I want a toy of that. Like now.

 

I really like the design, the transformation seens very intuitive and possible, but would match more with IDW line

 

I think it's a neat attempt and it's cool to see the entirety of the vehicle present on the robot, but it seems a bit un-dynamic for working in live action. I also think it wouldn't have lent itself to a very exciting transformation like this:

transformers GIF on GIFER

 

I don’t think this looks good for a movie, but I’d definitely be interested if it were a toy line.

 

It's sourced from the same wheelhouse of nonsense that said for years superhero costumes couldn't look like their comic counterparts to be believable, and instead had to be like, black leather and stuff. Let's recall, this was praised as a great movie Super Hero costume for years.



Much of that has it's uttermost source in the Tim Burton Batman films, but movie studios, which were then (and to a large degree still are) run by people completely unfamiliar (and even hostile to) with sci-fi / fantasy / comic culture, took entirely the wrong lessons from those films. Batman is Batman and black worked for him. But biker suits really were just an admission of thinking the audience didn't want to really see what they were being paying to see.

Here's Nicolas Cage at a superman lives costume fitting, because even Superman had to be played down.




Marvel came along with Iron Man in 2008 and leaned hard into making Iron man true to his comic design (basically, Mark III was the then-current Extremis suit with a different chest and a jaw, which is not surprising because Adi Garov designed both). It then followed it up with even more comic-friendly suits. Thor's original costume with heavily inspired by Thor's then current comic suit (more on Thor in a moment). Captain America's Avengers suit was, by design, as direct adaptation of his comic suit as you could do. Even during the first Avenger, they weren't afraid about leaning into Captain America wearing the red-white-and-blue.

But that said, Marvel was hesitant about some things still. Thor leaned very heavily on Asgardians being highly technological aliens rather than magical "gods" (which is technically comic accurate) until Ragnarok really. Chris Hemsworth wasn't really HUGE until Ragnarok (or maybe Age of Ultron), so it was much more a man-in-a-rubber-suit affair rather than the 80s-muscled-action-star vibe they (intentionally) went for since then. Captain America 1 was sub titled in the US "the First Avenger" and called "The First Avenger: Captain America" in other parts of the world because of concerns that Captain America was marketable either domestically or internationally. They dropped that practice by the time of the Winter Soldier. Regardless, Marvel was always far braver at leaning into its comic origins, in no small part because the core of the first 6 years of Marvel Studios was comic book. And to some degree, it still is.

A good contrast is DC films, which has seen years of creative upheaval as they tried to ape Marvel success without doing the slow build up Marvel does with "its phases". Marvel did five films before Avengers, and DC tried to skip to Justice League after three. Pure greed. And served them right, the entire ordeal has been a creative and commercial failure. They also have had a scizophrenic relationship with their comic book origins. In some cases they lean in (Batman's costume in BvS, which was amazing). In other cases, they are standoffish and go full "grimdark" in a dated attempt to gain credibility (the costume design of the Justice League in general, much of Man of Steel, a film I do like in general).

They may finally be getting it right though. A big thing with Superhero films (and Transformers too) was thiis idea that the audience had to be connected to the film by seeing human faces. So as a result, most Batman films were something like 20 minutes of Batman and 110 minutes of Bruce Wayne. And Transformers films had about 20 minutes of Transformers action. But "the Batman" inverted it. Robert Pattison work his mask for almost the entire film and was Bruce Wayne for about 15 minutes total. Rise of the Beasts on paper has only D-list stars, which means the robots will have to carry the film.

The truth of the matter is that Hollywood is gutless unless someone else takes the risk first. When they found out people liked bright and colorful, they decided that bright and colorful was okay (hence the difference between BvS and the Whedon Justice League cut). With Transformers, the post-production retrofit of Bumblebee that added on the Cybertronian scenes to what was clearly a Bayverse-adjacent movie made paneled Transformers less risky for them. So here we are.

 

While the bulk of your very well thought out post is spot-on, I just have to say that really what it means when they hire D-list stars is that they didn't want to pay for names. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes new names make for a fresh film. But I think anybody, at this point, assuming that means the robots will carry the film is really just taking a wild guess. We don't know, but considering the history, I think there's just as much of a case to be made that they just didn't want to throw funds at a-listers, and this film may very well repeat the mistakes of the past.

Not that I'm saying that's going to be the case, just saying it's every bit as valid a possibility as the possibility of the robots carrying the film. With historical precedent to back it up.

 

I love how even working with the Camaro that they made Bumblebee have to turn into, he still managed to make him look smaller and more “cute” like Bumblebee should be. But of course we can’t have that. Bumblebee has to be the ULTIMATE BADASS KILLING MACHINE!!! so I can see why they didn’t use this design.

 

Yes he does.

 

His head sculpt (with his famoгs horns) could at least be used for a knightformer...

 

The car sucks, but at least this design acknowledges TransFormers. Don is a good fan.

 

To be completely fair the Eggman robot is supposed to look a bit comical, whereas Transformers designs tend to play it more straight. I'm not really sure that design philosophy would work great for Transformers (unless it were a BotBots movie or something).

I do think Hulkbuster makes a good point though. That has a good level of detail without being too simplistic or too overdetailed. I'd also point to stuff like Pacific Rim and the Bumblebee movie.

When I looked at this Bumblebee art on my smaller phone screen, I realized my main problem with it are the proportions. I think this level of detail would work fine if the size of the legs and arms were shrunk. You could fit ten heads into his lower legs. I do think it could benefit from breaking up the vehicle kibble a bit more, but I think fixing the proportions would work wonders and make it look less toy-like. Aside from the feet, I actually like this layout of kibble more than the final Bayverse version.

 

We can also point to the BB movie too.

 

This kind of explains why the original 78 Camaro deluxe has the back bumpers as feet. I still feel that 78 Camaro deserves a better mold fwiw

 

While it's not my favorite Camaro, and it's personal preferences I do think it's a nice car.

I think the TF1-TF3 designs do like this. Just they have a bit more going on.

 

Not every D-list actor is terrible and not every A-list actor is born for the role they play. I’d say give the new blood a chance before declaring their acting quality to be shit.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

I tried seeking for it on his twitter page, but can't seem to find it. Is it okay to ask for the link?

 

Awesome.

 

Just for clarity, what I meant by WWI was "War Within", not World War One. And he didn't have it there.
So, here:


Now for Sh!t's and giggles here id Don Fig's Optimus from that TF / GI Joe:

 

awwe lol I'm disappointed. I really thought there'd be a world war 1 optimus akin to the other world war 2 last knight designs