Transformers 4 in 2014

[Aotrs Commander]

I have a simple rule, humans in Transformers movies should be equivalent to humans in Japanese Godzilla movies.

Baffled scientists, an ineffectual military, and the masses running in terror. If you must include a human to sympathize with, they're inevitably children.

I agree with you in principle, though I wouldn't go so far as to say they have to be children (and I'd rather they didn't, honestly; I never liked that idea, even as a child myself).

Again, with my unashamed bias towards the Uk comic showing, they did it quite well. They used children once or twice, but the "Spike" expy of the comics (Buster - Spike, his older brother, showed up much later, and they even made a crack about him saying he was glad he wasn't just a cartoon character in the editorial) was the largest recurring character, mostly because he kept getting caught up in events. But they also had the long-suffering GB Blackrock, an industrial mogul who became sort of an ally to the Autobots.

There also Circuit Breaker, who after being electocuted by Shockwave while defending one GB Blackrock's oil rigs, ended up (in true Marvel fashion) with a pathological grudge against all Transformers. (She was actually only a direct threat to the Autobots, because they wouldn't hit her back, whereas the Decepticons would have shot her without a second thought.)

Or Donny Finkleburg, an out-of-work actor the government basically hired to pretend he was the Robot Master, because somehow they thought having giant transforming robots under the control of a lone manica was less frightening than having two races of giant alien robots. He ended up working - albiet a little unwillingly - for the Decepticons for a brief time. He also is most notable for being the instigatior for explaining what (puttup), which Soundwave had always punctated the mention of any Autobot (puttup) with on the letters page, actually meant. That had been driving us readers all mad for ages...