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lastmaximal

lastmaximal

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I have no problem with the glasses on ROTB Wheeljack. It's a neat little affectation and can add some charm.

What I don't like is the way the current design style does faces. Mirage is fine, Arcee less so, Wheeljack just... Bleargh. Lots of strips of metal approximating flexible skin, and slap a couple of creepy floating lips on top of that.

Like, I don't need the full Geewun (as cool as the customs with that head look), but if a face ever needed a faceplate.
 
Donocropolis

Donocropolis

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Faces have always been tricky in live action. The cartoon and comics can just draw the faces as though they were flexible metallic skin, but that doesn't translate well to live action? (maybe it would? I'd be curious to see.)

So they went the route of lots of overlapping metal plates so that things can shift and move around behind other things without any part needing to visibly stretch for movement. It was a logical way to go, but I was never super fond of the execution.
 
The Mighty Mollusk

The Mighty Mollusk

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Considering we already have to suspend our disbelief enough to buy the idea of giant shape-changing robots from outer space, I personally think that making them less distractingly busy is a much smaller step.
 
Donocropolis

Donocropolis

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The Mighty Mollusk said:
Considering we already have to suspend our disbelief enough to buy the idea of giant shape-changing robots from outer space, I personally think that making them less distractingly busy is a much smaller step.
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Definitely agreed. The Bay movie designs were way too busy. The BB movie did a bit better with scaling that back a bit and using larger chunks of alt mode in the robots, but kept it similar enough to the Bay movies to make them visually cohesive. I'm a big fan of keeping the designs simpler less "piles of random metal bits shuffling around."
 
Dake

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I mean, if the T-1000's "poly-mimetic alloy" is capable of simulating flesh (and we the audience were ok with it), there's no reason Transformers couldn't have something similar going on with faces.
 
lastmaximal

lastmaximal

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Suspension of disbelief has nothing to do with it, for me. Not consciously, at least. I'm not really concerned about "looks like it could happen", I'm concerned about "looks good" or "fits with the rest of it".

Smooth liquid metal faces wouldn't look good, especially in conjunction with everything else about their bodies that's panel based. I'm not looking for that either. It might even be arguable that the current attempt at making the faces smooth (and/or easier to animate, idk) is what's led to this choice that doesn't work for me.

There's just something much less effective about, say, Optimus Prime's unmasked face (then and now) vs. those on Bee solo Clifffjumper or ROTB Wheeljack. The older faces were boxier and busier, but that works better than later takes that now really look like a face wrapped in foil. It's been a poorer execution that doesn't even really have any positive tradeoffs like better emoting or anything.
 
unluckiness

unluckiness

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They should just make the faces simpler in general. The greebly faces always translate terribly in the smaller scale of toys.
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Previously painted dinobot’s sword silver but that stuck out badly in raptor mode. Adding a superheated burning effect to the tip sort of helps but not much to be done with how it’s designed.
 
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Sabrblade

Sabrblade

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LordGigaIce said:
I feel like people would have accepted RotB Wheeljack if we didn't get a very G1 version in Bumblebee.
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Luckily, thanks to how Steve Blum portrayed that Wheeljack in Bumblebee, they can't be the same Wheeljack anyway.

Bee movie Wheeljack was voiced like a gruff old war veteran who's getting up there in his years (which actually aligns with how Que was portrayed as being even older in DOTM), while ROTB Wheeljack was voiced like a much younger character, sounding like he had just recently graduated high school. Aging doesn't work backwards.
 
LordGigaIce

LordGigaIce

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Sabrblade said:
Luckily, thanks to how Steve Blum portrayed that Wheeljack in Bumblebee, they can't be the same Wheeljack anyway.

Bee movie Wheeljack was voiced like a gruff old war veteran who's getting up there in his years (which actually aligns with how Que was portrayed as being even older in DOTM), while ROTB Wheeljack was voiced like a much younger character, sounding like he had just recently graduated high school. Aging doesn't work backwards.
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Well it could. Who knows how Cybertronians work?

But I think there's some connective tissue. They gave RotB Wheeljack G1 head fins for a reason.

But also Bumblebee and RotB were helmed by two different creative teams. Broad plot points were likely kept in mind but I seriously doubt anyone cared enough to say "we can't call this character Wheeljack it doesn't fit with that last movie."

They had an idea for a character and grabbed a name, and that was that in all likelihood.
 
Superomegaprime

Superomegaprime

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With ROTB Wheeljack, if they had just called him Que, I think people would be more open about the character desgin, then ever since I heard Prime V Prime, saying he looks like Elon John, I can't help myself and call that desgin, Elon John as he looks very much like him! Thou out of the Autobots in ROTB, I only got Optimus & Mirage SS, while OP I also got the mainline verison, not a fan of movie BB in general, thou for me, it kind of boils down to the fact, he got no personalty and the only thing that makes him stand out, is the noises he makes for speech and for me, its growing tiresome as his character is now defined by that gimmick and yet, its growing stale!
 
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