Well they are doing animation together so sorry for the bad news.

 

Come again? Are you talking about the animated Transformers film?

 

Hasbro Speaks About The Future Of Transformers Live Action And Animated Movies - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

Yeah that's probably the Soto film which we don't know much about at the moment and quite frankly isn't a grantee of anything, up to and including it ever seeing the light of day, let alone continued partnership with Paramount if ROTB flops. In that situation it still could come out purely out of the contractual agreement but anything further between Hasbro and Paramount is not certain.

 

Yeah, pretty much both are the reason we're getting these figures now.

Same.

I'm expecting him to be G1 looking since Prime, Nightbird, and Arcee are all very G1 looking. So expect at least the face and wings from BB/G1 to carry over. Maybe something like fan art.

 

I think Mirage will also look like his G1 self to an extent.

 

Forgot to say it but same goes for him if Prime (same model as BB), Bee (supposedly same model as the end of BB with door wings), Arcee and Nightbird are all G1 looking it'd be weird if he and WJ weren't so I think Mirage will be to an extent as well just with Porshe parts.

 

Cable said he was a fan of the character...right? ... but he didn't want to use his beautiful iconic alt mode from the period.. the Lancia Stratos, I find this confounding.

 

Maybe he has a good reason for it.

 

I think it'll look like Jazz with Mirage's head.

Honestly, it's super sad Lorenzo keeps insisting these movies are all part of the Bayverse. If he had accepted Bumblebee as the soft reboot that it was, Jazz could be Jazz instead of cosplaying as Mirage.

 

He never said anything about Wheeljack, ever. Wheeljack was not revelead officially at the time of the film's announcement and hasn't been revealed yet either, we just know it's him due to on-set leaked material but the director has not aknowledged his existence yet, much less commented on how much he likes him or not.

What he did say is that when he is working on "franchises with history" he likes to do nods and new things at the same time to both honor the past while bringing new ideas at the same time, so even if he had said he were a fan of Wheeljack's character it is likely he would want to give him new details too, just like he gave to Arcee who is a bike despite being g1-ish in robot mode.

 

I think Lorenzo is desperately clinging onto the idea the TFCU can be salvaged and the Bayverse can be parlayed into the new continuity. Anything to avoid a reboot because sunk cost fallacy is the "in" thing with Hollywood these days.

The problem there is that there's only so much you can really change while also simultaneously claiming to be paying respect to the original series.

I mean, Wheeljack being a high-spec rally car like the Lancia Stratos ties into his official character, which is he is the best driver of all the Autobots. Likewise, change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing when you're making a character into...something that multiple other characters already are known for. Sure he turns into a electronics repair VW microbus but is this something that necessarily needed to happen with Wheeljack, completely eschewing part of his character entirely, as opposed to say Ratchet who turned into a similar looking vehicle and also could get away with being a repair truck since that's generally what you would expect of the medic of a race of robots. It just seems like a lot of pointless work to make somebody into something else...when another character already is that something else and could be dropped in no problem. Sure they might have to rework some stuff plot wise but this is hardly a challenge if the writers are halfway competent.

Its like the movie doesn't even know what it wants to be. On the one hand, it's trying to keep with the "G1 loyal" aesthetic that was Bumblebee what with Prime straight up having a cab-over mode in the right colors and presumably the same robot mode as at the end of Bumblebee (with different details but the silhouette is probably similar), and Nightbird reportedly having a robot mode similar to her G1 cartoon appearance (but with the "chicken legs" that would be more akin to Bayverse aesthetics, according to somebody who has seen the concept art proper). On the other, you have dumb shit like them having a Porsche that looks like a simplified version of Jazz's alt. mode...except it's Mirage for some reason, which I'm guessing is because of a specific gimmick that occurs in the film (since this is not the spoiler thread proper I'm not going to say what happens) which frankly could have been done with any car in any paint scheme. Instead, if there are sequels after ROTB and Jazz shows up, he's not going to have his most iconic alt. mode because it would look too similar to Mirage now. And the plot looks like a mess because they filmed in the ancient ruins in Peru...as if we didn't get enough ancient human civilization involvement with space robot wars with Bayverse already, how original.

I just want somebody to explain the weird decision choices going on with this film at seemingly every point.

 

No, you're deranged.

 

Since when was Wheeljack's alt-mode ever a major part of his character?

 

Yeah but when has that ever really been a facet of his character in any media? He's almost entirely characterized as an inventor and mildly-crackpot engineer. His driving abilities are less developed than his original unique ability to fly.

I mean, we won't know until the movie comes out? If they lean more to the inventor/engineer side of him, make him a less combat-focused and physically humble character, the van makes perfect sense of conveying that. I said it once before, but the VW van looks like exactly the kind of vehicle an independent inventor would live out of.

Plus, it's not even like a boxy, less aerodynamic vehicle is new for the character:

Again a part of his character that, despite being a huge fan of Wheeljack and having pretty good knowledge of the majority of his major appearances, I completely forgot existed until you mentioned it because it literally only showed up in his original bio.

So it'd be okay for Ratchet, despite him never being a repair truck, because it fits with a robot medic. (even though ratchet rarely displayed affinity outside of medicine) Yet Wheeljack, a fixer, engineer, and often medic himself when things got tight, is just too far removed from the idea of a repair truck?

But how do you know that? ROTB Wheeljack could be 100% Wheeljack in function and personality. You're basing your criticism entirely on alt mode choice that even you admit is not 1:1. It'd be just as poor a fit for Ratchet IMO because Ratchet is defined as a medic, so he really ought to be some kind of rescue vehicle and not just a van.

But if they're halfway competent than Wheeljack being a van is no problem. You're concocting a conundrum that doesn't exist yet and may not even. It could be as simple as the character of Wheeljack was desired for the film, but they didn't want to pull the same mistake as Bay and make 90% of the Autobots fast cars, hence Arcee being a bike and Wheeljack being a van. Both alt modes entirely congruous with their characters but giving that much needed variety.

How could you possibly know that at this point?

And nothing else. One could argue that's not even G1 loyal, since G1 Prime didn't have a big front guard, and that it's merely conforming to the general design of the character from the past four years. Nobody else is G1-based. Even Nightbird, while maybe visually similar to her G1 version, is disqualified from this "loyalty" by simple virtue of being a Transformer with an alt mode and (presumably) personality.

Nothing about this movie seems overtly G1 at all. Just Optimus' alt mode kind of.

 

I would go by G1 inspired like BumbleBee. It’s not a G1 movie by any means.

 

Fair.

It just seems odd they put in Wheeljack when Hasbro typically has been following the same usual five-man plan for the core character teams ever since Animated. Prime, Bumblebee, a big vehicle guy, a bike, and a wildcard. And Ratchet's been on almost all of them up to this point, so assuming Mirage as the wildcard, subbing one of the most consistent characters (with a built-in retool as Ironhide) for Wheeljack, just seems to not follow Hasbro's usual MO. Admittedly this could be a very good thing but we'll have to see.

I mean, when you repair a machine, you don't call your doctor, you call your repair guy. I guess that just boils more down to how much of Cybertronian medical practice is and is not conventional mechanical repair.

Pre-existing bias against Paramount, admittedly. These are the same people who took a film where Blitzwing, arguably the first triple changer in the franchise, is nameslapped onto the only non-triple changer in all of Bumblebee that is on Earth. Small matter, I know, but at the same time this is a franchise loaded with names so we shouldn't be at the point where a throwaway character has to burn a rather notable character's name because of a lack of options that doesn't even exist if they'd bothered doing five seconds of searching on the wiki.

While I do agree the variety is nice, at the same time part of me still thinks Paramount has not proven it can actually handle the franchise any better than it did before. If you can't get the core fundamentals working, how can you build upon them? Same case here - while I'm fine with Wheeljack being a van, we are missing the context that would dictate if they had to have an inventor be the van or if they couldn't have just used a pre-existing van character already pre-packaged in the franchise.

It's still up in the air if this is even a rebooted continuity or not. Every time we get somebody official saying something about it, information comes out that completely contradicts that stance from the other side. Communication between Hasbro and Paramount is still shockingly bad even this late into their working relationship.

Especially since all the faction emblems welded onto the front of Scourge? Not one of the Autobot or Decepticon emblems use the classic designs, they're all Bayverse 'angry squinty eye' style, despite Bumblebee exclusively using Classic style emblems.

Which does not bode well for the Beast Wars component if we're being honest...

Mirage's robot mode has been described as being very close to the G1 design aside from, y'know, being a completely different car, as has Arcee's despite also being a completely different type of vehicle.

 

Not a bad look, overall.

I'm loving the new aesthetic with the BB movie figures, but Brawn, Ratchet, and Wheeljack aren't the characters for me, so I'm really interested to see how Mirage ends up looking.
To me, it bodes well for the beast-formers, but I do wish we had some kind of leaked /official image or something. Toys come out this year though, so we don't have too long to wait.

As for the movie itself--I can't even guess at how it can possibly be a good one. I feel bad for the director, he's starting to get some name recognition by being attached to this thing, but on a mostly objective level it seems doomed to fail. I mean, Paramount has refused to make good Transformer movies so far, so I've lost hope...and I'm not saying that as an angry TF fan, but as a fan of enjoying watchable movies.

However, I'm keeping an open mind...because, who knows???

Nice thing about TFs is the toylines can be and are often separate fiction from the media.

 

Have they? Prime may have followed a similar team setup, but RID didn't, nor have any of the Netflix shows or Cyberverse. The movies definitely haven't followed that structure.

Also, would that even be odd? It's not like that's a rule or anything. It's still the same five-man squad with good alt mode and, seemingly, good character variety. Why would you want the exact same cast structure as before, especially since that was one of the factors that made Prime feel so indistinct?

Except they still have machines that need repairs. Wheeljack can be both a tech head and a medic, as he frequently was in the G1 cartoon. When the lines between medical practice and auto repair are so blurred why need that hard distinction between medic and fixer guy?

Except it's obvious Blitzwing was a copyright thing related, most likely, to the hasty change of the BB movie from Prequel to reboot. The character was clearly intended to be Starscream, but had to be changed into someone else. It's not like he's name din the film anyway. Presumably Wheeljack will not be a hi-and-die who goes unnamed. (at least I sure freaking hope he isn't)

You make no stink about Arcee being a bike, or BB still being a Camaro. Of course it's because those characters have been these things before, but they weren't originally, hence my point. You can't treat every divergence from the source material as an affront or things like bike Arcee would have never caught on. If it's okay then, why is it not okay now? Arguably we need TF media that is more distinct more than ever, with some much homogenized from brand synergy.

That has really nothing to do with the "core fundamentals." The Bumblebee movie nailed the core fundamentals, and it had Blitzwing as a non-triple changer and two entirely new villains not meant to be new versions of anyone. To me the ability to come up with new, lasting concepts is the core fundamental of Transformers.

You're fixated more on what Paramount can prove, I'm worried more about what the brand can prove. We've had the same "core fundamentals" regurgitated in a loop for years now. I know Transformers can do G1, what I don't know is if it can do anything else.

I don't see how it can be. It's clearly a reboot, because all the old continuity is obviously thrown out. Any words to the contrary are pure lip service and clearly don't influence the decisions made, or shit like Optimus being on Earth at all before 2007 wouldn't be a thing. It doesn't matter what is "said" about the new movie, it's clear by what is being done that it's not connected to the Bay movies at all.

This means literally nothing. Faction symbol styles have been used interchangeably by toys and Hasbro ever since TF07. It could be as simple as the director thinking they looked cooler, because to anyone but the obsessive, highly literal fanbase the differences in symbol design are negligible.

But it also has nothing to do with your point about "G1 loyal" designs.

And? Descriptions and "very close" are subjective, and if anything wouldn't that just be a point against your notion that Paramount isn't being true to the characters? They'll go so far as to give G1 accurate robot modes but apparently don't have the object permanence to find matching alt modes?

Or maybe the director is just, like, doing his own thing to make a new yet familiar Transformers movie? Like most TF series used to do once upon a time?

 

I'll give you the stuff about the latest shows, I haven't watched anything since Prime since I've heard none of it was particularly good.

Everything else we'll just have to agree to disagree, because to me, this film is looking like just as big a disaster in the making as TLK was because the only thing that seems to have changed is the robots at least have a better variety of alt. modes. As long as that bastard Lorenzo diBonaventura is involved, I have zero faith in anything Paramount makes anymore.