I was hoping they would have started over with a reboot for the movies instead of prolonging things. This will be a mash up of more things we have ever seen, and seemed like it is just pissing on the original source material, so I think it will suck, but hopefully I'm wrong.

At least the Bayverse fans are still getting some love I guess, but I don't think this was the love they were looking for. Wasn't this supposed to be the Bumblebee movie part 2, and a different movie was being made for Beast Wars? Nightbird is second in command, really? The Japanese robot Megatron steals and brings to life. RID Scourge could be interesting. it feels like a throw everything against the wall and something will stick film, and I haven't seen many films I liked that do that. These types of films seem to be all over the place and the plot suffers horribly. I'll be surprised if this movie does well.

 

Enter Beast Wars

 

Excited for a new movie!

 

From the descriptions that are floating around it sounds like this Scrouge is based on Cybertron Scrouge (the fiery theme) and Predaking from Prime. There's also smokestacks involved so maybe they put parts of RID Scrouge there, too...

 

It kinda sounds like we have an Animated Hotshot situation, put all the previous versions together to create something new and distinct. Except for the G1 versions oddly, and the Beast Wars one I guess, but he barely counts.

 

As long as he's given character and done well, I'm fine with the new concept for him.

 

This movie is seemingly a hybrid of the “Bumblebee sequel” and “Optimus Prime movie” ideas that were batted around last year. There’s no sequel to TLK that we know of, and at this point, there likely never will be, given how much money it lost for Paramount. The upcoming Beast Wars movie is a completely separate thing that’s been put on hold for the time being (probably so Paramount/Hasbro can test the waters and see how well RotB does). There’s also an animated Cybertron movie being released at some point.

 

He actually has elements of G1 Scourge, as not only does he have a goatee, but he is a Hunter/Tracker, which is what Scourge was introduced as in the movie. This takes that to a new level as making him more like a trophy hunter.

 

Apparently the Beast Wars movie was going to be about the Incas and they mixed it with this movie that was a Bumblebee sequel. I think it will set up an actual BW movie spin off and a more G1 focused sequel, maybe.

 

On a side note, lowkey hoping for a continuation on the Unicron and Quintessa storyline one day...

To tie loose ends ofc

 

Having a rouge Transformer party that's focused solely on the goal of hunting Autobots and Maximals without some mysterious force behind sounds great actually. I wonder if they will hunt Decepticons and Predacons, too. It would make a lot of sense.

 

I hope they've got an actual plan in place for this new continuity of where it's going and it isn't like the Star Wars sequels were they are improvising as they go along.

 

I'll give you the beard, but I don't remember G1 Scourge ever actually... doing that. I don't really remember him doing anything other than claim the matrix and be a victim of Starscream based shenanigans.

I like it, it forces them to use other villains. I welcome it. Bring on Deathsarus, Sideways (I know but he wasn't named in ROTF) and the DJD.

That's always a bad thing, it's just that they pretended to have a plan when they didn't. The original trilogy wasn't planned despite what George says.

 

Read the info again, they say he collects insignias from all factions.

 

Do you know any details on how creative control worked for the first 5 or 6 movies? I had the impression Hasbro had little control after a film goes out of preproduction but something about that reasoning sounded off.


Anyway, I thought the Bumblebee movie was the litmus test for reboot/prequel, are they still that undecisive? Well, at this point the main big relevant character limitation would be just Megatron.

 

NOTE: The following comment is really, REALLY long and quite a bit of it is a rant. For those who want the cliff notes? Here they are:

This was unexpected. I'm more cautiously optimistic for the movie than some but there are definite problems I can see rising up like this film being potentially too bloated, the potential of it reconnecting itself and by extension Bumblebee to the Bay films which would in turn neglect the several problems that would come with that and all in all it seems like Paramount could've learned the wrong lessons. On the other hand, we've seen films be able to juggle several characters well, at least we don't have Bay in the director's chair, the idea of live-action Beast Wars is still awesome, the fact it's set in the 90s could be intriguing and if done well, this could be the big leaping off point for Beast Wars that the 07 movie was for the brand itself back then. All in all, we just have to wait and see.

Now for those who want to see the more detailed response? Read further.

Well this was certainly a surprise to wake up to. I honestly thought we were still some ways away from getting a title reveal and yet here they give us a title and a whole synopsis and sufficed to say... it's a lot to take in. I mean we've heard of how a Beast Wars script was in the works at Paramount along with the script for the next Transformers movie and when we heard that the latter was being developed first, I don't think we expected an announcement for something that sounds like the two ideas were mashed up or maybe the Beast Wars script is a prequel to this tale they're telling and they're really hoping the box office numbers will allow them to get to it. This story sounds like a lot is what I'm saying and has the risk of the movie basically becoming exactly what I fear a Bumblebee sequel could be like which is an overstuffed explosive punch-fest that seems to be under the impression that the reason why BB's box office wasn't as stellar as previous Transformers outings despite still being profitable is that there wasn't enough "Bayhem" and that it wasn't the fact that people are sick of the Bay films and have been wanting so desperately to move onto something else and for the longest time, it was thought that Bumblebee was going to be a prequel to those movies and of course it's focusing on the most over-marketed character so most people clocked out until it was said to be a reboot and then Lorenzo di Bonaventura kept muddying the waters with all his conflicting interviews which surely didn't help matters for either the people who want to see the Bayverse continue or those who were desperate for a proper reboot.

That being said, I'm... cautiously optimistic about this. Unlike some posts on this very forum, I'm not cringing with worry mulling over how this movie is going to be hell that's about to be unleashed but I'm not overly excited to see where this goes. To be fair though, this could be a mixture of me being rather sick of the overreactions and excessive nitpicks every piece of Transformers media and most especially its film output gets and the fact I haven't been hyped for a Transformers movie in four years ever since The Last Knight which to me at least was not just disappointing but it was the movie with the title of "X: The Last Y" I actually full-on hated. Hell it seems to be continuing down the route of being coy about if this is a rebooted universe or something that's just crowbared into the Bayverse judging from that detail about how this will show how Prime became the "leader" we see in the Bayverse which is odd since Prime in Bumblebee just acted like Prime while the Bayverse turned Prime into a bloodthirsty psychopath who frequently Leeroy Jenkinsed his way into fights and I have to say I am SO not for seeing how Prime darkened as a character if that's what they mean because knowing Paramount, this could so easily be screwed up to the point where we're kind of right back where we were before Bumblebee and with that, I'd say it's a good starting point to speak about the problems first since that's what everyone else is doing but before I do, I should lay my cards bare so people know where this is coming from.

Obviously being on this site, I am a Transformers fan but when it comes to the movies? I've had... complicated feelings on those and some of the opinions I have could be considered controversial. For instance, I didn't really care about the 1986 movie. As far as I'm concerned, that thing is good for the final battle between Optimus and Megatron, the soundtrack and the characters it introduced and that's really it. The 2007 movie was okay, it wasn't amazing especially on rewatches but the foundation for a franchise is there. ROTF is a disaster but it's only really that because of the writer's strike and what that led to as far as the film's production was concerned. DOTM is marginally better but it really falters as a final movie to what was supposed to be a trilogy at the time. AOE I will still defend every so often as being better than the previous two sequels because while it's definitely flawed, too long and has some very questionable elements? It also does at least try to fix the problems that have plagued this franchise with a greater emphasis on character, the robots get more screen-time, Lockdown was a genuinely cool villain and look, they may only be in the movie for a bit but the Dinobots are awesome and it set the stage for an interesting sequel... that never happened. TLK was where I broke on the movies, at the time I tried my damnedest to look at the positives and genuinely appreciate them for what they are... but I couldn't with this one because this was AWFUL. A rushed, cluttered as all hell mess that fails as a sequel because it's still the same story as the previous movies and throws out ALL of the improvements made by AOE, fails as a starter to a potential cinematic universe because it confuses gigantic scenes of exposition and such for careful set-up and planning and really just felt like a grab bag of various elements from other successful movies that were thrown in because Paramount was desperate for a hit. I've tried time and time again to watch that movie and search for positives but there is just nothing there...

And then along came Bumblebee where I went into the movie with no excitement. I had cautious optimism due to the trailers and the fact that Michael Bay was FINALLY not going to be directing one of these but I still basically was expecting this movie to be nothing more than the same tired and overdone formula I've seen throughout these movies. I left that theater feeling like it is not just the best of the live-action Transformers movies but it's also the best Transformers movie and a good movie period. The acting is well-done, the characters are likable, the story is focused and intimate and has those E.T. vibes that the first movie was aiming for but couldn't quite grasp at least to me. Every piece of fanservice in the movie was not distracting and felt deliberate and while we moved on from Charlie sadly as a remnant of when this was supposed to be a prequel to the Bay films, it felt like the story mattered to Bumblebee's development and the development of that character. Oh yeah and it also was a reboot which is a smart move to make because with all due respect? You can't really connect the previous movies to each other at all. You can try certainly and people like the insanely talented folks at IDW have tried to make this universe work through comics and so on but quite frankly it all has fallen flat because ultimately, I have NO desire to explore this universe because the movies which are what matter most are terrible and every attempt to make it better still reminds me that they're intrinsically tied to this universe that can be best described as Transformers as told by someone who cares for leaving 13-year old boys with boners and shouts of excitement while chugging Monster Energy and punching holes in dry wall than it does for telling an actual story.

And I'm not gonna lie, Rise of the Beasts (Which for the record I don't think is a good title really.) sounds like the sequel I feared we would get because you see, Bumblebee to me was a fluke. A well done fluke but still a fluke. It was a movie that benefited from how Paramount really didn't seem to meddle with it and thus Travis Knight was able to make the movie he felt most happy with and the decisions that were made either as edicts from Hasbro and so on were integrated in a way that benefited the movie and didn't just make it feel like a toy advertisement. However it was still made by Paramount who falls into the same traps that studios like Warner Bros. and Sony often do which is that as soon as they see some success? They fail to see that success partially came from them not sticking their fingers into the pie and thus for the next movie, they've worked out how they'll make "enhancements" that will make the movie supposedly better while failing to see they were exactly what helped to kill interest in the series. I also see this as Paramount looking at the modest success Bumblebee had and thinking to themselves that the reason for that was that it was lacking in elements that the films were known for having while ignoring that it lacking in those elements was what SAVED that movie and that the box office was due to us having for the past couple years movies that audiences finally grew tired of due to being the same type of movie every single time. Hell, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said something close to this in an interview that followed not too long after Bumblebee's release if anyone remembers that and if not? I included a link to it. In fact while we're on the subject of Lorenzo, let's remember all the times he pretty much was tripping over himself with all the different explanations for what Bumblebee was. Hasbro at first said it was a reboot as did the crew... but Lorenzo kept saying that it was not a reboot... until he didn't and said it was but that they were still gonna do Transformers 6... until he didn't and then said this was a spin-off of the Bayverse... until he didn't and then said this was just it's own thing... until he didn't and said it was actually a Marvel movie.

That last one is a joke mind you but the rest still happened, it's clear that at Paramount even with TLK being what it was coupled with the growing negativity for these movies, they still don't want to let the Bayverse go, they still see those billions with a big fat "B" the two films that preceded AOE have made and I guess are thinking in this ever evolving landscape with movie series like the MCU still doing gangbusters and now that Star Wars is taking its break after making four movies that each broke at least a billion with the only outlier being Solo that this is their chance to try and reclaim that box office... by doing EXACTLY what hurt them in the first place. I mean let's break down some of the stuff this movie is gonna have. First we have Transformers tied to human civilization as we're going to see the Incas through the eyes of Cybertronians. I'm assuming this ties into the beast stuff but... we've been through this. ROTF? We see ancient humans being squished by the Fallen. DOTM? Cybertronians are tied to the moon landing. AOE? The creators of the Transformers killed the dinosaurs and apparently the Dinobots must've shown up there. TLK? Arthurian lore is real and Transformers have lived through every major event with Bumblebee EVEN being involved in WW2 because the continuity is some drunken scribble on the back of a pizza box. What I'm saying is that I am SICK to death of Transformers being tied into our history to the point where the one movie that has a good reason to do so I already now have zero interest in this plot-point. This movie is making a promise for bigger action set-pieces which on its own isn't so bad... but they\'re doing so while throwing in Beast Wars but oh, it\'s not just Beast Wars, we also have motherfraggin' TERRORCONS. In other words, we have a grand total in this movie of four factions and depending on how they execute this if they decide to include Decepticons? This means this movie would have FIVE FACTIONS! Five factions that bear in mind, are gonna have more characters than what this announcement has already told us which means it is very and I mean VERY likely this could return to what we saw in the previous Bayverse movies where the Decepticons were disposable props with little-to-no character despite being the main villains of the damn piece! I mean this is what Bumblebee so expertly avoided with Shatter and Dropkick, hell even the bot that did die so quickly, Blitzwing, was really cool in his brief appearance and showed hints of character. The only disappointment was they all died but these are robots, they easily can be rebuilt and hey, people forget that one of Blitzwing's most popular iterations has the face-changing ability with each face having a different personality so they could've done something with that if they wanted a villain through all the movies. Now don't get me wrong, the idea we're gonna see Scourge is cool and he could be done really well... but I don't trust Paramount to allow for a villain that actually lasts through the movies especially with the news we're presented here. Not to mention that on top of character dynamics we already have, we have to establish two factions of characters, their dynamics and then how this new fifth faction affects this war and GAH! This feels like such a bad move and while maybe, just maybe the argument could be in theory "Well they're relying on people to get the skinny on the Maximals and Predacons from Beast Wars, natural pop culture osmosis and/or the Beast Wars characters that will be appearing in the Netflix show."? They miss that not everyone will have seen Beast Wars, that the Netflix show is a SHOW and that it's more for hardcore Transformers fans and the fact this is still a Bumblebee movie sequel that's gonna have all this in it. To put it simply, this would be like if after the first Iron Man, they jumped not to Avengers... but CIVIL WAR and as such had to try and explain all these characters and such that no one knows quite yet in a movie that should be focusing on being a tighter film that at the MOST could expand to have more of the wider Autobot-Decepticon conflict. At the very least, this film sounds like it should be happening later after we get a proper sequel and that Beast Wars movie that we heard about because then, you have enough set-up for the audience to care and if the worry from Paramount is "But the box office might not be good because of TLK?" then here's an idea for them, perhaps maybe they should STOP playing coy about if it's connected or not to the Bayverse and just say that it isn't and if it is actually connected? I've said it once, a dude by the name of Autobot Burnout has reflected this sentiment along with several other fans, I've said this time and time again and it bears repeating but this time in all-caps...

LET! THE BAYVERSE! DIE!

Please for the love of Primus and all that is good and decent in this world Paramount and Hasbro, leave this behind, it is not worth it anymore. I get that the Studio Series are selling well, I get that there's nostalgia for those movies, especially by those who were kids when they came out that are growing up now, I get that those movies were successful at one point since DOTM and AOE both made a billion dollars but you guys really and I mean REALLY need to understand this. People are SICK of these movies. TLK underperformed and not in that cheeky "It's a flop because I don't like it." sense, it genuinely underperformed especially when compared to the box office of those other movies and the budget it already poured into the movie and the marketing budget and of course there's that matter of if people don't like the movie then they probably won't give enough of a crap to go out and get the merchandise and that's not even mentioning how mainly the only thing that was bailing you out beforehand was the worldwide market because when one looks at the domestic box office numbers, they were on a steady decline with AOE being pretty much agreed upon by people to be the film that China saved since otherwise it was on its way to being where the franchise finally fell and that part of the reason TLK failed was that it was both a mess and that it didn't really catch on with those markets. And look I'm aware of the big elephant in the room and that's the fact that if it wasn't for the Transformers film series, the franchise would've remained in stasis as this niche nerd thing that maybe would get comics every so often along with a new cartoon but otherwise continues to live perpetually in obscurity. However...

That job is now DONE. Yes they made Transformers popular again and we have Animated, Prime, the Generations line, Rescue Bots, War for Cybertron, Fall of Cybertron, Robots in Disguise 2015, Cyberverse, whatever that new Nick cartoon will be, the Netflix shows and more to show for it and in a good chunk of those, they've done everything the movies have done but WAY better. Not all of them mind you have been that great but still, they're around and the point is clear as day that we really don't need the Bayverse anymore, the main purpose that Hasbro set for it has been served and as it has continued for longer and longer? I've come to the conclusion that not only is there no point to the Bayverse anymore but that as it goes on, it keeps proving itself to be at best either one of the most meh parts of the brand that really only has action scenes to its name and at its worst, it's giving people the wrong impression of what the brand is and has resulted in changes being made to other parts of it to make it more like the movies that in turn make the franchise worse if you ask me. Say what you want about the inundation of G1 and how tired you may be of that but let me tell you in the years that followed 07, people were getting SO tired of Bumblebee being a mute sports car robot with racing stripes, Prime being elevated to near godly status with several moments that are there just to remind you how badass he is, the focus on making the fights more brutal and in your face even during periods where they don't need to be and just this general attempt to lean into the movie aesthetic far more than what was needed and I mean I get it, the Bayverse was successful and this is a franchise made for children so the idea of adapting characters to be more like their film counterparts makes sense to keep some familiarity which will hopefully draw them in but it still became a problem and that's just getting into it more from the general perspective. You then cover what's in it for the older fans and that's where you find more problems. There's no sugarcoating it, while IDW tried their absolute best to reconcile all these issues and make this universe palatable, there really was just no saving this universe which actively seemed to spit in the face of being coherent and as a result there was this bizarre disconnect with the expanded material where while you ultimately had some good Transformers stories done by people who cared about the brand... it was with an overdone aesthetic in a universe that really didn't provide much to go off of and it had that problem where a character's whole characterization could be given in the comic or game and not the movie which means you are required basically to read supplementary material for the sake of understanding the characters... which could then promptly change personality because it can't even make the process of getting into its EU feel like a rewarding experience.

It is why when Bumblebee was said to be a reboot, a collective sigh of relief was let out all across the fandom by various people because by the time we hit TLK, we were all exhausted by these movies and had resigned ourselves to the idea that these were all we were going to get as far as cinematic Transformers experiences were concerned and that the best we could hope for is maybe we can get some more cool music for a playlist, some occasionally cool action, ILM getting pushed to the brink which means whatever film they work on afterwards will reflect that growth and thus the effects will be stunning and that the film could be slightly less garbage than the last one but other than that? Any hope for these things to be anything but an overly long bundle of explosions, frustration, cariactures that even the early 2000s would do double-takes at and disappointment. What helped even more was Bumblebee actually being a really good movie that not only showed what another director who understands character and story could do for the franchise, it also basically did the whole "young adult with a weird alien friend" story in a way that ran circles around the first, there was a balance of humans and robots, the humans themselves had actual characterization that mostly didn't delve into the kind nonsense the Bay films were filled with, the action was shot in a way where it was clear that there was an actual vision and not run by sensory overload and the attention span of a frat bro who just chugged their third can of Coors and is hopped up on sugar and caffeine and it was an actual story with development and structure. Oh yeah and there was also the designs which yes were more G1-inspired but it was clear they weren't exact copies. For instance Optimus Prime, doesn't look like say a render of his Masterpiece toy but with some added dings and scratches just to make him look a little more realistic, he looks like a marriage of the aesthetics. He has the general build and look of his G1 self put through a movie filter with added details and so on but in a way that makes sense and feels streamlined which I'll take ANY day over the visual clutter of the movie designs especially as we moved well into the AOE era though admittedly, aesthetic design and what you prefer is pretty subjective and even more than how art and criticism tends to be in general so I don't blame people for not liking the aesthetic all that much.

Anyways, Bumblebee then didn't make all that much money and yes it was clear that the changes that were made so that this could be a reboot were done quickly and pretty last minute whereas if this was planned to be a reboot from the beginning? They probably would've done things like make Charlie a mainstay and so on but it didn't really matter because the film still kicked ass for what it was and especially after enduring disappointment after disappointment, this felt like we were given a moment to breathe and remember that a good Transformers film can in fact be a reality. To me, trying to still treat this as if it's a prequel to the Bayverse stuff is only gonna make that continuity more convoluted than it already is and is a sign of both stupidity from Paramount as well as a degree of stubbornness and, if you don't mind me getting blunt here, arrogance. It's like if a survivor in a zombie apocalypse decided to fight a zombie with their bare hands and every time they get bit, they get a limb amputated and replaced with a prosthetic and this keeps happening with the one time they decide to take the smart path being because they had no choice... and then they go RIGHT back into doing exactly what they were doing before as soon as they can do it again.

That being said, I did mention I was cautiously optimistic about this one and yet I've spent most of this obnoxiously long comment REALLY tearing into the idea. Well that's because I do ultimately have positives to speak about with this news including some positive spins I could put on the stuff I was negative about. For starters, as far as I'm concerned I think the design aesthetic of the robots is sounding like it's a step in the right direction with there seeming to be an emphasis on making them look like their G1 counterparts without outright copying the G1 designs. To me, the Bumblebee aesthetic is very dead-on as far as how I think the robots should look in the movies. The Beastformers in particular sound like they're gonna look awesome and look I get it when it comes to those characters, people really want to see them take on organic beast modes since they are supposed to be in disguise... but let's face it, if one were to do that with the kind of involved transformations these guys would have coupled with the focus on realism? That's gonna look horrifying and that's REGARDLESS of if there's gore or not. For a test, look at a picture of a gorilla. Now imagine that gorilla twisting his waist around as pieces of fur flips up to form shoulder pads and as the face of it flips around to form a chest-piece and picture that in DETAIL. The cartoon could get away with it because it's animation and had a realistic but still slightly cartoonish style that made the transformations easy to stomach. The toys were plastic so it was very easy to stomach but you render a realistic animal in CG twisting and contorting like that? Maybe as a TF fan you can ignore that to an extent... but for others that's gonna look PAINFUL and be very hard to ignore. This is one of those concessions that I feel has to be made with this being a live-action film and to me, there are plenty of ways for them to reconcile this. Either you have the Beastformers smaller and they use hologram tech to make their forms look less freakish or with the focus on the ancient civilization stuff and how they might want them to be bigger? You could have them take the forms of these animals more for convenience and also to utilize their strengths with it not really mattering to these ancient people who could may see them as gods but later they had to either hide or change their forms a bit because it was getting to the point where blending became more necessary. This is one of those cases where I think we'll just have to wait and see a trailer or just the movie itself for what they do.

The cast has the potential to feel bloated but we should remember that we are not in the company of Michael Bay anymore. Now Steven Caple Jr. is not really an experienced director, his credits really only include Creed II and a few television episodes and Joby Harold is from what I can see hasn't done the most in terms of writing but at the same time, we should remember that Travis Knight really only did animation before Bumblebee and as far as I'm concerned that man did a great job. To me, this tells me the film has potential to have a coherent vision, that the director and writer have somehow found a way to take this idea which sounds totally insane and make it work within a two hour runtime and how they could achieve this is by keeping the roster small and contained for each side and doing it in such a way to where while the focus is placed on the development of Prime and most likely our new human character, the interactions with the Beastformers are there to push them further and are a natural point of the plot unlike the Dinobots in AOE where they were heavily advertised and then they turned out to just be there for a glorified cameo. Also with that talk about nostalgia and understanding how to use it? I'm assuming this guy gets that you can't just toss in references and characters left and right without any hint of rhyme or reason which tells me that hopefully every character choice was done deliberately and with good reason for why it's there.

Before this announcement, if I remember correctly we saw bits of news about how one of themes that was important to the movie revolved around family. Now again, this is if I'm remembering it correctly but even if they didn't, it seems with the character details we have that signs point to that being a focus which tells me once more that the director and writer seem to have a vision and that they themselves are aware of how they're gonna tell this big bombastic story without straying too far from what we saw in Bumblebee and if you don't mind some harmless speculation? I feel like if Lorenzo is still gonna act like the Bayverse is a thing while no one else does, this might be a good opportunity to show a little of that "phase" Bumblebee went through that Prime referenced in AOE but rather than have it be the standard teenager acting up thing (Though that's also probably gonna be present.), he could be feeling a little down still about the fact he left behind a good friend of his and the strain of warfare could be getting to him especially now that he has had a taste of the simple life and thus he starts acting out of line every so often and doing things that forces Optimus to have to play a little Autodad with him and maybe we see a little bit through that how Optimus isn't perfect and that also he still has things to learn, maybe make it to where being in the war for so long has kind of led to him forgetting some aspects of what it means to just slow down and be a person and not just a soldier of war. In other words, do what the comics for the Bayverse TRIED to do to make Optimus's more violent tendencies seem natural. Then to tie it into the Beast Wars stuff, he could see with Primal how much of a father to his men that he is and learn a few things from him because remember in Beast Wars, Primal may have been an Optimus but he wasn't just Optimus Prime but as a gorilla. He could be wise... but he also made mistakes which he would acknowledge and to my memory even learn from and apologize for. He could also be silly, encouraging and sarcastic every so often. Using how he interacts with bots like Cheetor and Rattrap would be a good way to I'd say to help to tell that story and because family's probably gonna play a big part for the human characters? It has the potential to work in favor of their story as well.

Next, as for the Beast Wars stuff... let's think about a few things here. So most of my rant was dedicated to the potential of there being five factions while most speak about there being four due to of course the fact that there are only four factions listed so far which is still a lot to take in. Here's what I'm thinking about, what if the Predacons and Maximals in the movie were mainly locked in guerilla warfare and maybe at the point we meet them, they have some fragile peace going, the kind of agreement that could crumble to bits with so much as a wrong look. Then of course at some point, this peace gets broken and they either attack or this fragile peace was put in place to stop our new threat which is the Terrorcons. Prime might not be aware of there being other factions since he's familiar with the Decepticons and Autobots which could of course lead to the time-travel shenanigans explanation but I have a feeling they might not want to go for that at least not for now since that's a VERY complicated story so maybe either for the sake of simplicity or for genuinely having a story they can retcon later to make a proper reveal, they just say that they are older than most and/or they do a quick brush aside and say the story would really take too long to get into so they're gonna stick to what they absolutely need to know at this time thus they utilize the story as a means of both expanding the Transformers cinematic universe but in a way that really only shows it's bigger than what we've known before whereas the heart of the story which is our characters, is not left behind. Now if they don't have that and the Predacons are in open-warfare with the Maximals? Well we could totally still have it work for these purposes, just say that the Predacons and Maximals have been fighting on and off and that mainly the fight has been for resources to last and maybe the Terrorcons enter the story a little later as in maybe they pick up a signal that leads them to Earth and eventually coming across the Maximals and Predacons or they're truly hunting these Beastformers which maybe either leads to Scourge coming across Nightbird either as a Decepticon scout who is later convinced or they could just have her already with him. Perhaps one of the ideas in particular they could pick up on is the idea that Prime and the Autobots seem to attract evil to them and that they're way too destructive to the planet around them or something like that, you know incorporate a little bit of Primal's personality from Beast Machines minus most of the zealotry and we have Prime as our opposition with him saying things like how it can\'t be helped or that it's war and thus he doesn't have a choice sometimes with maybe Primal conceding to some ideas while also making it clear that he thinks the problem isn't that Prime doesn't have a choice sometimes, it's that he thinks there is and isn't making an effort to make an option available. Some of the details we've gotten on Anthony Ramos's character are that he's struggling to redeem himself so this could be a GREAT time to draw some parallels and so on and then maybe, our big last tease if they do a mid or post-credit is that the fighting DID attract someone and we see it's the Decepticons.

I also can see how they would make this story which is seemingly about being an outsider and having to adapt work with the Beast Wars cast since at this point, they have been living on this planet for awhile now but they're also so... different from the other bots that Prime and the others have seen. This could work as both a way of furthering the story of being an outsider to the planet but it also could show how, much like in real life, people are always learning stuff about even their own home and what secrets they may have and if they stick to there being mostly no Decepticons? This means the story may have a chance to truly flourish and it would make the presence of these different factions less a case of overstuffing but more actual deliberate actions that exist to expand the universe and further the story with no one element overtaking the other.

In fact, once you get the ranting out of the way and start thinking about how this could work? I think it makes Rise of the Beasts go from an "OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" kind of idea to a "Hmm... you know what, if you've got the patience, time and skill to pull it off..." one at least for now. Yes, it could very well turn out to be the disaster these details might be suggesting but it also could be a nice surprise which brings me to a big detail I feel needs to be mentioned along with my closing thoughts. This is only an announcement of the movie. Allow me to repeat that.

This is ONLY an announcement of the movie. At most, we've got a title, some character names, talks of robot designs, some small plot-details and that is it. We have not seen a single promotional shot aside from the title, we've not seen a trailer nor have we seen a poster. In other words, I think while it's fair to get concerns out and definitely mention where interest lies after the news? I think it is immensely unfair to call judgment on the movie before we've truly seen anything of the movie and yes this even goes for leaked set photos and so on because those do NOT provide an accurate idea of what the movie is going to be about. They're taken by people who care about at most getting glimpses at stuff we haven't seen yet while also trying to make sure they don't get caught so we often don't get the full picture, we're left with only our own interpretations and thinking skills to fill in blanks but also it's not shot with promotion in mind so some things are gonna look like crap. Go back to ANY Transformers movie or just movies in general and read comments from people that are trying to pin down a plot based on these small details and you're often left with stories that are wildly different or takes that are very reactionary because ultimately, that photo is all they have to go off of when to me, the importance is in waiting for a PROPER piece of promotional material to come out. In this case, I'd wait for a trailer before really passing judgment on if whether or not you'd even see it because we've so far seen nothing.

 

Thank you for the clarification!

 

THAT'S ONE HELL OF A LONG ASS COMMENT, JEBUS CHRIST

 

So I’ve been living under a rock in regards to this movie and finally this gets announced and to see how this thread has no chill is not even surprising. Even without getting involved, the thread still finds its way to drag itself into a cat fight.

My initial thoughts is the title is generic if I’m being honest because ‘Rise’ is such an overused word in titles. And if it’s not clear, I understand that this is the follow-up to Bumblebee (which is the reboot).

The Bayverse elements seem more like references or Easter eggs to me at this point since it had such an impact over the past 10 or so years. I’m okay with good Transformers movies than Transformer movies that are follow-ups or spin-offs of each other. The same way I’d see good DC films vs DC films that fit in the same continuity.

Whatever story is being cooked up remains unclear to me but everything ‘transforms’ once you see it on screen.

More Transformers. That’s my takeaway.