The Transformers films by Michael Bay offer quite a few Scrappies:
The films in general:
- Sam Witwicky himself is probably one of the least popular lead characters in film history, largely for being as whiny as Daniel Witwicky at many points, and for taking time away from the Transformers, the whole point of the franchise. He increasingly becomes a Jerkass as the films go on, and he's a Pinball Protagonist, with most of his roles in the films amounting to "hold the MacGuffin of the minute and run around with it for a while", and then somehow being the one to kill long-time villain Starscream in the third film despite his general uselessness. Being played by the oft maligned Shia Labeouf doesn't help. It's telling that him being written out in the fourth film and implied to have died in the fifth met almost no fanfare or outrage whatsoever. More than a few readings of the films have suggested that even Bay doesn't seem to like him, as he's consistently framed with a contempt normally reserved for a Hate Sink.
- Sam's parents, Judy especially, are loathed by just about everyone for drawing even more attention away from the Transformers with their pointless escapades and serving to shoehorn in some of the most inane, lowbrow, and unfunny comedy in the series. Its says a lot when you trail behind Skids and Mudflap in heroic acts and overall likability. Their portrayal is made even worse for viewers familiar with actors Kevin Dunn and Julie White's other work, as both have given acclaimed comedic turns elsewhere, which just makes the cringeworthy routines they're made to play out in these films even more irritating.
Revenge of the Fallen:
- The biggest examples are the twins, Skids and Mudflap. In addition to being accused of being ethnic stereotypes, they have absolutely hideous designs. To make matters worse, they had more screentime in ROTF than Optimus Prime, and were rather poor attempts at being the Kid-Appeal Character when the former Trope Namer, Bumblebee, was still around, making them completely redundant. Dark of the Moon was originally going to contain a scene where they were killed off by Sentinel Prime, but was cut for pacing (the scene appears in some of the licensed goods such as IDW's comic book adaptation, based on an earlier cut of the movie). Ironically, said scene was viewed by many as something that might have Rescued Them From the Scrappy Heap by virtue of being a massive Tear Jerker.
- The Fallen falls under this, partly for demoting Megatron to The Dragon, but also for his uninspired evil plan that over-the-top 60's villains often used, having a strange grab bag of unexplained godlike powers, and having less personality than a flapjack. It doesn't help that the Fallen was curbstomped in less than a minute by Optimus, barely even scratching him despite how overpowered he previously showed himself to be and having been established as the Cybertronian equivalent of Lucifer. That, and he's never shown to have an alt-mode. Even Michael Bay himself called him "kind of a [expletive] character."
- Sam's roommate Leo, who is incredibly obnoxious and irritating, not to mention pervy even by this series' famously low standards. Doesn't help that outside of connecting the group to Simmons, he has zero plot relevance and proves to be completely useless for the rest of their adventure. Several audiences cheered when Simmons tased him. Thankfully, he didn't appear in the next movie, in which he's not even given an indirect mention.
- Alice, the Decepticon who has somehow managed to take the form of a college aged girl. Not only is this out of nowhere development completely unexplained, but she's also used for some of the series' most blatant fanservice. And then there's her lackluster robot form, which inexplicably comes complete with a human tongue, which gets some rather gross coverage.
Age of Extinction:
- Tessa gets a lot of flak for constantly blaming her father and the Autobots for nearly every bad thing that happens to her even when they are attempting to keep her safe from Lockdown. She's also a Damsel Scrappy whose cowardice makes things harder for everyone, after the first three films at least made token attempts to make the female characters useful. And though the series had already been harshly criticized for the blatant portrayal of women as eye candy, Tessa's fanservice has been called out as especially bad since she's a minor. Thankfully the actress was not, but that then begs the question of why the creators would make the character underaged if she was to be sexualized, even if it's much less explicit than that of the previous films. And finally, being played by Nicola Peltz of The Last Airbender infamy does not help, with the general consensus being her acting didn't improve between these two projects. She was relegated to a short voice cameo in The Last Knight because of all this.
- Ditto for her boyfriend Shane, who is equally despised for reminding Cade of his relationship with Tessa even when they are under attack. The fact that he carries a card with a description of a law that authorizes his relationship with a seventeen-year-old girl in his wallet like a condom certainly rubbed viewers the wrong way. The fact that the universally maligned scene in which he smugly reveals this is completely unnecessary to the plot just left many viewers scratching their heads both over why it was ever included in the film, and how the writer could think this would endear anyone to the character. Saying lines like "I'm not here to save your daughter, you're here to save my girlfriend" make people side with Cade on wanting him away from Tessa. He didn't even show up in The Last Knight and it's implied that he and Tessa broke up.
The Last Knight:
- The JPL engineer for being a painfully unfunny character with a grossly bloated amount of screen-time that he mostly spends condescending other, more confident people. Not helping matters is him being a Straw Scientist, dismissing the entire plot as "mysticism and hobgoblins" and trying to save the day with an actual scientific solution, which even makes sense, but is doomed to fail and make things harder for the real protagonists.
- Jimmy also gets hated for being yet another painfully unfunny black comic relief and served no purpose in the movie's convoluted plot, showing that the audience have had enough of them in the other four movies.
