If you’re a Transformers fan like me, you might’ve been disappointed by the redesign of the characters in the 2007 movie.  I very much was.  I was willing to accept some redesign, to be more modern, and in a few cases, to be more practical (like with Megatron and Soundwave).  But the movie took it way too far.

To give you a taste of how it could’ve looked, I present this video clip.  It’s the fight scene between Megatron and Optimus Prime, the one with the famous quote of “One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall”.  This starts as the original cartoon and switches into 3D CGI.

CGI rendering of G1 Transformers clip

[Update: 7/8/11]

Apparently Hasbro took the video down off their site, for whatever reasons.  But it’s still on YouTube:

A fan took this video and replace the audio with music from the original G1 cartoon series, which makes it even better:

It’s not the highest of CGI quality (due to budget and time, I’m sure), but it shows that the characters in the live-action movie could’ve been made closer to the originals and still looked good, especially with a high-dollar budget.  So why did Michael Bay and crew decide to totally change the design?  The new look for the Transformers in the movie didn’t have much personality, as they all looked too similar and generic.

Until someone does a live-action Transformers movie RIGHT, I’ll always wonder what might’ve been…