...it's not that complicated: bumblebee started development as a straight prequel, then about halfway through production the last knight tanked and the executives decided to give travis knight free rein...

...the film we saw is the product of that process, a reboot hewn from prequel foundations, and it purposefully contains elements of both so paramount have liberty to spin the franchise either way...

 

Okay. Yeah it had potential. To me the first hour is near perfection. The second half of the film with the knight stuff is where it gets iffy.

 

Exactly. I don't get why this is so hard for people to understand. I mean I do understand that there are some confusing elements within the film itself, but if you just keep this aspect of the production in mind, it's simple.

 

It's kind of funny how the movie-verse is cannibalizing itself here.

The G1/animation crowd hated Bay movies for essentially re-writing the entire thing. But that was okay: the movies' success "saved" the entire franchise, after all. Right?  

The mythology that Hasbro and Paramount will stand behind: the one that makes $$$.

If pre-teen girls in sexy outfits scores well with test audiences, that's the vision.
If conversations about marijuana-laced brownies and masturbation sells the product, lots more coming!
If messy, janky-camera battles with explosions get people excited? Yeah, more of that then.

The tragedy of all this "let's just throw darts and see what sticks" strategy is that Paramount ends up throwing hundreds of darts and calling it a cohesive movie (or should I say Bay is the tosser?  ). So when the first Bay movie did phenomenally, it's really hard to tell the director to tone down the masturbation comments (it's a kid's film, ain't it???). It's hard to tell Bay to stop cutting battle scenes with a Ginzu knife in the editing room and then splicing it back together (badly).

All's we's knows is that TF 2007 did well, so keep on doin' dat!   And this is how you end in the train wreck that was TLK (and arguably a few more TF movies before that).

Paramount doesn't know what it's doing. The best thing that can happen to the TF franchise is for Hasbro to shop it to another studio.

 

I mean let’s be real, Disney will probably absorb Hasbro soon enough anyway. At least we’ll have deathshead back.

 

I think it's more so people want it to fit perfectly one way or the other.

 

Bumblebee not having a voice is paramount to Bayverse. (Adopted by TFPrime, but definitely inspired by Bayverse) Stop grasping so hard. You got a fake reboot, deal with it. In reality it was a planned prequel, slightly altered, then designated a reboot after the fact. This is what happens when you have group of producers who have no idea which part of the fandom they want to please the most.

Bees aestgetic was total Bayverse. The head especially. But he had the car hood chest instead of the G1 car roof chest. He didnt have the G1 car hood feet. And as a jeep he even had the damn Bayverse wings. Stop sugarcoating it, he did not go with the very G1ish bots on Cybertron. He stuck out like a sore thumb. That scene was almost like a damn crossover comic: G1 meets Bayverse. Bee had no voice for almost the entire movie. And when did you get hold of a copy of the paramount contract ? They didnt have to feature a 40 year old Camaro thats not being sold at the dealerahip. And on Megatron, all I gotta say is they could have brought him back, but they didnt. That would have pushed the reboot claim over the top, but no, it didnt happen.

 

Oh wait, I forgot you don't know the difference between an aesthetic and using another design as an inspiration. Knightverse Bee was inspired by a mix of his G1 and his Bayverse incarnation, but he defintely doesn't have the Bayverse aesthetic. You can see in the image below, there is a clear difference between the design aesthetics from the Knightverse and the Bayverse that if you put Knightverse Bee with the Bayverse designs, it would look severely out of place. We had this conversation before, but I know you won't budge on it even when multiple people have proven your argument to be null in the past.

@SilverOptimus had confirmed this a few weeks back. There is a contract in place that Paramount has to feature Camaro even if it's for a minute.

The movie takes place in 1986. How is 1979 Camaro 40 years old from that time period? Why does the car even need to be sold at the dealership?

You know, if ignore the time and money they would have had to invest in Welker to voice Megatron (the time and money they didn't have). Or the fact that most of the fandom would have preferred Megatron not to be a retool of Prime like Soundwave and Shockwave.

No, this is what happens when a continuity was destined to fail actually failed and the filmmakers were smart enough to react to what the audience wanted and ditch the continuity.

 

I like what someone at TF Con said: in WWII that wasn't B 127. It was B 126.

 

Dont got much time here so ill just touch on the picture. On the top I see 3 G1 looking bots and a Bayverse Bee with rounder car parts due to the shell of a VW. The VW doesnt make it G1. What makes it G1 is the transformation and configuration of the car kibble. Travis Bee is still Bayverse, just rounder parts. A VW is rounder, so duh. That dont make it fit in with the other 3 based off actual G1 bots. And for the record, as cool as that Cybertron scene looked on its own, I wish it didnt exist. Pandering to whiny Gwunners at its finest. For that just give them their own movie. If I could edit out that part of the movie, and replace the Prime hologram scene with a picture of Bayverse prime talking on a monitor from Cybertron, I gladly would. It would be the "prequel edit". Somebody please do a fan made version and gut that crap out, Id buy it in a heartbeat.

 

Actually it was zb-7 but hey, who’s counting  

 

It's not just the car parts that are different though. Every other part is also different. Did they really have to cover up his forearm with a flat plates? Or give him round boots? Not if they were trying to conform to the Bayverse aesthetic. If they were truly going for the Bayverse aesthetic, they would have just used this Bee (which was a real concept that was developed for the film):

Oh don't worry, that's going to happen now that Bumblebee proved G1-inspired designs work in live action.

 

I'm not the kind of guy that can sit here & read all this bullshit. I don't care about anything but the final movie. I don't care what happens behind the scenes, I'm not interested in dvd special features except for added footage integrated into the movie, I don't care about their opinions & I especially don't give a rat's ass about the actors.

I just wish a team like the ones making the MCU was working on the Transformers. The MCU kicks ass, DCEU kicks ass, the new Godzilla monsterverse is kicking major ass (huge Godzilla fan here) but the Transformers cinematic universe is total shit & Bumblebee shouldn't be the main character.

What they should have done is make 1 character the main focus for 1 movie. The 1st movie could have focused on Bumblebee since he was first to Earth. The 2nd could have focused on Optimus Prime & the Matrix & The Fallen, the 3rd could have focused on Ironhide, the 4th Wheeljack creating the Dinobots etc. But instead they went too far with Bumblebee & they fucked up the entire franchise just like Disney fucked up Star Wars. I don't give a shit about future Star Wars or Transformers movies. I didn't go see Bumblebee, Force Awakens or The Last Jedi & I wish I hadn't wasted my time & money on The Last Knight.

 

all i know is that Bumblebee is a very good standalone movie 

 

I still don’t understand why there’s an argument to be had. The people in charge have said it’s a reboot. Like it or not there’s not a darn thing any of us can do about it. Denying what is at this point a fact is like denying that Beast Wars is a continuation of g1. It wasn’t that way to begin with, and in all likelyhood, at least one person wasn’t happy that that’s what it became, but plans changed and now, that’s just how it is. If sequels continue to be made from bumblebee that ignore the other five films aside from the same little Easter eggs and homages that every new tf universe has, 20 years from now, the fact that an argument was had at all will be regarded as just as ludicrous.

 

M8, they’re doing exactly what you described. Bumblebee is the first one on earth, this is the first movie in a new franchise. If a certain producer is to be believed, the sequel will build on it by adding Optimus to the mix, followed by a film that introduces the rest of the characters from the opening bit of bumblebee.

 

"Where is Optimus Prime!?"
(Tears out Bees throat)

Thats like asking someone to point you in the right direction, but you pull their finger off so youll never know.
Making Bee a mute, again, is too dumb & confusing for it not to be a prequel.
Dude borrowed from Bay hard where it almost merges the 2, but it doesnt because its a sel contained universe...but continuity & consistency is important.
Travis makes my head hurt.

 

Fandom: so is it a prequel or reboot?
Owner and producer and director: well it started as a prequel but then we realized we wanted to take it in a different direction so now its a reboot even though a few things are left over. We’ll be using it as a starting point and from now on things will be different.
Most of fandom: oh ok cool, the old thing had a (insert feelings on bayverse here) run, but it’s time to move on like we do every few years in this franchise that’s all about reinventing itself every so often to tell new stories and stay fresh.
Rest of fandom: but it has a few things left over that make it seem like it potentially could be a prequel, and we really like the thing you were doing before, so we’re gonna just keep saying it’s a prequel.
Me:

 

Highlighted the important important bits. Also, about the last part, I suspect that Knight pushed Bumblebee a lot further into reboot territory than the higher ups at Paramount expected.

What Blitzwing did was kind of dumb. But maybe Decepticons are used to that kind of defiance from Autobots and have a standard response to it? I was wondering if the dialogue was recorded when Bumblebee was in prequel mode.

Also, I've never been a big fan of movie Bumblebee losing his voice, but it worked for Bumblebee.

It is a prequel. If you look at it through a prism. Or squint really hard.

 

Right?? I’ve made this same post like 3 other times, but I’ll do it yet again.

Hasbro at Toy Fair last year: The franchise will be reset after Bumblebee.

Hasbro at Toy Fair this year: Bumblebee was the beginning of a new storytelling universe.

Viacom CEO: Bumblebee reset the franchise.

Lorenzo(the man who claimed he didn't know what a reboot was and has been saying it's a prequel): Bumblebee was a reboot and it's sequel will be set in the new timeline we set up.

The actual film: A massive list of blatant contradictions(Example: Sector 7 knowing nothing about Transformers) to the Bayverse with very minimal references to it that come off more as easter eggs(Example: young agent Simmons). Let's not forget the scenes with Bayverse connections that were re-shot to distance the movie from that continuity.

The DIRECTOR of the film: We’ll be using this as a reboot going forward and use some pieces of the previous continuity going forward but just do them better, and we’ll be rebooting the characters as well so they’ll be much different.

What more do we need to hear??? It obviously started out as a prequel that they then turned into a reboot. Why is this conversation still going on??