Absolutely. In isolation, maybe it's not that big a deal, but it's symptomatic of the appalling taste of the people behind it,and their total lack of regard for the source material. There are many minor details they get wrong, and it can seem petty to point it out. What it comes down to is they don't know how to play the franchise to its strengths.

It's always the small things that reveal how out of touch someone truly is.

 

It's pretty clear from context cues that when people criticize G1 they're criticizing specifically the 1984 lineup.
Even G1 moved away from 1984 pretty much immediately.

Do a G1-inspired movie with Rodimus Prime as the lead, with Kup and Springer and Arcee.
Do a G1-inspired movie with *Powermaster* Optimus Prime as the lead.
Do a movie with Laser Optimus Prime.
Or Star Saber, or Dai Atlas, or Star Convoy.

The 84 guys are memorable, but they're not the be-all end-all of G1, and plenty of G1 fans get tired of Hasbro constantly going back to that well when there's a *decade* of characters they could use instead.

 

F***ing Lorenzo, how has he not been fired by now? I fear Bumblebee was an isolated incident and they'll learn absolutely nothing from it. Almost everything I've heard and seen from RotB has me very worried except for Prime's vehicle mode and that's pretty much it. The less this guy has to do with the franchise moving forward, the better. The live action franchise needed to be rebooted hard but I fear they're going to be wishywashy and try to have it both ways, or worse go back to the pre-Bumblebee dumpster fire.

 

See, of all the out of touch things in the TF movies, the flames on Optimus never struck me as one of them. It was rather plainly an aesthetic choice to give his alt mode a convincing and interesting balance of red and blue and give his robot mode visual interest. Bay even said numerous times he chose the flames primarily because of how they looked cool on his robot mode, evoking "ribs" on his torso and "veins" on his arms. It's also not uncommon for privately owned rigs to have elaborate livery like that.

If Prime was inexplicably some hot-rodding punk as well as the wise old commander just justify the flames it'd be one thing, but they honestly weren't that outrageous in practice. In fact it's kind of surprising that none of the Bay films ever once called attention to it, just treating it as "yeah it's just how he looks because that's the truck he picked." A good example is how utterly boring and plain Prime Optimus looked without them, looking almost naked in alt mode with all that blank space. Plus the idea that Optimus, either due to being old and grissled or an alien, doesn't understand the social connotation of flames on a vehicle when picking one is somewhat humourous.

 

Yeah, Bumblebee was the closest we got to live action G1. Bayverse was something else, I didn't mind the idea of changes, but the guys in charge were randomly nameslapping and throwing in anything they thought was cool, even if it didn't really make sense, and again, they admitted to this.

As for the 'Mirage is a Porsche' thing, I might have said there might be a logical reason for doing that instead of using Jazz, but going by past experience, it sounds more like that Bayverse cr**, where they were doing things either 'just because', or even to p*** off fans (they used to love boasting about stuff like that).

I'm just wondering if their official logic is that 'Jazz is dead' and people would get confused if we saw a different version of him in the new movie. That reminds me of the medieval mentality of movie studios that didn't like TV series of a particular character being aired around the same time they were screening a movie about the same character, because audiences might get 'confused'. (which sometimes led to a good TV series being sacrificed for a crappy movie, or at the least a good portrayal of particular character being written out of a TV series in favour of a more mediocre one on the big screen. (though I suspect a lot of it was about not wanting competition).

But, right now, it looks like the Paramount dinosaurs are back in charge. And I hope I'm wrong about that.

 

It's not so much about the flames, that's just an example. If it's a problem at all, "it's the least of the movie's problems".

To go back to Burnout's post:

As we've seen before, small things that maybe don't sit quite right often turn out to be the tip of the iceberg. These are just minor manifestations of the corporate/creative mindset behind it. The things we think bother us now often pale into insignificance, in the face of an all-out shitshow. Although, not to jump the gun, we're still at a point where we've basically seen nothing. - But nothing seen so far would fill me with hope... as much as I do actually look forward to these and want them to get things right and come out with a movie that works.

 

No kid these days would be excited about a continuation of 35 year old cartoon ya old goose.

 

Imagine thinking the marketing was the issue with Bumblebee, and not the fact that the previous 2 movies were so loathed by audiences as to nearly crater the franchise (theatrically) completely.

Luckily this guy doesn't have sole creative direction over the franchise. Not even close. He has some say, but he's not the Kevin Feige fugure some of these interviews are painting him out to be.

 

Let’s just see the movie before we start crying about the franchise.

 

Only 5. 2 are not bayverse

 

@WishfulThinking gets it.

Been saying this for soooooo many years. I don't see the franchise doing much better until these two finally realise that it's much more than toy commercials and spreadsheets. They literally own Star Wars and Marvel tier material (at least potentially), but time and again, treat it like soulless product and the fandom as a nuisance. Those guys are our Kevin Feige and Bob Iger. No single well-intentioned and knowledgeable director or writer will ever have any more influence or power than that of a hired gun as long as they're in control. Not even Bay.

 

He never said the marketing ended up being an issue though, he says that even if he thought the marketing was bad it actualy lead to the movie being a success since it caught back the eye of audiences that saw "the awe and emotional" potential of the film. He's flat out saying he ended up being wrong about it. He even tries to downplay the movie's weaker box office when the interviewer tried to needle at it.

 

I just want good movies. Snake Eyes was a slightly different take on the character, but I enjoyed the movie. No reason it couldn't kick off a new GI Joe franchise.

I dont know why people act like it's blasphemous to have different takes on existing characters. Comic books have literally done it for decades, but for some reason "THE 80S" are some walled off garden that shall not be sullied with new ideas.

 

Cant kill what's already dead amigo

 

Oh that's asking this fandom too much.

They chose a different alt-mode for a character in a franchise of characters who constantly change their alt-modes who hasn't been pre-defined in this continuity without us even seeing what his bot mode looks like.

Movie ruined.

 

Why wait!

 

Am i the only one that likes the alt mode change done?

 

God I can't tell you how much I couldn't give a shit about the mirage altmode change, like mirage isn't even that much of a character as he's just been in the background most of the time even in g1. He's pretty much like sideswipe and sunstreaker for me, he's just....there.

 

And on that note you need to quit typing and go watch one of those Hasbro documentaries specifically about The Transformers origin (or Wiki it).

That way you'd know that a good 80% of the toys in the 1st two seasons of G1 weren't Hasbro's to begin with. Hasbro was leasing them from other toy companies. Which got more expensive so Hasbro figured they could kill off the characters of toys they had to lease/rent figures for and start from scratch with new characters from toys of their own.

Unfortunately this greed and arrogance is what caused Hasbro such a loss by the middle of season 3 forcing them to at least make preparations to bring OP back in the finale.