Totally agree. I love Transformers and grew up playing with the toys and watching the cartoon. I would love to see a movie featuring the characters that actually captured the look and essence of them; it would have to be a lot more campy than the Bay films, though, and he doesn't seem interested in that style.
A lot of the popularity of Transformers originally came from the comics and TV show, very much Marvel properties at the time, and I've always felt it needs to be interpreted through that lens of being a comic book property, instead of just sticking giant toys on screen, so I'd love to see some of the talents behind the Marvel Cinematic movies tackle Transformers. Maybe if Disney buys Hasbro...
I feel like Transformers is 15 years behind everyone else. Current Transformers movies seem paranoid people won't take them seriously, so it's all grim and hyper realistic with what passes for jokes being few and far between, and unfunny. There seems a belief amongst many executives that the public have trouble suspending disbelief when faced with ridiculous concepts.
Meanwhile at Marvel, movies like The Avengers have shown you can be very faithful to silly comic source material, with costumes that look like they do in the books, and far-fetched plots with lots of jokes and comedy, but instead of alienating audiences, they love it.
If the script is good, people will buy into it regardless of how crazy it is. People buy into far stranger things from Pixar than giant talking robots, and with the right team you could do Transformers that aren't that different from how they were in the 80s and it would still look great and generate huge numbers at the box office.
Comic book movies can always be interpreted in many ways - Batman has had the cinematic visions of Burton, Schumacher and Nolan - all very different, but so far the only Transformers movies have been Bay's, movies with barely anything in common with the source material. Once he's out of the picture and someone a decade or two younger is given the reins and a clean slate, we could see some very cool films come along.
