to the size of, say ,a human then he could be a real threat like frenzy was. and lets face it. a cell phone is capable of more things than a boom box and is something people wouldn't leave in their car or on the street.

Then people would whine because Soundwave would be barely bigger than your dad.

Didn't DW come up with some shrinking on a molecular level theory to appease the fans a while back.

 

Despite any retcony MTMTE B.S. that DW may have treated us to, I don't seem to remember them ever polluting their own stories with any Magic Shrinky. Even though they had characters that should have.

Didn't DW come up with some shrinking on a molecular level theory to appease the fans a while back.

 

Despite any retcony MTMTE B.S. that DW may have treated us to, I don't seem to remember them ever polluting their own stories with any Magic Shrinky. Even though they had characters that should have.

 

True.

 

As said it was all about toy sales in the 80s. Nobody at Hasbro cared if characters weren't realistically scaled in either mode.

 

Soundwave by far isn't the only one who defied this. How Ratchet in ambulance mode was ever able to haul around full scale ABs is anyone's guess. Same goes for Astrotrain being able to house an army of Decepticons as well as as a combined Devastator. In the cartoon world I guess it works but in a live action movie where fans and critics often pull apart each error, misstep in logic something like this would be laughable.

 

Equal size/mass makes the most sense to most people when live action in concerned. The 80s are long over and mass shifting be it on purpose or retconned has no place anywhere in a movie. A tape deck didn't define who Soundwave was it just fit the diaclone or whatever have you toy Hasbro borrowed. Very much like Gun Megatron it just won't happen and a majority of fans seem to get it.