I was actually chatting with someone about that whole deal earlier.

If they decided that Bee and TF7 were prequels and then made a sequel to TLK, yet ignored basically everything that came before and did it's own (hopefully better) thing, that'd be fine. Ideally they'd just hop on the reboot train, but if they end up doing what Fox did with the X-Men films, as long as it meant we could get a few decent films, I could live with that.

I find it ironic how they seem worried about alienating fans of the Bay movies when the Bay films already did an amazing job alienating fans of Transformers.  

 

Do we have pictures of the cutout that was spotted on set?

 

When I read the initial blurb that came with the previous post I’ll admit to mixed feelings concerning this new faction, the Terrorcoms, especially as they appear to just have vehicle modes, I.e. they’re evil transformers, so how are they different from decepticons? A third group of cybertronians who decided not to join the other two main affiliations and follow up their own agenda, probably terrorists?

Seeing them referred to here as ‘Unicronians’, makes things a bit clearer (if true). I.e a group created or reformatted directly by Unicron himself, working for him directly? This could be interesting. Like others here, I do think there is a danger of keeping too many plates spinning, but I’m hopeful.

Curious how the maximals and predacons factor in. I’ll be interested to see how they’re depicted too. I get the impression the animal forms will be more cyborganic in nature than their original designs. So more Beast Machines than Beast Wars, maybe? Or is it just that they’ve been on Earth for so long, that their fleshy covering has worn away? If the Incas are referenced then I’m thinking they’ve been hanging out in the jungle for ages (possibly literally) although you’d have thought they’d have taken South American animal alt-modes rather than African and Asian,* (and to be fair, considering the ark location, I think the original Beast Wars was set in a North American location too. Guess you can fudge the animal species as ‘changes in prehistoric populations’) but we don’t know the full story yet.

I’m not a major fan of the live action Transformers films, which isn’t to say I dislike them all. Edit: I go on a bit of a waffle tangent here so I’ll spoilerify this bit. Have a look if you’re interested in my experience with the Bay films.

Spoiler

I quite enjoyed the first Bay film, overall (although I found some characters irritating). I think I quite liked the first sequel, although I can’t remember a whole lot about it. I haven’t seen all of the rest, maybe the odd bit here and there, and felt no strong inclination to do so. I remembered watching a chunk of the one where Leonard Nimoy turns up as a giant

Spoiler

evil

Autobot fire engine (a very nice character design by the way. I even considered getting one of the toys, despite largely not being keen on Bayverse transformers designs) and finding that film rather poor quality.

I never saw any of the films involving dinobots, and felt no strong urge to. Screen shots and clips of Grimlock didn’t really help. (Sure he’s an interesting giant robot reptile design, but that’s no Tyrannosaurus rex! )

That’s not to say I hate all the rest I’ve seen. There’s certainly plenty of fun spectacle.

I really enjoyed the Bumblebee movie however, and I rather liked the fusion of bayverse with G1 designs of many characters seen at the start of the film. I suspect this new film may go down the path of the rest in terms of quality, but I hope for the best. There’s some interesting ideas.

As for whether Bumblebee and this are set in the Bayverse, I interpret it to be “it can if you want it to, but don’t get hung up on it”. There are continuity issues, of course, but there kind of was in certain sequel Bayverse films too, I understand. (I didn’t see those films, but I understand there are flashbacks to WW2, etc?)

I take that to mean, if you want these to be Bayverse prequels, then just assume something occurs to take them back into space in the time in between. Or there’s X-men style time alteration shenanigans at some point.

Yeah, probably best just to see these latest two movies as their own thing.

* So ‘Jaguor’ instead of ‘Cheetor’. ‘Tapiron’ instead of ‘Rhinox’. ‘Capybaron’ instead of ‘Rattrap’. (Or he could stay as Rattrap, as rats are pretty much everywhere.) Optimus Primal could keep that name but he would need to downsize radically if he wants to be a South American primate.  Airrazor... different bird of prey form, but the name still fits.

 

No reason given, but they mentioned that Rhinox is "the mind behind the operation" and taught the others how to camouflage and disguise around Earth, so it might be stuff that the beast robots attach to themselves to hide better in the distance.

 

I think it's a big mistake to think that even the loosest of connections to the Bay movies (which, let's be honest, will be a throwaway line or tangent at most) spell automatic doom for this movie and its story, just like I think it's a big mistake to declare Bumblebee a great movie because a bunch of robots who looked like G1 showed up for 5 seconds in the opening scene.

Let the filmmakers' work stand on its own. Bumblebee was a very good movie for a number of reasons and G1 designs are pretty far down on that list. You have the director of ROTB talking about individual robot characterizations, in detail, and a story centered around character growth for Optimus Prime. This is all good stuff and if the whisper of the word "Bay" overshadows that for you (especially when it looks like anything that will be maintained are some of the good things those movies achieved), then I don't know what to say.

Now that said, if you're concerned about the movie potentially being overstuffed given the amount of factions and characters at play, then yes, that's a valid concern, but that doesn't really have anything to do with Michael Bay, whose movies never touched Beast Wars.

 

I LOVE that the film will be about a younger, less stoic Prime.
Give me the wisecracking Autobot who played sports with his soldiers and human friends again. I don't need my Autobot Commander acting sullen and somber ALL the time. Let him have a little fun once in awhile.

-SS ("it's called a 'layUP', Prime.")

 

It's not that much to unpack at all, really. Just going by the description, The Autobots and Maximals are going to be allies who fight against the Predacons for most of the movie. But then the Terrorcons come in, forcing the Predacons to team up with the Maximals and Autobots to fend them off in a big end-of-movie battle.

 

Never heard of the guy!

 

Do we have pictures of the cutout that was spotted on set?

 

I mean it was established in the second film on why the Decepticons did know of Earth and humans since their founder (The Fallen) was deeply affected by both Earth and the early humans since, from The Fallen's perspective they caused his brothers to turn on him, when from the non-bias lense was the opposite.
And I quote, "I dreamed of my return to that wretched planet, where I too was once betrayed by the Primes I called my brothers.", a simple, yet effective way to show The Fallen has a biased memory of the event, I love how it's not that deep.

Lorenzo did mention "time travel" as a possibility to explore that genre of film.
“We could do a time travel movie. You could take almost any genre and do it. You can go back in the past, you can go to the future. So I think we’ve got an abundance of choices. It’s really more about narrowing them down than anything else, and deciding which one we think is the strongest one to go with next.”

From the article:
Optimus Prime Could Get His Own Solo 'Transformers' Spin-Off Following 'Bumblebee'

I know, I know, Lorenzo says things that don't always come true. Like Optimus' and Megatron's backstory being in Te Last Knight, but that can easily be explained that they decided to instead save that for the Cybertron prequel that was in development at the time.
Crazy idea maybe it's the job of the Order of the Witwicans to keep any evidence of Transformers involvement in history maybe because it involves time travel to preserve the timeline? It could explain why Bumblebee didn't seem to recognize Burton. He hadn't met him yet. Hot Rod might be important because he has to help establish Order of Witwicans.
And what if Vector Prime is involved somehow? I love theorizing I miss this excitement for a new movie, I'm so happy.
I know there are like three types of Time Travel stories:

• Characters can change nothing: Single Continuum.
• Characters can change some things: Fixed Points.
• Characters can change everything: Infinite Alternates.

 

Who do we think will be apart of the Predacons/Decepticons since we haven't gotten a single reveal for them yet?
My money's on
-Megatron
-Blackarachnia
-Dinobot
-and Scorponok/Waspinator for the preds and
-Starscream
-Shockwave
-Soundwave
And Barricade? For the Decepticons.

 

I think that Blackarachnia and Dinobot will probably make an appearance. I wonder if Dinobot will be pre or post his defection. Waspinator always makes for a good comic relief character, so he's probably in. There's also Inferno, since he's a fire ant and it's a rainforest. I don't know how they will solve the case of two Megatrons.

I'm not counting heavily on Decepticon presence, but I hope for some Barricade cameo.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

Given that Peru snd Macchu Pichu are settings in this film, I strongly suspect that the Maximals and Predacons will get an "In Search Of Ancient Astrobots" backstory.

And that would be awesome!

-SS

 

Prime: Wait. Did you say *Megatron* is here? On Earth?

Primal: Well...there's a guy *calling* himself 'Megatron'...and there is a definitely resemblance. Maybe he's his brother.

-SS

 

Wait... Ultra what???

 

China and ASIA loves bayverse because they know mechatronics and they can see more tha meet their eyes  as engineers (and me of course) I´m sorry about people who can´t and love the 5 steep-80´s-box-changers. I was born in 1980

 

Lorenzo straight up lied about Quintessa with regards to how there was 'existing lore' about her being human.

There is no lore. Quintessa didn't exist before TLK.

Everything Lorenzo says can not be trusted if there is no second source of evidence backing him up.

Furthermore, the idea they want anything to do with Bayverse is laughable, beyond Lorenzo being dumb. Every possible thing they could excise from the Bumblebee film, including the "Transformers" prefix originally in the title, was removed - including Megatron being shown frozen under hoover dam as confirmed by Optimus Prowl's report of the pre-screen of the unfinished film - specifically to distance the film as far from being seen as related to the bayverse as possible.

Let it fucking go Indiana, the first stage of loss is denial but it's been going on for nearly two years at this point. Bayverse is dead.

 

'Transformers': Brooklyn-born stars are just learning to drive cars

-The stars are learning to drive for this film. (In NYC, a lot of people don't require a personal vehicle, therefore learning to drive is rather unnecessary for a number of the residents.)

-"Prepare for Maximals, creature-like descendants of the world-protecting Autobots, Predacons, descendants of the evil Decepticons and a new movie villain Terrorcons. These combatants will bring the boom to Brooklyn."

-"There are prehistoric animals that travel through time and space, powerful beasts," Caple Jr. added. "That's something new we're dropping onto the table. There are some dope characters that I'm going to introduce."

"We get to pair everybody up against each other," vowed Di Bonaventura. "So it becomes a grand finale epic 'Transformers' experience."

 

Wait, Caple called the Maximals and Predacons descendants of Bots and Cons respectively meaning this will pretty much be like the original Beast Wars and not the other way around like we assumed. I guess that's pretty important news. I'm assuming they time traveled and got stuck in the past then.