Well.....

https://twitter.com/TF_Forums/status/1408175755771580419?s=19

 

I may be wrong, but I believe Lorenzo never wanted BW.

 

Lorenzo didn't want a lot of odd things, like not wanting Peter Cullen or any of the cast from the original cartoon to reprise their roles to the point of making it difficult for Cullen to get the part without Bay's help, or not wanting any of the Autobots to talk at all which is why they never talk in vehicle mode.

Lorenzo may keep wanting to say Bayverse is still around, but from a simply financial standpoint after the last two movies I don't think Paramount may have the same idea. The whole "maybe it is maybe it isn't" is probably just a way for Paramount to not have a second universe to end if the next film or two don't do well and are forced to pull a Batman taking a decade or so break until new movies are made again.

 

Lorenzo doesn’t care about Transformers. This is the same hack who was developing a script for GI Joe that featured none of the Real American Heroes characters like Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Baroness and Cobra Commander because since Lorenzo grew up in Italy he had never heard of any of them and believed the franchise only consisted of the 12 inch army dolls from the 1960s. He’s a greedy hack who attaches himself to properties that he knows will make him money and that’s all he cares about.

 

Makes sense, they might say RotB is Bayverse so if it flops then they can reboot the franchise earlier and pretend they didn't reboot it already (which they did with Bumblebee).

 

mostly his refusal to acknowledge bumblebee and ROTB as a reboot, the guy just cant let go of keeping the original films alive in some way

 

Nope, that was all Spielberg. Spielberg literally had to talk him into doing it.

And I'm glad he did.

 

Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if Lorenzo was also involved in those talks.

 

Hot Rod spoke in vehicle mode. And so did Bumblebee in AoE.

 

Bumblebee "speaks" in vehicle mode cause he uses the radio and doesn't have a voice. Hot Rod is so far the first and only time in the Bayverse.

 

Even if he's using his radio that's still how he talks. For example he told Shane to get out after he insulted him at KSI.

 

With the radio.
The condition was that none of the bots talk in vehicle mode with their voices.
If Bumblebee had his voice still after the first movie instead of them trying to continue the radio voice after it got old, it would have only been the steering wheel hitting Shane and him getting out on his own.

 

Hiring Bay was all Spielberg, I should point out. And Bay took the gig specifically because he wanted to work with Spielberg (he'd interned at ILM when the Indiana Jones movies were being made).

The big thing Lorenzo did was try and insist for celebrity actors for Optimus and Megatron - his sabotage of Peter Cullen's audition is well-known. However, he screwed Frank Welker over too - successfully, I might add.

Allegedly, most people involved wanted Frank Welker to return as Megatron - and Cullen was looking forward to working with Welker again. Welker even auditioned and, allegedly, Bay and the writers really liked his performance.

However, Lorenzo insisted they had to get a celebrity actor for Megatron. Hugo Weaving didn't even have to audition for the part - they just rang him up when he was doing a play in Australia and asked him if he' d like to do the part. He said no at first, because, allegedly, he didn't want to leave the play and didn't really care much for that sort of thing.

Allegedly, Megatron's role was rewritten to work around Weaving's schedule - that's why they had the "Megatron frozen in ice" plotline, so Weaving could record all his lines in three hours.

 

Claiming in an interview that the Dinobots will have a bigger role in TF5.

 

Correction: Skids talks at the beginning of ROTF as the ice cream truck.

 

Also the wreckers spoke in vehicle mode when optimus was tangled

 

Do you have source on that Megatron being rewritten part? That one is shocking to me since I recall very very early concept art already with references to Megatron's frozen situation.

 

I don't - someone (I can't remember who) told me that the reason why they had the "frozen Megatron" plotline was because they wanted to work around a celebrity voice actor's schedule. Now, I think this is a bit dubious, so please do not quote me on this.

However, Welker did audition and, allegedly, the writers, Spielberg and some of the producers really wanted him in - Bay was ambivalent on the matter, but was impressed by his performance (allegedly, it sounded a bit like TFP Megs).

You can "blame" Bay for one thing, however - allegedly, the script was rewritten before Bay came on because they were scared he'd think it was too kiddy. The original outline was more like Bumblebee than the film we got - it had Sam and Mikalea as sole human protagonists, a smaller group of Decepticons and a finale at the Grand Canyon.

One of the things Bay did want was an increased role for the military in the story - partly because of Bay's longstanding ties to the US military and partly because he thought it would lead to a more interesting storyline. Now, you could argue he was at least partially right.

 

Megatron was frozen to keep him offscreen as much as possible due to the enormous cost of animating him.

 

Everything else is true, but iirc the frozen Megatron bit isn't. That is one of THE oldest surviving plot ideas they had throughout all treatments, even before Bay was brought on. This was from around the time when the helicopter was going to be Soundwave, and the Scorponok scenes were instead set in a forest with Ravage.

Which, on topic, was changed by Lorenzo into being a desert thing with a robot scorpion. Something Don Murphy resented him over, leading to him nicknaming the guy Scorponok on his message board for years.

This is partially true. The more kid friendly thing was the pitch Tom DeSanto and Don Murphy shopped around to various studios. Paramount picked it up but scrapped it entirely in favor of what would become the final 07 movie, written by Kurtzman and Orci.