Spectacle could very well be another factor. Since Transformers came out we've seen things like Iron Man and Thor battle it out or Superman and Zod tear up a city in their fight, so robot A fights robot B is getting to be a bit of been there done that. Even with Dark of the Moon it seems like the spectacle of big worm tears up building just couldn't live up to the spectacle of combiner destroys one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Kind of a tough field next summer as well with X-Men bringing favorite cast members from the original movies and First Class. Spiderman is at it again. Guardians of the Galaxy testing if it has the Marvel magic. Godzilla attempting to stomp the box office. The surprise hit of Planet of the Apes getting a sequel. And while rated R films don't make as money there is still a Sin City sequel to draw on the comic book crowd. In a loaded field Transformers 4 might need something to stand out from the pack.

 

Don't forget the fact that TF4 opens pretty close to How To Train Your Dragon 2 and kids movies tend to draw a lot of the potential market as well.

If anything Robot Dinosaurs is just what the movie needs to draw in attention. DOTM was really gimmick-less movie, ROTF had a lot more going on in terms of new content like a robot panther, what ever the fuck Readman was, Alice the pretender, Combiners, the Fallen and the sun destroying machine, the matrix of leadership concept, the final battle was set in a desert, Optimus gets a flying super mode etc.

DOTM on the other hand was more like 2007. Bunch of cars and a jet battle in the city over the maggic Mcguffin of the week which gets destroyed and stops the plan. The only thing visually that REALLY stands out is the spectacual opening on Cybertron. Other than that for a non transformers fan it really would feel like "been there done that" type of deal.

So yeah from a marketing stand point the movie really needs a "welp I haven't seen that before" gimmick to draw in the audience and the transformable dinosaurs are just that.

 

I guess it didn't help most fights were either aniclimatic or focused on humans too much. Imagine if we had got well choreographed battles between wreckers and Shockwave, Ratchet,Swipe and Dino against Starscream, three way battle between Prime, Megs and Sentinel , etc.. this could have let people in awe. Or me, at least  

Also, they can always make fights at night, or underwater, oreither in rain or blizzard, etc.. I'm sure those would be spectacular. This would require a lot of effort and money,no doubt,, but hey, at least it's worth it, unlike Devastator and Driller.

Edit: also, battle on the Moon would have been all sorts of epic.

 

Devastator is all right because at least it was something visualy new and it kinda served the plot a bit. The driller on the other hand was just a giant vaste of CGI that never did anything interesting.

Hell look the final battle from the 07 movies. Sure the camera if awful as shit but at least it had lots of things going on for itself, the decepticons were attacking, the bots were defending, there was lots of transforming left and right.

With DOTM the height of the movie was the highway chase and the mexican stand-off. Nothing after that was even remotely interesing as every battle was either completly stupid (Starscream VS Sam) or short and anticlimactic (Bee VS Soundwave, Optimus VS Driller, Optimus VS Shockwave, Optimus VS Sentinel and Megatron etc.).

If anything I felt more excitement reading about the action in the novel than watching the movie. Hell Q had an underwater battle with a bunch of Decepticons before he gets ripped appart, that would've be much more visually interesting to see than the stupid Driller.

 

Yeah that would have been cool. Que was too cool to last.

 

Fair enough.

Yeah, that's why it still remains my favorite out of three movies.

Exactly. And considering this was supposed the be last one at the time, it's sad the final battle was so... underwhelming,to say the least.

This..would have been awesome. Maybe we would have seen him using that giant sword of his. Though I always imagined him relying more on his gadgets rather than close-combat skills.

 

Anybody else want a jungle fight scene setting? It'd be super tight.

 

^They've got like sixteen different jungle branded toys across the toylines so it would be fun if they actually did something like that. The forest battle in ROTF is usually cited as one of the best in the trilogy so clearly urban settings aren't always the best.

Something to note: Hasbro may have been planning Dinobots for some time now with TF4. The reason I say this? Well, someone mentioned their reluctance to include them in FoC. Granted, that's two years ago, but it's also a year after DOTM, easily enough time for them to get feedback in general on sales and see their main issues and problems. And then when they actually did allow High Moon to use them, the only toy they produced was Grimlock, and they explicitly told us that there would be no more Dinobots in Generations.

More than likely, they are paying attention more readily to the shelfwarming situation, and how they flooded the market with Optimuses and Bees before. They probably thought Grimlock would sell okay and that the FoC design wouldn't serve as an impediment to the movie line, given the two year gap between. Even so, if a full set of FoC Dinobots had been implemented, can anyone honestly say they'd have instantly bought the new Dinobots?

Hasbro is being cautious, and this is very good. They want to maximize sales, also good. I think the real key is if they release the newer guys (or some of them anyway) in the first waves of the new film's toyline. There's also the consideration that unlike the other bots, who can usually swap out their alt modes in a flash, the Dinobots are characterized by those alt modes: it would be difficult to continue justifying their inclusion after TF4, other than as redecos and the like, simply by virtue of the fact they will be the "spectacle" item for TF4.

 

I think it's probably hard from Hasbro standpoint to make the toys both appeal to kids with easier stuff and appeal to the adults with more complex stuff. For the love of God just change it up a little but this time. Don't give BB the leader class treatment give that to someone else. You know prime will get it. And try to stay away from the reprints. In this movie line which I learned from the past ones is I won't get every figure just the ones that catch my attention. In my opinion the human alliance series was the best. It's time to highlight some of the other characters besides prime and BB. Nobody wants to buy 3 different versions from one movie. For instance I will probably get the one leader class prime and one BB. Just make sure the other figures get attention also. It seems like it might be shaping up to the dinobots pretty much stealing the show and that's cool cuz everyone loves dinosaurs much less Dino robots. If they are done justice this time, then all will be good.

 

Which is more than a little sad given how collector driven the Generations line is. I'm sure the demand is pretty high from collectors for either Fall of Cybertron or Classics style Dinobots. Just hard to watch G1 reruns and not feel like something important is missing in the Generations line.

In a way the movies have seemed like both a boon and a bust for Generations fans. On one hand you could argue that having a combiner in Revenge of the Fallen might be a factor in why Hasbro gave the Combaticons a chance. On the other hand movie Constructicons might have killed our chances at any sort of Generations release. Some character just don't get lucky enough for releases across different toy lines even when the look is very different.

 

I can visualise that. Depends what else they do with him too, but it's a positive start for something different for the character. It's not a new thing for a beast TF to have the animal head become the arm in robot mode, but it's new for Swoop (as far as I'm aware).

I've not really been following all the movie news, and Bay Dinobots (Baynobots? Binobots? Bynobots? Baynosaurs?) news even less, but do you recall what the fandom reaction was to changing Swoop away from his somewhat iconic beast-head-on-robot-chest design?

 

I can totally see his head being the blaster part of his arm. Or hell, even a sheathed sword.

 

That fin thing on his beast head would be pretty cool if it flipped down, extended and then went all light-sabery.

Beast head arm-mounted in robot mode could be both blaster and sword. It would give him a reason to land and transform.