Ian S said:
Yeah, I think Bay's been unfairly maligned for the Transformers movies myself. Looking at the old show, it's equally as stupid. And yet as you say, despite that, it's somehow above criticism for some reason. The Bay movies are big, dumb fun, but yet I can watch them as an adult (at least the first one) and not feel guilty because of it. I can't quite put a reason why, but somehow the way it was done made it acceptable for me to enjoy them, whereas I'd be embarrassed if someone caught me watching the old cartoon.
I cannot comment on Revenge of the Fallen because I have not seen it. I can comment on the Nostalgia Goggles blinding everyone to the reality of the Transformers.
The show from the 80s sucked because most cartoons from the 80 suck. Many of them existed to whore themselves out to young kids. You can count on every show unraveling along the same story lines: Decepticons are looking for sources of energon, the super macguffin for the series. The Autobots catch word of this and try to stop them. The Autobots and the Decepticons use the battles to reveal the new character suited for completing that task, who may or may not appear again depending on how popular they are. Somehow the good guys win and the bad guys retreat. Then there is a bullshit moral at the end, similar to the "Now you Know stuff" from GI Joe.
What people often do is confuse the old Television series with two things. Best Wars and the Marvel Comic.
Beast Wars took the established characters and turned them into animal machine hybrids, but it also told an interesting story with complex character development and in a way that if you missed one episode, you were not lost. Having the focus on 10 characters (later 18) instead of 80 allows you to have better stories, better development and logical conclusions to things.
As for the comic, they do not remember the American made one, but the British. The American comic iteration existed solely to whore the franchise out and had plots just as nonsensical as the show. In the British comic, you have great story arcs, nice character development, and sense of menace from the Bad guys. It was from the Marvel comic series where you learn about the war on cybertron, how Optimus is as a leader (effective, but learning), that Megatron is truly a badass who the other decepticons follow out of fear more than anything else. You never got that sense from the 80's series.