[Lazer]

I don't know much about the Transformers. I did enjoy the animated movie enough to buy some of the toys from that era. What I liked about the movie though had a lot to do with the human elements the Transformers were able to convey towards the humans that the humans were genuinely powerless against (at least until they got their own exosuits).

The father and son mentor-ship between Kup and Hotrod is still at the core of that movie and progressing Hotrod into a leader of sorts, giving a somewhat useless hothead some foresight and accountability not to forget courage and responsibility (keeping the human characters alive).

Of course we all saw that sort of thing totally shifted away from Kup and Hotrod when the live action movies came out. Almost all of the tug and turmoil lies on Optimus' shoulders alone, and to some extent that secret government agency who enable the autobots to even pick sides in an all out alien battle...yes I have come to a crossroad at which point after 30 years they have been relegated to Aliens instead of just robots. This doesn't have to be the only way to relate to the characters, but their sentient existence is only possible through their life force of which is very limited after the destruction of their home world and almost their entire "race?"...

Transformers didn't stick with me very long after the animated movie craze faded away. I didn't complain when the live action movies started changing the main character archetypes around because I always had the animated movie to look back to as the source of why I enjoy them at all. I only own two Transformer figures and wouldn't you guess they're the newer incarnations of Kup and Hotrod (Rodimus) which I leave in vehicle mode to remind me that that's when Kup is teaching Hotrod a lesson of some sort.