Paramount’s Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is making a killing at the box office, but the sequel to 2007’s blockbuster has fallen under fire for featuring two shape-shifting robots as “racial stereotypes,” according to The Associated Press.

Some filmgoers are complaining that Skids and Mudflap, who speak in street slang, cannot read, and sport gold teeth, are racial caricatures designed to poke fun at people of color.

It is a claim director Michael Bay vehemently denies.

“It’s done in fun. I don’t know if it’s stereotypes – they are robots, by the way,” he says. “These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it… [They] were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”

Bay added: “Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything. It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.”

Actor Reno Wilson, the voice of Mudflap in the film, is defending his portrayal of the robot.

Mudflap, he says, is “an alien who uploaded information from the internet and put together the conglomeration.”

“If he had uploaded country music, he would have come out like that. It could easily be a Transformer that uploaded Kevin Federline data. They were just like posers to me.”

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $16 million from midnight showings on Tuesday night and took in a total of $55 million on its opening day.