Ehren Kruger as the only writer made a great finale for a trilogy, minus the dumb girl. So when they were working on a reboot and abruptly changed it to a sequel with Michael Bay paid to return, it seemed like beating a dead horse, the new character designs and new cast made no sense, the dinosaur origin story contradicted the Cube, and Galvatron seemed tacked on. What's so stupid is that people alienated Kruger like it was his fault. He was asked to end a trilogy, then immediately asked to start a franchise from scratch, then asked to change it back to a sequel, so it's not entirely his fault. Bumblebee also has some inconsistencies because it was changed from a prequel to a reboot. Paramount should stop making financial decisions like this and just make movies that people will like.

 

Lmfao, ramming enemies head on is literally shitty low standards too. I prefer the Prime that took on 4+ decepticons in a Forrest compared to the loser who couldn’t kill Megatron when he was needed the most, leading him to end up dying like a pussy. At least Bayverse Prime died in the back. G1 Prime wouldn’t stand a chance against Bayverse Prime in a 1 v 1. Movie Prime would win in a fight. He's got the energon swords, a pair of guns, an Ion Blaster, and a vast knowlege of Martial arts. G1 Prime has an Ion Blaster and is powerful, but not powerful enough. in DoTM he takes out almost the entire Decepticon army single handedly, took out Shockwave, the Driller Killed both Megatron and Sentinel Prime with one arm, that's true bad ass. G1 Prime is just a children’s star  

 

Let's stay on topic. Arguing about which version of Prime is better has nothing to do with the OP.

 

...there were three Decepticons, not four; Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor.

Plus, this just ties back to why DOTM should have been the end - Prime had nowhere to go as a character. Second film had him realize his place as the Last Prime in killing Fallen, while the third film has him rise above the title after he learns his immediate predecessor as Autobot leader; Sentinel Prime, was a corrupt traitor with delusions of godhood over what he considered lesser beings. Not to mention the problem of power creep because you can't just keep ramping up Prime's overall strength/power/whatever, since in the second film he basically took down a demigod and in the third he was up against another Prime proper. How do you top that?

It does bear pointing out that the question ultimately is unanswered because after DOTM, the fact Optimus is the Last Prime and he has the Matrix means absolutely nothing. Suddenly the only thing that matters is that he's now inexplicably one of these Knights or something that had absolutely no bearing on the previous three films. What is the actual, functional difference between a "Prime" and a "knight"?

They had no clue where to go for the story after DOTM, but greed dictated they push on and somehow try to use a franchise that didn't have a foundation laid to support a growing narrative. That's why AoE tries to go scorched Earth and have the bare minimum of connections to DOTM while simultaneously trying to explain its own new universe instead, when they should have just gone the whole way and rebooted from scratch to avoid the blatant fact they're ignoring the first three films when it comes to what was already established about Transformers history, like how The Creators ultimately were pointless if you already had The AllSpark doing their job but better.

 

Uh, what? Second film he took a nap alright.

Also the last few sentences implies that Transformers as a franchise has weak villains overall; which undermines the potential. There should be a library to pull from.

Because of your justifications for ROTF and DOTM beforehand that made Optimus look like he had character development... I'm taking the devil's advocate here and say the difference between a knight and a Prime is that one of them is a higher rank than the other.

Kind of like what's the difference between a librarian/Prime.

So what was the point of Vector Sigma and the Quentissons in the franchise then to begin with?

 

You’re giving me reasons as to why DOTM should have been the end of the Bayverse, but.. I don’t disagree with that? DOTM should have been the end, there was no reason to bring Bayverse back except money. AOE and TLK were cash grabs, no doubt about that. But they’re more TF movies, so I’m not complaining. But.. can you blame Paramount? Of course it was going to happen, money is money at the end of the day. They kept Bay because at the time, wasn’t DOTM in the Top 10 highest grossing movies OAT back then? Ofc it should have ended but it was obvious it wouldn’t be the end after the huge success in 2011.

 

Oh, I'll blame Paramount in full for that, because at the time it was a golden opportunity to reboot the franchise while it was popular and actually build it into something that could potentially take on the MCU with those numbers. But this required a lot of work on the ground - setting up a foundation for a stronger narrative and actually planning out sequels instead of flying by the seat of their pants and shoving in plot devices every time to drive the plot instead of following up on plot threads from previous films.

Instead, they took three years - keep in mind that it only took two years for ROTF and two years again for DOTM - and the best they could do was kill everybody and try to start over fresh. They really were dead set on avoiding the very word reboot to the point when the death knell of the bayverse actually came by stating Bumblebee was not in continuity with the Bayverse, the specific words were 'new storytelling continuity' as opposed to, y'know, "reboot".

There's such a thing as stopping when you're ahead, but Paramount legit thought they could get away with sheer garbage thrown at the screen - especially when it came to AoE because that film was built to exploit the opening Chinese market, what with the contracts with the Chinese government giving Paramount a higher percentage of profit per ticket sold and the pandering to the Chinese in general. And then they tried repeating it with TLK by cobbling together scripts and trying to use marketing gimmicks like bringing back as many absent characters as possible and putting Anthony Hopkins in it just so his name would be on the poster.

 

I honestly don’t know who decided that there needed to be a 4th Movie but I feel like Hasbro stopped caring after DOTM. Just look at the Toylines. The first 3 films had large lines of figures from legends Scale to Leader Scale with toy only characters being created (out of retools and entirely new molds) in order to spice up the roster of figures. In the AOE toyline we got very few original figures besides the new Dinobots and we only got 2 villain figures despite the fact that the movie was ripe with characters who were literally designed to be army built. TLK faired way worse with most of the toys being repaints/remolds of AOE figures and only 3 of the Decepticon’s in the film getting toys at all.

They only reason I bring any of this up is that it makes it clear, to me atleast. That the decision to make more Transformers films came from Paramount, with Hasbro deciding to make toys in order to cash in on the movies. Seriously, think about it, without SS we wouldn’t get toys of KSI Sentry, KSI Boss, Lockdowns soldiers, Stinger, or Bumblebee and Hot Rod’s WW2 looks. It’s because at the time, Hasbro didn’t care and due to Hasbro not caring we got 2 really shitty movies with total disregard for the franchise in general.

 

I still recall that at one Botcon, the Hasbro rep's answer to why they never made a Stinger toy was literally 'we thought nobody would want a toy of him'.

 

The one time we actually wanted a bumblebee repaint.

 

I don't understand the needs and wants of the fandom at every step of the way.

If DotM had not killed most of the Decepticons, fans would have complained that the Bayverse versions of their favorite characters were continuing, and how we would continue getting metal shard Decepticons. Fans would have complained about more Witwicky adventures, more N.E.S.T., etc.

If they rebooted, then some fans would apparently not like that either based on the post I'm responding to.

And if they continued in a new direction with new characters, threads, designs, and lore, while still continuing the story of Prime and Megatron...like AoE...well, fans would have complained. And indeed they did.

The only certainty about any possible post-DotM film is that many fans would have hated it. Some were never going to like it just for existing. Darned if they do and darned if they don't.

 

Yeah, I don't even think they were different ranks so much as different roles. Nor would I call Prime killing the Fallen and being the last Prime "character development."

And I'm glad someone can see another important parallel between the films and the cartoon regarding the Transformers' origins.

 

Because Dark of the Moon to a largely satisfactory degree managed to resolve the character and story arcs (such as they were). The Decepticons are defeated. Cybertron is lost so Earth is truly their home now. Sam is at peace with himself and what he does. Optimus has also made peace with himself because Megatron is gone and he can go back to being - or rediscover - who he was before his entire world and society shit the bed.

 

But we totally want 12 Bumblebee repaints, right?  
I cannot believe Hasbro actually said that.

 

Yeah, it was completely stupid - even a red Bumblebee would have been better than nothing.

 

Let's be honest, if you eliminate 2007 and ROTF; DOTM makes a perfect kickstarter Transformers film in its own rights. With enough modifications, it couldve easily been the 1st film to a series.

 

I can totally believe that someone who watched DOTM would want Transformers movies to end.

 

"If you made it a different movie, it would have been different, maybe enough to be a first."

Well yeah.

 

I mean there was this thing, but Im not exactly a fan of the mold to begin with.