Why does optibotimus still seem to be under the impression that its not a reboot? Hasbro said it, one of the producers said it...not getting it...

 

hes having a hard time facing and the fact they didnt include the megatron scene says it all

 

Ok, Lorezo. That's it.

 

Many of the fans knew it was possible. Unfortunately the guys making the (earlier) movies didn't. I bet Bumblebee was a shock to them.

I guess Knight's movie was meant be a standalone to keep the fans interested in the franchise while they figured out how to salvage the original continuity, and it turned out to be the Animated of the live action movies.

It probably turned out to be a bigger success than the guys at Paramount expected (a good thing, imo. It probably gave Knight more freedom to do his own thing with less studio interference, or insistence on keeping to the original continuity - such as it was) and now they don't know what to do.

Do they scrap the original continuity? (There are probably more than a a few higher ups at Paramount who are reluctant to do that, for various reasons.).

Do they ignore the Bumblebee movie? (But it's success can't be denied).

Do they somehow try to shoehorn Bumblebee into the original continuity? (I bet this would have been the favourite option, if only they could just figure it out).

Do they continue both movie continuities? (This is probably where they're stuck at,at this point.)

 

1. Bumblebee and the triple changers sharing the same aesthetic as Prime and the autobots on Cybertron.(they are all Bay as hell including Bumblebee)
2. No 1979 Camaro at the end of the movie to bring in the 2007 movie.
3. No agent Simmons.
4. No Travis Knight saying its "not a reboot" only to incur nerd rage and flip flop after the movie's release.
5. No army of zombified anti-bay TF fans who care more about "statements" than the prequel content of the film which cant be erased or unseen.

Give me all those things and Ill agree its a reboot. Othewise its just a Solo or Rouge One style addition to the Bay franchise in my opinion regardless of what somebody said after the fact. Another thing to consider is where will it go from now ? A 2nd Bumblebee movie that contradicts the 2007 movie would make the series a reboot. But this movie alone by itself is prequel. And if they do a TF6 with Unicron or more "Bayhem" game over for the reboot crowd.

 

So therefore, by your own logic, Bumblebee is in fact out and out a G1 movie, in the G1 continuity, because Prime turns into a Freightliner truck at the end...

Awesome! Thanks for confirming we finally have a live action G1 movie!  

 

To the above comments: Whatever Bumblebee ever officially becomes (reboot or prequel), you can’t deny the movie is extremely prequel-like and could be considered as one.

And what I’ve noticed is a lot of people have selective hearing. If something points toward it being a prequel, such as Travis Knight’s comments or prequel elements, it’s ignored and called nonsense. If something points toward it being a reboot, it’s 100% believed on the spot as truth. Most people said Lorenzo was lying and crazy when he said it’s a prequel, but now he mentions the “r” word and he’s automatically believed?

I honestly don’t know what to think right now. We’ve had so many conflicting reports.

 

This makes me happy to hear. I might see a Transformers movie if they go down this path.

 

Going by the Bumblebee Wiki, 'It was developed as a spin-off and prequel, and later declared a reboot of the franchise.'.

The original plan was to make it a proper prequel - until the TLK fiasco.

 

It's a movie caught between originally being a solid bay entry and being retooled into something more 80s styled. I can forgive them the triple changers simply because they needed to convincingly look like they transformed into two seperate vehicles and I suspect, being they were the main villains of the film, Shatter and Dropkick were designed first and as such weren't "g1"-ified more for the sake of cost cutting during the retooling given most of the CGI budget most likely went into those Cybertron scenes.

Plus, they had identifiable vehicle kibble up the ass. In case you haven't been paying attention to the movie designs in the previous films, this is a shockingly rare commodity given how humanoid and organic looking they thought the robots needed to be. Where's the kibble on Knight Prime that's identifiably part of a truck other than the flames on the chest and the exhaust pipe shoulders?

No, because how dare Bumblebee change alt. modes to maintain a disguise since S7 knows he's a yellow Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle by that point. The Camaro mode was purely so the film could serve as a prequel if it bombed and was the last entry.

However, a counterpoint to all that is I think you've forgotten Prime's there too - the whole point of coming to Earth was to regroup the Autobots and build a base. Because there is no supplied reason why Prime would somehow fly off the Earth with absolutely no means of managing this whatsoever, there is no reason to expect that the audience is supposed to assume such a stupid idea.

Literally nobody noticed that was the same actor until it was pointed out. And what's funny is the movies already managed to make this trick even stupider because if you believe 'young Simmons' is about as concrete a reason why a film isn't a reboot, then you must logically then assume Tucci's character in AoE is Merlin the Wizard because guess who plays Merlin for no apparent reason in TLK.

How do you know that wasn't a stock answer he had to give, because Hasbro had already established back at Toyfair 2018 that the reboot was coming after Bumblebee no matter what, in different wording (which is why I suspect everybody conveniently forgot that), and it's a lot better for them to go reboot with Bumblebee if it proved popular enough (which it did), as opposed to say they're rebooting with Bumblebee and then not should the film bomb due to TLK fallout. It was nothing more than Hasbro/Paramount straddling the line between reboot and not reboot in order to make a decision later based on how well the film did.

You were the one who steadfastly held to Lorenzo saying that it wasn't a reboot...until he literally said it was a reboot less than a day later and thus you flip-flopped on him and called him a habitual liar because he no longer supported your argument.

Or you could draw your own conclusions instead of blindly going off nothing but face value of things that support your preconcieved stance and dismiss everything that contradicts it, just like how you supported Lorenzo...right up until he stopped supporting you.

This is where you really need to actually pay attention to the films and assume some rather obvious conclusions:

1. Prime sends Bumblebee to Earth to establish a secret base because there are no Decepticons on the planet. Except several Bay films establish that no, the Decepticons actually have been on the Earth anywhere between the age of the Egyptians, to the middle ages, to as recently as the 1960s. Not including Jetfire. Or, you know, the fact Bumblebee was on Earth at all during WWII.

2. The way Sector 7 acts around the Transformers suggests a complete and utter lack of ever actually having encountered a cybertronian before. Except, y'know, Sector 7 literally being formed in response to the fact some old guy found Megatron frozen in ice. And they keep Megatron in their home base next to the giant freakin' cube Hoover Dam was built to conceal the energy readings of. And all modern technology being reverse engineered from him. Except when they are talking with Shatter and Dropkick, no mention of Megatron or the Cube or literally anything else Sector 7 should already know after having kept Megatron and the Cube secret for over 100 years.

3. The whole thing Shatter and Dropkick are attempting to do with the radar dish? Going off bayverse continuity they do not need to do this. Because in case you forgot DOTM, it was heavily implied Soundwave was key in the Decepticon subterfuge that got the Apollo missions ultimately scrubbed in the 1970s and has been cultivating human allies ever since. Why couldn't the two triple changers just call him instead of having to go all ET Phone Home? Or, you know, the massive Decepticon army on the dark side of the moon. And don't give me some bullshit about radio frequencies over long distances or whatever, since Blackout is still in the Middle East when he receives Frenzy's radio call about the AllSpark halfway across the world inside a massive concrete structure and deep underground.

4. Why would Blackout and Frenzy need to access top secret servers to get information about Megatron when Decepticons literally built the internet? Having intimate knowledge of the backbone of a wireless connection basically gives you backdoor access - and the first film clearly establishes quantum mechanics at work since Frenzy uploaded a virus while accessing S7 material that knocks out the national defense network, but not the shortwave stuff that Glenn eventually uses to contact the air force later within Hoover Dam.

The thing with Lorenzo is that he's made it very clear he believes in the bay films. And he has to know how dumb he looks by confirming BB as a reboot after his infamous 'I don't know what a reboot is' statement some time back. But he makes that statement right after a near constant stream of nonsense and jargon that seems to imply Bumblebee is not a reboot and the Bayverse is still going on?

It's very similar to how Mark Hamil made very public statements about his negative opinion regarding Luke Skywalker's portrayal in The Last Jedi...until suddenly he recanted. Almost as if he was contacted by lawyers from a company with a net worth in the billions that would stand to lose a lot of money and public face if somebody that high profile was going against what the aforementioned company was trying to project.

Hasbro and Paramount stand to lose a lot if they don't handle the follow up films after Bumblebee well - the ghost of TLK still lingers and Paramount can't afford another high profile disaster of that magnitude. Establishing Bumblebee as a reboot got them a TON of brownie points, but then Lorenzo comes in and makes a bunch of statements that not only contradict that, but cause widespread negative attention to the franchise? Him contradicting himself with the reboot confirmation afterward and then promptly shutting up out of the blue suggests some arm twisting was involved.

 

At this point I'm not trusting any of these remarks, they've gone back and forth so many times over the past few days. I

These are my thoughts exactly. I don't think Lorenzo's "reboot" remark carries much weight since he just said they're working on a sequel to TLK. I mean, he himself admitted that "he doesn't know what the word reboot means." Why should we trust him to use that word properly?

At the moment, I'm completely neutral. I don't think it's a reboot or a prequel, I don't even think the filmmakers know yet. It's in a weird state of "canon limbo" that could go either way.

 

I always thought it was ferngully the last rainforest meets robojox.

 

The last TF LAM I saw was AOE. I'll watch BB without paying directly for it on Amazon Prime or Hulu. I don't trust anything from this portion of the TF media.

 

How did you get tomorrow's news today?

 

Admittedly, a different relationship isn't a bad idea in the slightest. I do want to see Elita again in the future (that's just my opinion, though), but it doesn't have to happen this time. I'll be happy to see any Transformer couple get a movie dedicated to them (as long as their relationship is well written, of course), especially if it's a brand new couple. Whether it's between pre-existing characters such as Optimus and Arcee or even entirely new characters created specifically for this universe, a whole new paring could be very interesting.

 

I am really getting the impression they don\'t know what is going on with the future of these movies.  

 

I want to see a Arcee x Optimus Prime relationship for once st least unlike what they did in the old cartoon and the comics which would been them instead of that

 

Just wanted to update, reached out to Paramount & Hasbro and they had no comment.

 

Instead of arguing over this endlessly (I know, I know, we're on a message board...), can't we just take the mish mash of prequel \ reboot elements in Bumblebee as proof that these guys don't know what the fuck they're taking about, or what the fuck they're doing?