The Energon Pub

My only real issue with the Protoforms in the movie, is that they were all identical. Sure, my wife thought it was clever "it shows that they are all the same race" - but if they scan their Alt-modes based on a vehicle of roughly equal mass...why don't they all turn into Truck sized things, seeing as they are all the same size when they arrive on Earth?

And if they all look identical, why do they all have unique faces/hands/etc in their earth forms? I seem to recall the reason TF dont change their Alts every 30 sec as being due to the high energy cost involved...so it would make sense NOT to alter things (like faces) if its not absolutely required.

Plus it must make things hard to recognise your friends if they all have new face.

...On that note, how the feck does Ironhide recognise Starscream in the city, given that he has never seen 'scream's Jet alt-mode?

I kinda agree. Take Ironhide, his Protoform didn't seem to have any of his bulky weaponry on him, he looked extremely lean and plain. I would think if you were bringing that kind of firepower down with you, it'd still be on you in protoform.

I'd also like to see some recognition from protoform to new scanned mode. Their faces completely changed size and shape from one form to another. I can see the head maybe changing some to fit better with the alt mode requirements, but they got completely new designs that didn't seem to share much with the previous look. Kinda weird. Especially the "ears".

When they all transformed in front of each other for the first time, what does keep them from mistaking each other? None of them look at all like what they had minutes before. It'd have been funny to see Jazz call Ratchet Ironhide or something.

I think that was more a case of laziness on the CGI animators' part than anything else. I think they just used the same CGI model for each protoform, rather than design something that would only be used 90 second for each character.

Ironhide recognized Starscream for his energy signature, most likely. In most continuities it's been established that each Transformer has a puts off a distinct energy signature for identification purposes. Like some species of animals recognize each other, not based on their physical appearance, but for their scent/call/whatever.

JazZeke wrote:Ironhide recognized Starscream for his energy signature, most likely. In most continuities it's been established that each Transformer has a puts off a distinct energy signature for identification purposes. Like some species of animals recognize each other, not based on their physical appearance, but for their scent/call/whatever.

Yeah, that occured to me too - although one would think it'd kinda make the whole "disguise via Alt-form" deal kinda moot if you can recognise each other by "smell"...

Correction: The protoforms were not identical.

Sentry Prime wrote:

JazZeke wrote:Ironhide recognized Starscream for his energy signature, most likely. In most continuities it's been established that each Transformer has a puts off a distinct energy signature for identification purposes. Like some species of animals recognize each other, not based on their physical appearance, but for their scent/call/whatever.

Yeah, that occured to me too - although one would think it'd kinda make the whole "disguise via Alt-form" deal kinda moot if you can recognise each other by "smell"...

The alt-modes are more to allow themselves to hide away from humans and blend into the invironment, not each other.

WEll, since transformers are not real, i dont think any of this matters.

HUmans watching a movie need to see visual cues as to who is who.

Heck, why do they all have to have different voices? Should just be all the same, if this was real. Why do some have 5 fingers and others have 3 long fingered claws?

Robot movie made for humans. Don't think I'd care much for Transformers if they all had the same heads and were all the same colors blah blah blah and sounded the same etc etc etc.

Perhaps Ironhide knew Starscream has been an air superiority transformer for millions of years. So when he sees a nasty looking jet acting strange, and he knows starscream is somewhere in the area, i'd say it's safe to assume that a seasoned combat vet like Ironhide would know that was Starscream.

Blackout isn't exactly a speed demon, in any form.

And of course there is always the make believe stuff that we could add in there. THey are robots, they can scan things, see things, etc, blah blah blah.

I don't care that their profoforms looked similar. Sort of makes sense. And yes I am sure it was cheaper to reuse/tweak the existing model for the other characters.

Beast Wars protoforms look similar to eachother at certain points. Hell, even go into a liquid state sometimes (Airazor episode)

Please explain to me how Protoform Prime and Protoform Starscream are even remotely similar.

If you look at the protoform Starscream toy, (pictured)he has more of a dangerous look, and if you read the prequal comic that came with the TF dvd, all the protoform Decepticons are comepletely diffrent.

We saw their protoforms for all of a few seconds but even if they were the same size or height which there may have been slight differences that does not mean they have the same mass and that is how they can be different sizes and shapes so Starscream and Prime could be larger than the rest same with Blackout, either that or they were just retaining water?