Then why did the ending of that movie suggest that the story would of continued in the next sequel? I think they WERE going to get back to the Unicron plot but the movie did so bad that they went in a different direction with the Bumblebee movie instead.
Because, if Burnout is to be believed, they were going to make a bunch of "spinoffs" and "prequels" set during various period times, featuring the Transformers, though even then they'd probably most likely be pushed into the background some more just to focus on the historical humans. Because that's apparently how they think a "cinematic universe" works, which it kindof doesn't.
Yeah but there was also still going to be a sequel planned as well which got cancelled. And the problem with the whole Cinematic Universe thing is that it only works with fiction that was already designed to work that way in the first place. Avengers and Justice League has always been about characters from different stories coming together to form a team. That's not the case with Transformers where they STARTED as a team originally. The Bumblebee movie is the first time we've had a story focused on a single character and it really doesn't work because he's always been part of a team not a solo character. The only way they could really do a Hasbro Cinematic Universe is if they did a cross over with another Hasbro franchise like G.I. Joe because that's how a Cinematic Universe works is by bringing together characters who aren't normally seen together not separating characters who have always been a team.
You would have had to wait several years if they ever bothered revisiting Unicron. He was to be the TFCU's Thanos - you know, the big bad guy looming in the background who just did nothing for the large part of his actual existence in the fictional universe. Doesn't quite work when he's, y'know, the goddamn planet, but that gets into a whole different thing about how 'Unicron is the Earth' kind of invalidates the one critical thing that actually makes Unicron unique. In the meantime, you would have gotten absolute garbage like that atrocious looking WWII thing. As well as Bumblebee - concept art revealed it was supposed to involve the Vietnam War somehow.
So you'd rather see the movie ruin a team of existing combiners than introduce a completely new team?
But Dragonstorm were Autobots... and also equally wasted in the movie. Also are we ever going to talk about how much the movie took from the much better Transformers Prime? The concept of Unicron being the Earth, the idea that dragons really existed but were actually Transformers the entire time. Both of these things came from Prime and ended up also being in The Last Knight except they were done a lot better in Prime... Not to say they couldn't be done better if revisited again but just it's rather sad that a low budget cartoon series has ultimately done everything the movies tried to do but much better. Regarding these two things specifically... to keep this post short otherwise I could go on all day about how much better Prime is... (One thing I think the movies did better was Bumblebee being mute.) Unicron being the Earth: This is a pretty dumb concept to begin with and I think it limits what you can do with Unicron as a character. That being said I think it might be possible to make it work if it's handled the right way. I don't think either of them really did this but Prime got closer by actually DOING SOMETHING WITH IT! All we see in the movie is some horns coming out of the Earth and then NOTHING... It doesn't really add anything to the story. It builds up suspense for a finally that seems to have never come. There's a post credits scene with Quintessa and one of the horns that really doesn't give us any new information that wasn't already set up when the horns first appeared. That whole sub plot could of been removed entirely and it wouldn't change anything about the movie since it ultimately goes no where. Unicron in Prime had those avatar rock creature things whatever you want to call them. Which I still think is dumb and not at all what Unicron is suppose to be but at least that version of Unicron seems like more of an obvious threat than some random horns which if I just went by the story in the movie and ignored an other lore about Unicron in other media... I'd probably have thought that Unicron was some sort of protector of humanity and sent up his horns as a warning for incoming threats like Quintessa. Because they seemed to pitch the idea of Unicron in the movie as a warning to coming threats rather than a source of the threat. The only reason I know Unicron is a villain is because of other media he's appeared in but nothing in the movie by itself suggests that Unicron is anything more than a warning system for outside threats. The movie didn't even make it clear that Unicron was a character and not just another name for Earth. If Prime were my only knowledge of Unicron I'd have no problem understanding who Unicron actually is and that he poses a threat to humanity. A way I think this concept could be done better than Prime or TLK... Though I kinda doubt we'd ever see this happen. If you're going to do the reveal that the Earth is Unicron they should make him a bigger threat. Like as soon as the Autobots realize this they should be trying to evacuate the planet, as many humans as they possibly can and taking them some place else. Unicron should actually transform into his robot mode. They defeat Unicron some how, most likely using the Matrix... forcing him back into planet mode and either killing him so the planet no longer holds Unicron's spark or sending him back into Stasis lock. Maybe there could be some debate among the surviving humans if they should even go back to Earth after Unicron is defeated. That would make for a much more full and interesting story line than either of these have given us. The fact that I don't think they would ever do this means they probably just shouldn't make Unicron the Earth in the first place because any story that can't fully explore the potential danger that causes is going to severely limit themselves and what they're able to do with the character. So yeah Prime isn't perfect but they're still better than TLK just because they actually did something with the concept other than just presenting the concept and then ignoring it for the rest of the movie. When the present the idea that the Earth is Unicron and that's it, nothing else happens the entire movie that involves that character, literally ANYTHING would be better. Dragons are real and they're Transformers: Now technically I think Beast Wars did this first but seeing as how there were no humans in that I'm not sure how the existence of a dragon made it into human mythology. That does seem to be the implication though since TM2 Megatron and BWII Galvatron had dragon beast modes that's suppose to have some how inspired the legends about Dragons even though no humans were ever around to see them. There was also an episode of the G1 cartoon that dealt with time travel and going back to Camelot except in that episode there was an actual real dragon who was not a Transformer. None of the transformers who were in that episode could of been mistaken for dragons either, no one even had a beast mode. ANYWAY... Again I think Prime did this better with the Predacons. They were more developed as actual characters. Even Darksteel and Skylynx who had very little screen time and only appeared in Predacon's Rising at the end of the series had way more character development than the Guardian Knights. Hell if it wasn't for the toy line I still wouldn't even know who the hell the Guardian Knights were. I don't think they were ever actually named in the movie itself. It's not even clear who is and isn't a Guardian Knight. AoE had me thinking that Optimus was the Last Knight... but also that the Dinobots were knights... and then we meet these dragon combiners who are knights. Also we find out that the Last Knight wasn't even referring to a Transformer but instead was a human? Who the hell are the knights? I still don't really know because the movies seem to change what that means every five minutes. I don't feel like I can really trust the toy like to tell me their names either... except for the combined Dragonstorm because that's the one name that is consistent between the movie and the toy line. And I'm surprised the OP isn't having the exact same question about Dragonstorm as Infernocus. It seems like any number of Guardian Knights can combine to form Dragonstorm. We see this in the movie as he combines with a different number of bots a few times in the movie and the dragon mode just seems to get larger as more bots join in or smaller as the number of total Guardian Knights diminishes over the course of the movie. Except having an infinite number of different combinations that all look exactly the same except for the size of the completed combination is freaking impossible. Which is likely why the toy line didn't even bother to try. Most Dragonstorm toys is just a single character and not even a combiner at all and the one who is a combiner only forms from two robots. We see some other Guardian Knights in the toy line as well who rather than combining or turning into something like Dragonstorm from the movie instead transform into an entirely different dragon mode never seen in the movie even though the robot designs do seem to be inspired by the CGI models in the film. There was suppose to be 12 of them in total, only five of them actually have names... technically four because Talisman Knight isn't a name it's a character description being the one who gives Cade the Talisman in the movie. I'm also only counting names of individual robots not the combined Dragonstorm dragon mode. Anyway... aside from Prime giving us three actual characters with the Predacons... We also got a larger variety of dragons. Even ones who never made it into the cartoon... and I still kinda wish if it was only going to be three that we got Ripclaw or some variant of that mold instead of Skylynx. Not that I don't like Skylynx as a character, I just prefer Ripclaw's design. TLK only gave us 2 actual dragon modes and only 1 in the movie. Honestly even what we got in the toy line is better than what we got in the movie. The same is true in both cases but even more so for the films because I'm not just talking about quantity. The on screen version of Dragonstorm with 12 knights and any number of those Knights being able to still form a complete Dragonstorm just will never be possible in toy form. That defies all laws of physics. They might MIGHT be able to give us a Dragonstorm formed from 12 knights but you absolutely would need all 12 to make the combined Dragon mode. You can't make a smaller dragon if one figure is missing you're just going to make something that clearly looks like an incompletely dragon with parts missing. It might not even hold together at all depending on how important the missing bot or bots are to the structural integrity of the combined mode. Like you can form Devastator with a missing limb but you would not be able to form him if one of the torso bots were missing. There has to be something to connect to. Generally most combiners connect to the torso so as long as you have the torso the remaining bots can still connect with one or more missing. It would be pointless but you could technically do it. Without that torso to hold everything together there's no structure for the remaining bots to connect to. That's what I mean about some bots being more important to structural integrity than others. In comparison the Predacons are fairly accurate to their on screen counterparts, though Skylynx is bulkier in the show than his toy is. The movie also had the disadvantage of the CGI models being made first and Hasbro having to make toys based on that where as Prime the toys came first and the animators made the CGI models based on them so even though they both took some creative liberties the Prime Predacons have a much better shot at getting a more screen accurate figure of Skylynx with that bulkier design than the movie has of making Dragonstorm work as a toy. Oddly enough the other dragon mode in the movie toy line looks like Hasbro possibly developed the figure originally as a Predacon and then decided to remold the robot mode to make it fit TLK instead. Considering the movie made Dragons Autobots and Prime made them Predacons... I almost wish the Guardian Knights were called Maximals. Anyway... again I don't think either one really visited this to it's full potential and they both could of done better. Instead of only dragons, how about we add some other creatures from mythology into the mix. Also I think in order to really take this concept to it's full potential it has to be a Beast Wars style story line that's set in the past where these myths first originated from. Not all the way back in Prehistoric times but like Ancient Grease, China, England, ect. Have the Maximals and Predacons not be from the future but the past. Lets say they don't have the technology to scan for disguises yet and their beast modes are just how the Quitessons designed them based on native wild life either from their own home or from the planets where Transformers were intended to be sold. So ancient humans see them while they're in alt mode and they pass down stories about them that become our modern day mythology. This opens up a lot of possibilities for different alternate modes and transformations that we've never seen before. Dragons too of course but we had Dragons in Transformers before this concept about them inspiring our myths even existed. What we haven't seen before are Minotaurs, mermaids, centaurs, chimeras, manticores, walking trees... Creatures that were described as half human... they could of been in robot mode and actually just transformed into those animals. They could've mistake the robotic appearance for armor since humans at the time wouldn't have any concept for what a robot was but they would know about suits of armor... even if the style is very different from their own armor that is likely the conclusion they would come to is armored human not robot. So even without seeing a human body if they saw a human like torso with animal features mixed in they would likely assume half human half animal with body armor not robot who transforms into an animal because they don't know what a robot is. It also just occurred to me that even though humans have been making cloths from animals for pretty much it's entire history that some of those half human half animal hybrids could of actually been like the first people to dress in costume... I don't know. Anyway... I almost forget to mention the difference in the robot modes. Prime's Predacons look like actual cybertronians. Like how you would except them to look based on what they turn into. The Guardian Knights on the other hand... look like medieval human knights. Did they also inspire the design of medieval armor? Why do they look less like robots and more like just regular knights. I wouldn't mind this so much if the story actually bothered to explain why they look like that but it doesn't so we just have this group of Autobots who look totally different than any other Transformers. Even Optimus and Megatron who have some knight like qualities in their designs don't look quite as on the nose as the Guardian Knights do. They look like Transformers with a knight aesthetic rather than literal knights who happen to also be Transformers. That could incorporated into the story as well if humans don't actually have armor until they meet the Transformers and then they copy the look of Transformers they've met. I'm not sure what if anything could of made Infernocus better cause I'm not even sure what Inferocus was meant to be in the first place.
I agree. If the Guardian Knights were already puppets of Quintessa, then that would fit in better with what Lockdown said about the Knights having all been captured before Optimus over the centuries rather than the Knights being found on the bottom of the Atlantic. An evil Dragonstorm also would have been a challenging opponent for the Dinobots.
No... Pretenders are human shells that exist around the Transformers. I'm just talking about a robot mode being mistaken for wearing armor. Essentially this. Through different retelling of the same story eventually becomes this... Airachnid is essentially an arachne which is what that mythical creature is called though her top half isn't actually armor the description of them by early humans who have no concept for what a robot is would have misinterpreted her appearance as a human torso on a stpider's body wearing armor. Heck the "wearing armor" could even be dropped in most interpretations and just tell the story as a human torso with spider legs... I mean most images I found were fully nude. This is the closest one I could find that would match Airachnid's general description if you had to describe her without using the word robot.
Something that proves that giant robot demons composed of individual smaller robot demons can somehow manage to be really boring.
Exactly. Hell rename Dragonstorm to Predaking and it'd actually work well. Both a combiner like in G1 but also a dragon like in Prime.
