Unfortunately, people have seen the designs and the (earlier) script, as well as the attitude of the production staff. So they're perfectly entitled to knock them.My thoughts exactly, WW.
They don't look near as much like the characters they're meant to represent as they could have; nowhere near it in some cases. The "It's not G1" argument is a pile of rubbish since it should be G1 to begin with; it's the most recognised, the only one that pierced the mainstream, and it's hardly keeping close to Armada or RiD; and if it's not G1, what's with the G1 Autobot names, some G1-ish alt modes, mostly G1 Decepticon names, G1-like Plot, "Spike" and "Sparkplug", and all the G1 type things being used to push the movie, such as the comicon Prime truck and using the original G1 font(albeit slightly editted)?
The movie is "G1" for much of the same reasons it ISN'T Beast Wars.
What bothers me is that people defending the movie ignored those. I'm not going to bitch at someone for liking it, but I will bitch at someone for acting like those that don't are somehow not "open-minded" enough.
The thing I dislike about the movie though isn't the designs by far - it's the fanbase reaction, with one half tearing into the other just for acting like you'd expect fans to. It disgusts me the sheer amount of bias some boards have, some even going so far as to ban people just for being strong opponents of the movie(Esp. Don Murphy's board, and "Nelson's" board; though the 4 main TF boards, Seibertron(before Ryan's escapades), Allspark, TFans and TFW2006(especially) have had their moments too).
It really has to stop. Whether any given person likes the designs or not, it's obvious they're upsetting a lot of people. Personally, I quite like these new pictures, but I'm not going to tear into anyone that doesn't. People who don't like things usually give actual reasons; many supporting the movie are just all out WOW THIS WILL BE THE BEST MOVIE EVER BAY HAS HOT DESIGNERS WORKING FOR HIM!!! Just because something is a negative opinion does NOT make it "wrong" or somehow inferior to a positive opinion; as there's no telling at that level of simplicity whether what they're criticising is bad or good. Criticising a bad thing is little different from praising a good thing; they ultimately have a similiar effect. What many TF fans are doing, are writing off the fans that disagree with them as "closed minded" and "full of hate", conjuring up images of homophobes and racists. This is ridiculous. Again, just because something is negative towards something doesn't mean it's wrong. Religious fundamentalists use this all the time to defend whacky beliefs; oh stop hating on our "Drown the fags" policy!!!
I really would appreciate it if people didn't get up to that here, I came here to get away from that on every other board, Beast Wars is my favourite series at the moment anyway. If you can't, then I'd rather there not be any movie talk at all, so I'll keep out of it.