Well Hasbro has said twice it's a reboot.

Yet here we are.

 

Yeah, that wouldnt be even more confusing at all!

 

Here's the thing: say what you will about how good or how bad the movies are, but we don't want an X-Men situation where the timeline makes absolutely no sense. The common misconception is that Bumblebee is a prequel. It isn't.

The way I see it, there are 3 (or potentially 4 with ROTB) timelines:

1. The original three Transformers movies and the comics associated with them.
2. All five Michael Bay Transformers films. I will admit that the movie comics aren't my area of expertise, but to appease those who do have a thorough understanding of them, I have heard that The Last Knight contradicts them and AOE and TLK are kind of a set of 2.
3. The Bumblebee movie.
4. (Maybe). Rise of the Beasts. This could very well be a continuation of the Bumblebee universe (no one can make up their mind in the world of executives and quite honestly I don't Lorenzo EVER cared), or it could be its own thing. It would be very difficult to tie it into the previously established Bayverse though.

 

Someone may have already mentioned this idea but what if instead of a reboot or a prequel, they just have these new movies set in another Universe.

 

Probably their best bet if they have hopes to jump on the multiverse train and bleed us dry because of nostalgia.

 

Wouldn’t that be a reboot though?

 

At this point, if they're going back to the Ancient Buried Space Magic Bullsh** well again, I'd be surprised if they didn't try to use that this time to jump onto the multiverse bandwagon.

 

It's going to contradict with everything that came before, so it's a reboot.

 

I still leaning towards both. If the beasts have to Beast Wars origin of being from the distant future, they could come from the distant Bayverse future, but going back in time ended up messing with the universe all timy-wimy- like ,creating the Bumblebee universe.

 

If its set in a new universe, then it is a reboot, Reboot means starting all over again in a brand new universe

 

That still doesn't explain how the hell Optimus Prime is on earth in the 1980s before he arrives twenty years later. The only way this could happen is if he leaves the planet...which he literally can't do because he doesn't have a spaceship, nor is there really any point given the entire reason the Autobots in the BB film go to Earth is to regroup following losing Cybertron to the Decepticons. Additionally, in the 2007 film he says the Autobots learned Earth's languages through the internet...which in the BB film is invented by the Decepticons...and Prime's already speaking English anyway.

This encapsulates the reason why Hasbro and Paramount don't want to use the exact word "reboot" - it tricks people into thinking this is more of the same if they liked the bayverse, so they'll burn money on it, even when logically it can't possibly be the same continuity for any number of reasons.

 

I’ve never seen that movie & I’m sure many others haven’t. Can u please explain what that means? Idk how u can conclude a story in a different universe and then start a new universe in the same movie that’s connected.

 

Days of future past - starts out in the present Xmen universe.

In order to stop this they send present wolverine back to the past to stop the sentinel project and hopefully change the future.

End of the movie the future is changed and the series continues on in a different direction not at all like original universe.

Days of future past lead to Apocalypse and finally Dark Phoenix

In the new universe however at the same time they did one more movie connected to the old Timeline that being Logan

At least that's how it was explained to me ​

 

It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen X men days of the future past, so anyone who remembers it better than I do can correct me, but anyways wolverine from the first x men universe (where the entire planet commits genocide to the mutants) goes back in time and meets a young professor X and they change the universe.

 

Wouldn’t that just be separate timelines?

 

I mean something of like a butterfly effect. If someone or somebeast goes back in time and stays there, that timeline is ultimately altered, in this case, at a large universal level. An alteration so big, Optimus and his bois don't show up in 2007, but the 80's. Kinda like what the other guy is mentoning about the Days of Future Past. One timeline goes to the past to ends up making a new seperate timeline.

 

Except you can't do that with the bayverse timeline, purely because it's so convoluted and TLK basically destroyed any attempt to reverse-timeline retcon anything.

I mean, TLK has Ironhide on a boat with George Washington crossing the Delaware in 1776. And then Optimus himself is somehow standing around with a bunch of British redcoats suggesting he's around even earlier than that, probably the French and Indian War.

You can not simply "Days of Future Past" the bayverse, we're past that point specifically because Bumblebee exists already. DoFP works because ultimately all that film does is erase the events of the original X-men trilogy from happening, but this only works because it isn't trying to force one plot line into another that was already defined.

With bayverse, you have to account for the three different reasons Megatron is around on Earth that have absolutely nothing to do with each other (chasing the AllSpark, rendezvous with The Fallen to purge all life from Earth, rendezvous with Sentinel to enslave all life on Earth) stretching back thousands of years. Meaning the only way to stop any of that from happening wouldn't even involve Earth, it would involve just making sure NOBODY WENT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. You have to stop the AllSpark from being launched...which ensures the Decepticons win. You have to stop The Fallen from setting up the Sun Harvester...which couldn't happen because of the whole 'only a Prime can kill him' thing (and removing the Matrix of Leadership from the Tomb of the Primes would ensure the Decepticons win as that leaves Optimus Prime dead after the forest battle). And you'd have to stop Sentinel from getting to Earth which would look really bad because all the Autobots at the time thought Sentinel was going to do something that wasn't selling them out to the Decepticons to allow his continued god complex delusions.

And that's not even getting into the problem of the Decepticons being around since at least the 1960s within the original movie trilogy alone, given Soundwave screwing with NASA and getting the final Apollo missions canned.

The timeline of the bayverse is just so nonsensical, convoluted, contradictory, and flat out idiotic that there literally isn't a single good reason to want to keep it, other than simply trying to avoid the inevitable and accept a complete franchise reboot. Which this franchise has badly needed since 2014 for this exact reason that there wasn't an ounce of forethought into the plot, which is why all the constant timeline retcons, and it literally would be the cheaper option to just not waste time on salvaging that which has no salvage value whatsoever.

 

Logan is not set in the old timeline, given both Logan and Charles die and its set way past DOFP, as DOFP is set in 2023 and Logan in 2029

Marvel officially considers the Logan film as being non-canon to the other films placing it on its own continuity
Earth-17315

The OG timeline is officially considered by Marvel as being Earth-10005

 

With Optimus being on Earth in 1815 that could explain how Optimus found Earth in the first place in Bumblebee, having at one point, maybe during his time as a Knight explored this corner of the universe or maybe joined the "other Autobots scattered across the galaxy" in search for the Allspark...then returned to Cybertron when he was needed back there, couldn't be during the time when Sentinel was leader of the Autobots as he left Cybertron around the time Megatron left, or before 10,000 B.C when the Allspark arrived on Earth?



Unless this isn't really Optimus Prime, but rather Optimus Primal, Domitus Major, or Leo Prime.




Also the "Ironhide" that appeared in one WW1 painting (Bottom Picture) has a different head design and appears to have whiskers, which suggest this isn't Ironhide, but someone who shares the same body-type.



There are lines of dialogue in the first, second, and fourth films, that could be interpreted as them having been to Earth before and have some past experience with humans.

Ironhide (2007 Film): "Why are we fighting to save the humans, they are a primitive and violent race?"
Optimus (2009 Film): "We've witnessed your human capacity for war, it would have absolutely bring more than good."

And adds a little more depth to their words, like Hound's and Drift's exchange of views on the humans betrayal in Age of Extinction and we find out in The Last Knight and/or future Hound or Drift Spin-off film that they have worked with some in the past.

Hound and Drift could still have fought with George Washington and with some Samurai, respectively, as it was never stated when they arrived on Earth.



Also a thought I just had that maybe Optimus' line to Mearing in TF3, "Everything humans know of our planet we were told had all been shared, so why was this found in human possession", could be reinterpreted/retconned as there having been some secret battles the Autobots had in the past on Earth, but was covered up, and that could be extended to Bumblebee's battle with Shatter and Dropkick, Various Past battles the Witwiccans covered up, but S7 or the US, Pre-S7 might have found out about it and whatever battle takes place in Rise of the Beasts. And at some point Seymour Simmons learns of the Witwiccans.

 

This really is the truth. People can use connections and contradictions from other movies as evidence for or against it being a reboot, but (as I've said before) contradictions and inconsistencies don't automatically make something a different timeline. Even if those inconsistencies are hard to reconcile.

What makes it a reboot is the studio deciding it's a reboot and crafting future movies with that in mind. And everything we've heard so far has suggested Paramount is still trying to play both sides of the fence. I don't think it's a mystery to be solved, it's just that they haven't committed to either direction...or they're just not particularly concerned with continuity.