Inspired by @Coffee's threads, how would you portray Ultra Magnus in the reboot?

To be honest, I'm not too sure about this one. Minimus Ambus was a cool concept, though I don't think it'd make much sense to stick around in the reboot.

Perhaps go the Animated route, and have him be Optimus Prime's commander, rather than his subordinate? It'd be a nice change of pace from what we've gotten of late.

Or better yet, go the Robots in Disguise route. Have him be Optimus Prime's brother who went rogue when he wasn't chosen to bear the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. Heck, you could tie in the whole "obsession with rules" if you want as well.

But that's just my thoughts. How would you guys go about it?

 

Use the "Transformers Hero" concept for him, which was an Autobot super-soldier. Make him a truck cab guy (either Minimus or someone else) augmented into a big buff Captain America type.

 

Some explanation why the "White Optimus" inner robot looks so Decepticon-ish with dark blue face and crimson eyes. :X

 

I’ve actually been envisioning that for Star Saber. Though with him being renamed Wing Dagger and then being transformed into Wing Saber.

I’ve always noticed how the two characters have similar color schemes(I’m talking about the Energon version of Wing).

 

This, basically.

 

Actually I wouldn't mind a take where he was inspired by the autobots and would up having the body be power armor to help fight some of the larger Cons. Hell even make him not from Cyberton and have it where he's the hero of his own planet or country or how ever you wanna play that.

 

I would like him to be a more full formed character. I felt he ended up like a caricature by the end of LL.

 

I think I'd make him legitimately powerful for once. Magnus seems to get Worf'd in every continuity - presented as a mighty character, only to be taken down with relative ease by, let's see ... the Sweeps, Megatron, Shockwave, Overlord, Predacons etc.

Even my original toy of him got stepped on and broken by my brother.

 

That would be interesting. Have him basically be Agent 113 as Ambus (keep the green mustache rather than blue faceplate, but the red eyes are a must). During battle, he manages to "infiltrate" the Autobot base, put on the armor, win the battle, then show back up with the Decepticons. He could help build up the legend of Ultra Magnus from behind the lines, in the same way as the DJD was built up.

 

He is the brother / best friend of OP. Which was brainwashed by Megatron.

 

Ambus won't be back in the new series. The inner bot is going to be WFC Siege one.

 

Oh cool! I wanted to do another one of these, but didn't want to seem like I was spamming threads.

Sorry about the walls of text-- I actually find this kind of stuff extremely fascinating. It is basically what I love about Transformers: the ability to tell the story in all these different ways. It also spurs a great kind of creativity in the community, and its just fun to imagine what the new universe could be. Other franchises have AUs, we get potential canon.

But anyway, Ultra Magnus is such a difficult one to do differently/better from his IDW depiction. Like there are definitely aspects of him I would fine-tune and avoid for the reboot, but otherwise I am drawing more of a blank for this one than the others.

Because of how much I'm drawing a blank on how to do him, I think I'll focus on what I wouldn't prefer to see him as in the reboot.

If I were to write him in the reboot, I would avoid making him a bit of a caricature, as others have said. When I first read mtmte I didn't notice it as much, but upon rereading it, yeah, he comes off a purely comic relief until the Tyrest arc, in which he gets LOADS (heheh) more depth. After that his conflicts with Rodimus kind of die down a bit as well, and I can't remember much of his relationships with the other characters aside from Megatron and Ten after that.

I think I'd do something different from the Minimus Ambus thing. I love Minimus Ambus-- like seriously, I have ZERO issues with Minimus as Magnus, unlike a lot of people-- but it is almost impossible not to retread the same ground in making him Ultra Magnus again. The idea is that we should see new shit done with these characters in the reboot that we didn't see in IDW, kind of like how Furman treated early-IDW in relation to Marvel. I also wouldn't make him leader of the Wreckers like he's been in later continuities. In Dreamwave the only reason he was added to the roster was because they were afraid using Impactor would result in a copyright issue with Marvel-- also because they didn't really care about the Wreckers and just used them as cannon fodder for drama. Ultra Magnus as Wrecker Leader in Prime was pretty what. He just doesn't fit in with what the Wreckers are about usually. To edit his character to fit in with the Wreckers would also be a little eh imo. Mostly because I feel it would remove some of what's true to Ultra Magnus' character. I also don't think I'd do the Optimus' brother thing either. I feel like it makes him too much of an extension of Optimus, and I personally prefer the two of them being unrelated. Making them siblings almost makes it feel like their arcs will be forced to rely on each other, and if not, and their arcs focus on other things, making them brothers comes to feel like unimportant padding that should probably be cut during editorial. As for the RID Magnus thing, eh. You COULD go down that route, but it also kind of goes against what his character was initially-- being someone who actually feared taking command. His debut appearance established him as someone who didn't WANT the Matrix, and almost argued with Optimus on it while he was on his deathbed. Also I always kind of viewed RID Magnus as a separate character altogether. I mean, he really is a separate character in that he's God Magnus, but yeah, you could always just use God Magnus. I mean, I'm the least GEEWUN person I know, like I'm hoping to see Armada Cyclonus and Demolishor spring up sometime, but I do think there is the risk of trying to write characters differently at a level where you might as well be writing a different character altogether, and my feelings on the God Magnus arc kind of fall under that.

Here's something I'm split on-- should he still be a part of the Tyrest Accord or not? When I try to think of what aspects of a character should remain to keep the bare essentials of who they are, I usually think back to the original Transformers Universe bios. Like, Optimus needs to be heroic, and put others before himself. If he stops being that, he stops being Optimus, and at that point you're just writing a different character. You can edit his age, his position in the hierarchy, and hell, even his function. But he should still be recognized as Optimus. With Ultra Magnus, he doesn't HAVE to be the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, but goddamn that's how he's been for a while, and without that, it's difficult to think of much else to do with him.

In the original toy bios he was given the title of City Commander. He was in charge of Autobot City, but what does that mean if you want him established before building an Autobot City? What if it doesn't make sense for there to be an Autobot City in the new reboot? In the Marvel Comic he was, truly, just a soldier. He was second to Xaaron, the Autobot Resistance Leader, and was literally just a massive bruiser who was pointed at and sent towards places of conflict. He was pretty cool, but not much in the way of personality. He had these sick rage moments fighting Galvatron, but he didn't have as definitive a personality as in IDW, and much of that personality-- that vehement following of the rules and OCD tendencies, completely stems from his role as an enforcer for Tyrest.

I think that's what makes it so difficult for me to think about what to do with him. He's either gonna be just a soldier and have the way we've known him for ages stripped away, or he's gonna be an enforcer again at risk of doing the same stuff as before, if not just making him a watered down version of the IDW character, and nobody wants that. So shit, I dunno. My main ideas.

- Super Soldier/Just a soldier: I like this a lot, and I think the Captain America route fits him perfectly. I also really like the idea of taking huge, larger than life characters, and putting them into more grounded roles kind of like what TFA did with Optimus. I like him being just a soldier who's being really good at fighting gets him recognized. Like, maybe he starts getting recognized for the wrong reasons by High Command. Maybe people misconstrue his battlefield prowess as tactical genius (and not him just being big and good at busting heads) and he ends up getting promoted to positions he is wholly unqualified for, resulting in some bad times for all. Maybe he's not even that great of a soldier, but he's just cool looking and kind of charismatic, so the higher ups want to use that as a beacon of morale, regardless of how Magnus feels about it. I think regardless of what can be done with him in the new reboot, he should take a step down from the High Command role and be more like just one of the guys. I've got this creepy image of him wandering into a room and finding the prototype of the Magnus Armour High Command plans to create out of him once he inevitably dies and being both repulsed and terrified by it.

- City Commander/Mayor or something: This one popped into my head and yeah, I know it sounds weird. Take his stickler of rules tendencies and make him a hard-ass governor or mayor of a neutral city. So like Dai Atlas and the Crystal City but without the mysticism. Maybe he's was a soldier who went through something tragic and decided to become a desk-jockey full-time, further leading him to take control of a small population of refugees, or a colony. I dunno, this is just a way to do something different with that original function while leaving room for some aspects of his IDW characterization. I think it could be funny having this massive dude constantly breaking his tiny desk by accident, only for him to sigh, and pull out one of nineteen spare desks out of storage. Also having someone who's clearly bred/built for combat plainly choosing not to engage in combat during a war is instantly intriguing.

- Tyrest Accord again, but different: So there are some directions you can take his enforcer role different from where he went in IDW. Maybe he's an enforcer for both sides-- maybe he doesn't wear the Autobot badge and acts as a neutral force of justice outside the war. Maybe he is offered a position by the Galactic Council and actually takes it. Show the journey of a Cybertronian working with/serving under organics of that nature. Maybe we just see him show up now and then to pull some arrests and act as a character that gets consulted every time a war crime occurs. Who knows? I've always liked Magnus as a cop character. Perhaps rather than being THE Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord he is AN Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord. Like, maybe he has competition in the form of Star Saber or Thunder Clash, and needs to make a certain number of arrests to keep his position. Maybe Tyrest is dying, and he's next in line to take up the mantle of Chief Justice, despite not really wanting the title to begin with.

 

Let's have the suit be an intelligent AI overlay/symbiote named "Ultra", which borrows some of IDW's "unkillable lawman" idea and marries it to Robcop a little.

Instead of eating people's brains it has an obsession with law and order and forces its wearer into upholding certain directives, with the caveat that it does so while being flavored by the host's personality. So Ultra Prowl would be obsessed with the rule of law and logic, Ultra Ironhide would be a brash cowboy style gunslinger, Ultra Bluestreak would try negotiating first before shooting, etc.

 

He doesn't need to be special at all. He's just a soldier. That's it. If there is an inner robot just explain that he looks like prime because he's from a similar region as Optimus. Or that Alpha Trion is just unoriginal when he rebuilds guys from the brink of death.

 

There’s certain things from IDW I’d like to keep. I really like the idea of him being this legendary galactic lawman Wyatt Earp type. I also felt like it would be in character with that type of lawman to be pretty OCD.

However, I like minimus as his own character, I wasn’t crazy over him being Magnus and the whole line on Magnus bearers.

A bot similar to Optimus with power armor could be cool. I’d like to see him be one of the best soldiers in the Autobot Army, but still not be able to go toe to toe with the likes of Megatron by himself.

 

Two different clone bodies from Optimus Prime, Nemesis Prime and Battlecore Prime, were made by Shockwave and Jihaxus. After activation, Battlecore Prime's moral coding evolved to the point that it began to question why it was committing atrocities when it "felt" wrong. He would defect to the Autobots, but his image as that evil white Prime that was slaughtering troops would be cemented in the legends of the Autobots. Seeing this could be a problem, Sentinel Prime had a copy of the Delta Magnus armor worn by Magna Convoy, mold brother to Optimus Prime who wished to hid that aspect of himself, to hide Magnus' identity.

A spy named Minimus Ambus is discovered to see the ruse, but is crushed under Magnus' newly armored boot before he could relay the "rebirth".

 

Someone who has time to deal with that.

 

I like your second idea, with Magnus being the retired soldier who's a full-time desk jockey. It makes for a funny image, as well as an interesting contrast to Optimus Prime.

 

The IDW version mixed with the Marvel UK version.
A follow-the-rules yet badass butt-kicking enforcer.

 

Concept: His name is "Magnus", but other bots call him "Minimus" as an insult.
After he gets the armor he becomes Ultra Magnus.