They could have been painted (in universe) between 2007 and 2017, by people who were aware of the Transformers existence, and inserted famous Autobots and Decepticons into historical situations. Which is backed up by the fact that most of those paintings in Burton's castle are famous real-world paintings with Transformers stuck in.

Kind of like this artist who put Mr. Bean's face into historical paintings. It's a real old painting, but this version of it was done recently. There's nothing in the movie to indicate those paintings actually depict specific events that happened, or were painted hundreds of years ago. They could be modern recreations. To be fair there's also nothing to indicate they don't represent real events...so it could go either way, depending on what potential future stories decide to do.

The idea that Transformers existed in various historical moments has been part of the series since 2007. Megatron crashing in the Artic in the 1800s, The Fallen building the pyramids, the Ark being part of the Space Race, etc. Not all of those paintings have to be taken entirely literally for that idea to be canon.

I honestly think it's a bad idea to look at canon this way. It's like when people obsess over...I dunno, why Asgard looks different in Thor 1 and 2. Some things are just artistic license. In this case these paintings were just set dressing. A painting of Optimus that appeared in the background of a movie five years ago isn't going to affect current continuity. Especially when that painting could easily be retconned out of existence.

 

POV: you check this thread to see if there’s any interesting leak or rumors but instead it’s the 795377442th argument about TLK

 

What I look for when going into a ROTB thread.

Like I said on the last page regardless of which toys come out in Cyberverse for ROTB (still again hope the deluxes come out this year but I'll keep my expectations of that low cause it's likely they won't). I hope they're decent and give us a good look at how the characters will look (I could see us getting box art but it will probably be in the Cyberverse style).

 

That’s how stupid, dumb and brainhurtingly bad the movie is.

 

...what?

I mean, you're putting so much effort into trying to say that all this stuff was essentially in-universe lies and bullshit, when the movie itself goes out of the way to at the very least imply that every major event in recorded civilized history involved Cybertronians given the WWII opening. Like, what is the point of doing any of the fake bullshit when by at least the Big Broadcast of 2009 ft. The Fallen where the guy addresses the entire Earth's population at once, the idea there are giant robots on Earth is a blatant fact?

The dude who puts Mr. Bean's face into photos does it because he thinks its funny.

Burton would have a bunch of doctored paintings made recently because...well, that's the thing. You aren't actually explaining any of this crap you're making up to try and justify bad writing as salvageable. There's no functional point to this since the original three films already establish S7 was very aware of the alien robots given they already had Megatron in their basement next to the god cube. You are failing to give a reason why the paintings would be fake, you're only giving the how.

If you're going to be trying to explain bad writing then at least get the facts from the films straight, as the only one of those things you got right was the Space Race thing. It's clearly said in the first film by the S7 guy that Megatron was carbon dated to have crashed during the last ice age, which was not the 1800s (the real life inspiration for that probably being the Franklin Expedition), while The Fallen was already locked into the Superman 2 Prison Dimension before the Pyramids built to cover the Sun Harvester and were unrelated to The Fallen entirely.

Its not artistic license though, it's evidence presented by the film that Transformers have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years in human history that has to do with the presence of several major characters. There's literally no other reason for it to be in the film if it was all a bunch of bullshit.

 

Sorry for writing so much, originally I was going to write my reimagining of the plot of the entire movie, which included quite a few bathroom ideas over the years due to my dissatisfaction with the way TLK was executed. But halfway through writing, I found that this was getting off the topic of this thread, so I decided to just include the backstory part that related to the Quintessa and Cybertron mythology. Maybe I can start a separate thread sometime after this with my modified version of the plot of the movie, if you like. 

Spoiler: Not a spoiler

• In the past three years Optimus has been looking for the information of the creators, and accidentally learned that instead of being destroyed, Cybertron is slowly recovering, so he took the initiative to return to his planet to find out the truth.

• When Optimus returned to Iacon on Cybertron, he found it partially covered by organic plants never seen before (similar to BM's ending), and the destroyed buildings were restored to a small extent, some Protoforms type TF lives in it. Quintessa tells Optimus that it's all a result of her attempts to reformat Cybertron after she's returned to it, and some of the former Cybertronians roaming the galaxy have returned to build it too. She told Optimus that once she regained her full power through the staff, she could completely transform Cybertron back to where it once lived. Unlike the original film, Quintessa looks more divine and organic, closer to her human form in the credits scene.

• Quintessa explains the history of Cybertron to Optimus in the archives. It turns out she's a member of "Creators". The Creators originally came from different planets, with different looks, but all had highly evolved civilizations. They eventually gathered on an organic planet to build an idealized utopian society. As their society developed, they worshiped mechanization more and more and were aggressive toward other civilizations. They created the seeds to convert matter on other planets into metals that they used to build their own planet. As a conscientious scientist, Quintessa secretly built Staff for this purpose, which can transform matter into another state, even back to what it meant to be in extreme cases.

• Creators eventually mass-produced robotic slaves out of metal made from seeds, using them for entertainment such as gladiatorial competitions. As an opponent of this behavior, Quintessa used the staff to empower those slaves with transform abilities and teach them to rebel, which eventually led to a revolution of the machines. The original Dynasty of Primes were the leaders of the rebel army, followed by ancient seekers and knights. The rebellion finally won, but after that, not only did the robots fail to follow the agreement with Quintessa, that is to live on an equal footing with the creators, but instead used the staff to transform the entire planet and non-metallic life into machines.

• As the only surviving creator, instead of being grateful by transformers, Quintessa was imprisoned in the core of the planet as punishment for her "carrying the sins of an entire race." The original Cybertronians began to rewrite history, erase the existence of creators, renamed the planet Cybertron and believed that the Allspark, which was reverse-engineered, was the origin of the species. In order to keep it away from the truth, staff was later taken by the three knights to hide on an unknown planet called Earth.

• Quintessa was imprisoned all along until the Battle of Chicago. When the structure of Cybertron was destroyed by the rupture of the Space bridge which allowed Quintessa to escape, she was surprised at how much TF destroyed planets and galaxies. She found Lockdown and ordered him to reclaim the only remaining leader in the war, Optimus Prime, at all costs.

• Optimus is hard to accept the truth but only knew of his own guilt. Quintessa tells him that the only way to atone is to go to Earth to find and bring back the staff to restore Cybertron, re-establish the balance of organic and mechanical. He agreed.

 

damn, I hope one day they can show us it.

 

On a side note, I hear something about the toys being pushed back to October.

I could be off there.

 

Stop making me sad

 

With the reveal of Cyberverse line, I could see it being a thing.

That means 8 months of wallet being safe from Transformers, at the minimum.

 

Silver Optimus said that and I could see it especially with Smash Changer Prime being scheduled for August/Fall time.

 

You have to wonder why they changed it. Shame you can't share more about it, more than ten years later.

 

Like yesterday, there seems to be two different arguments going on. I'm not trying to say any of this makes sense. I do kind of agree with you that it's bad writing. I'm saying there's enough leeway that future stories don't have to be beholden to a prop painting. If Paramount wants to make ROTB a prequel to the Bay movies, they'll just ignore the painting. If anyone asks the writers can say that painting was a fake. Paramount can do that if they want because it's their story. Bigger retcons than that happen all the time in fiction.

 

The DOTM novel has some pretty good moments. I particularly like when the Wreckers are fanboying over Sam.

 

Will you ever be able to reveal it?

 

Exactly. It all amounts to piss-poor writing where the writers, and the bean-counting suits-and-ties they answer to, didn't give ANY fs about continuity/solid storytelling whatsoever-and we're still seeing the effects of that now, i.e., how Paramount is so damn reluctant to not be wishy-washy in determining exactly where the films fit (except BB).

Then again, when a house is built with an unsteady foundation, it WILL collapse-irregardless of all the people who deny that it collapsed, and deny what caused it to collapse. . .And when that same foundation is used again, then there exists a self-fulfilling redundant prophecy. . .

 

Why do people keep talking about ROTB in the TLK rant thread?

 

Its been over a decade how can't you lol