carbsmith wrote:HAH! HAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
*falls down on the floor laughing*
Just what do you think, I dunno, most of the Transformers characters ever are?
Optimus Prime-"I'm like, John Wayne, but a Semi Truck robot"
Grimlock-"Me Grimlock SMASH! GRIMLOCK KING!"
Kup-"99% of old people tell ridiculous stories. OH MA' BACK!"
Arcee-"Woman are caring and annoying and wear pink!"
Blaster and/or Jazz-"early 80s popular lingo will always sound current! ROCK ON, WEIRD AL STYLE!"
They're all fun characters, but shining examples of originality? I don't think they could be much less. Hell, the original G1 cartoon designs are just reasonably ungimped looking versions of 5 year old Japanese toys even.
Personally, I found Jazz to be a logically modernized version of the original, even if the limited dialogue we got made him out as a bit ridiculous. He had very little time to come across as anything more than just the break-dancing and slang.
Carbsmith is right. These characters have always been stereotypes.
All fictional characters are based upon certain stereotype, or, more accurately
archetypes. They have to be. Every writer of fiction, when they design a character, starts with a simple two-dimensional concept for each character called an archetype—the young, naive hero, the girlfriend, the veteran, the hotshot, the femme fatale, etc.— and then builds upon it, fleshing it out. However, they can't flesh a character out too much or else the audience can't identify what type of character they are, and what their purpose to the story is, or their personality.