I think that they wanted to make the Autobots "deep" - so they went the easy route and made the Autobots evil instead. This is not the same thing as actual depth of characterization. Now, a handful of evil Autobots and a handful of grey Autobots could make things interesting if and only if the other Autobots were portrayed as quite heroic, by contrast. The problem is, IDW coasts on nostalgia, and it doesn't show its "heroes" being genuinely heroic nearly often enough.
Anyway, so I think that they realized that they made their Autobots a huge pack of jerks who don't understand how to handle prisoners, so they... sort of shoved the Decepticons off to the side, because if they showed normal Decepticons being remotely sympathetic, it would make the Autobots look even worse?
This whole problem started with Beast Wars, though Beast Wars wasn't quite so bad about it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-04-02 12:09 am (UTC)Anyway, so I think that they realized that they made their Autobots a huge pack of jerks who don't understand how to handle prisoners, so they... sort of shoved the Decepticons off to the side, because if they showed normal Decepticons being remotely sympathetic, it would make the Autobots look even worse?
This whole problem started with Beast Wars, though Beast Wars wasn't quite so bad about it.