>>5727867>and the aesthetic doesn't fit in with anything else in 30+ years of movies, games, comics, and series.>It sticks out, in a bad way.You strike me as a Rip van Winkel kind of fan. The sort that grew up on G1, then drifted away from the late 80's onward, and missed everything in between, until the hype running up in the lead in to the 07 movie(ironically) made you aware of the franchise again and got you collecting. It seems to me that those sort of fans take the most offense to the Bay movies and see it as a huge affront to their childhood.
Where as, those of us who where active in the franchise in the 5-10 years leading up to the Bay movie, had already seen their share of different aesthetics every few years and got used to the franchise reinventing itself every so often. By '07 we had already seen the cyborg aesthetic of the first years of Beast Wars, the bio-organic hybrid look of the Transmetals, and the Todd McFarlane mutant/freak look of the TM2s. Beast Machines gave us the first real examples of nontraditional/abstract and sometimes alien looking robot modes. Transtech never happened, but we where aware of it and how unique the designs where. BW Neo and Car robots/RiD gave us complex transformations laden with alt-mode parts hanging off not unlike the Bayformer designs would have. The Unicron Trilogy toys took things to chunky aesthetics, and then we got some leaks of TF heroes, which was sort of like a proto Animated line with the stylized proportions, but detailing of UT toys. So when we saw the Bay movie designs, we took it i stride, just another example of a line refresh.
Actually all things considered, TF2007 was closer to the basics. Robots in disguise as realistic vehicles; Autobots vs. Decepticons. How is that less fitting to the franchise than something like Pretenders or Beast Wars or Mini-cons?
