Think about this. Bumblebee and goldbug are the same character, but if they have goldbug be a seprate charcter - they will kinda have bumblebee in the movie due to his relationship in g1 but wont at the same time.
I don't really think so. I mean, even if they completely reinvent him as a character, but then you wouldn't have to use that name anyway. I don't think it's that great or well known a name to begin with, after all. Goldbug is so closely tied to Bee in character and form and history that it seems like a superfluous thing to do. It would come as just keeping Bee without actually keeping Bee, I think.
That's G1. Michael Bay probably wouldn't have an iconic character be reformatted into another just because of how his plot (or lack thereof) works. Goldbug would probably be generic Autobot #231 in an Optimus-flashback waving to the audience as he gets his face blown in by a Constructicon look-a-like.
Like I said, even if they completely reinvent the character, why bother using the "goldbug" name in the first place? I don't think it's that strong a name, and if the only reason it's being used is for a Bumblebee replacement character, that's needlessly tying it back to G1 anyway.
I don't know if you read Dan Gilvezan's autobiography, but that's pretty much exactly how he put it. A stupid name attached to a meaninglessly rebuilt character, solely for toy sales sake. Goldbug has been in Transformers iterations in the past as a throttlebot without having anything to do with Bumblebee. That's how he should stay if he were to ever reappear.
Why? Why would this ever happen? Changing BB to Goldbug might make some sense, but making him a new character just doesn't...? Why are you asking this?
Kind of Ironic that Gilvezan would say that, considering that "meaningless rebuild" is what put more attention back on the Bee-Bug character, after being mostly ignored for essentially all of Season 3. But yeah, he always did seem attached to Bumblebee as he originally was. I disagree with him, though. At least in terms of the G1 Cartoon, we had already seen "rebuilding" and "reformatting" or "upgrading" or whatever you want to call it as a way of showing a character had matured and grown (Orion Pax, Hot Rod, etc.), and given that Goldbug was meant to be a more confident and mature Bumblebee, it made sense in that context, and provided some growth for the character (though the series didn't last long enough to really capitalize on it) in a way that most characters never received.
Yeah, but then Bumblebee faded into the background as quickly as he had come back. Gilvezan didn't even know that the last episode of Transformers had been filmed until Chris Latta tapped on his shoulder and whispered it to him in a theater one evening. Plus, a lot of Gilvezan's contempt had more to do with sentiment than whether or not his character got attention, it seemed. He was perturbed that Hasbro would kill off so many beloved season one/two characters in favor of a glitzy new cast just for glitzy new toys. Even though Goldbug got him a few extra lines, it was just a contingency of Hasbro's imprudent money-making strategies. Needless to say, with his relapse into secondary casting and the gimmickiness behind Goldbug in any event, Bumblebee's transformation didn't feel worthy of being condoned as a growth of character.
Certainly in the Marvel comics Goldbug was given quite a good bit of time to show he'd 'grown up', what with him sorta leading the Throttlebots for a bit, getting Optimus rebuilt on Nebulos and running off with Blaster when Grimlock was in command of the Autobots. Pity really that he had to be changed back to Bumblebee just to promote his Pretender toy because as soon as that happened he seemed to lose his new character edge and just became regular Bumblebee again, retaining pretty much nothing from his temporary upgrade.
No. I like Bumblebee. Just maybe fix his voicebox and tone him back a bit to let some other characters have their moments. EDIT: Not to mention Goldbug being a dumb name.
