A lot of people I know loved Lockdown regardless of what they thought of the last movie, too. Which is why I think Lockdown could be a prime candidate for a spinoff.

 

Tumblr loves crosshairs and drift

 

Random chiming in, but I know a lot of Ironhide fans out there as well.

 

Nice to be reminded that people do appreciate some of the other movie TF characters. I kind of got distracted by the Optimus/Bumblebee (that one's my fault), Hound/Bulkhead stuff.

I feel better now.

 

No, the face of the franchise would be split between G1 Prowl and G1 Soundwave.

Except he's dead. Dead by Prime's hands and anybody killed by Prime never comes back except Megatron because isn't it funny how despite being pretty much worthless overall, the films have to keep bringing back Megatron even though there is absolutely not a reason why some other Decepticon big shot can't just come along and take over like, say, every other major Decepticon leader ever?

You look hard enough and there's proof Tumblr loves everything. So that really isn't that great a justification for anything. Like using Wikipedia as a primary source in a research paper.

 

They just copied Bumblebee's design, changed his colors and gave him a new alt mode. I know he's supposed to be Bumblebee's brother or something but it just feels lazy.

I think this design was better:
http://i45.tinypic.com/30cygzq.jpg (Although it could use some flames)

 

It doesn't matter. The spinoff could take place before AOE, just like the planned animated Cybertron prequel will take place before the existing films. I would totally be down for Lockdown hunting some Transformers like the Dinobots or something else entirely on other worlds. Just have remote Earth locations stand in for alien worlds.

 

Wow, this certainly is the unflavored oatmeal of Transformers designs.

Oh man, what I thought were his cheeks are actually his eyes. I take it back, this is salt-flavored oatmeal.

 

No, at least this isn't a straight reuse of the same robot model in a different color, like Stinger.

Why even bother with 'remote Earth locations' if all there's gonna be is CGI robots and no humans? Just go Pacific Rim and just make a full blown CGI animation.

 

I think it's tough to ever really know what the general audience for these films will know or not know because the demographics is so darn wide. You have kids old enough that their parents will be okay with them seeing these movies all the way up to old geezers like me.

So the older end of the target demographic might know Hot Rod because the older end of demographic seems to base most of it's Transformers knowledge off the G1 cartoon even if they don't always remember things like names. With Hot Rod being a big deal in the cartoons for a while there are people who don't consider themselves hard core fans but still know the character in general.

On the other end of the demographic you might have younger fans who don't know Hot Rod because he sort of just dropped out of Transformers lore when he didn't prove to be a good replacement for Prime so Hasbro just went back to Prime. They might mistake him for some other red car Autobot like Sideswipe on the new Robots in Disguise.

 

Sadly I wouldn't be surprised if this is the way Paramount etc. view it. Each superhero being individually iconic, but maybe only two or three TF characters being so.

Of course there's no real reason why some things get changed as much as they do in the movies. Certainly what vehicles are used is constrained by what can be negotiated with the car manufacturers. Even changes to colour can sometimes be excused. Film is a visual medium so a varied colour pallet for the robots and vehicles on screen makes sense; if the Autobots in the first couple of movies had their traditional colours, the team would be overwhelmingly red and white. That's nothing to do with the audience "not being able to tell the difference", it's asthaetics. I'm also sure that they've never gone out of their way to make characters as different from the original toys, but there's no real reason why they couldn't keep them a lot closer, in robot mode at least.

I like the majority of movie designs, but I can understand why many people don't feel they are proper representations of the character from previous media.

 

So you don't have to spend so much money on CGI environments for every scene? The film could have humans in costume and makeup as human-like alien species to interact with Lockdown and other robots. Instead of CGI Cybertronian alternate modes there could be custom-built, functioning alternate modes made to look Cybertronian or alien. Something like that could be extremely awesome in my opinion. Also, the film doesn't have to be entirely in space. It could start out in space, and then Lockdown gets a call from his employees about the jobs they have for him on Earth. He could hunt some Decepticons on Earth before the events of AOE. The possibilities are definitely there.

 

I'm talking about fan recognition.. Not general audiences.

When they make designs that not even the biggest fans could guess who they are, there's a BIG problem.

But hey, what does it matter? The humans carry the story anyways.. The transformers are just set dressing.

 

Avatar literally proves a mostly CGI background alien world can be done in under $250 million in budget. And that was a three hour film.

Even with extensive use of practical effects, most of Pacific Rim also is CGI in just over two hours and $190 million budget. Because those were not dudes in costumes fighting other dudes in costumes at the bottom of the ocean.

There were several characters with completely CGI alt. modes all through ROTF and that was never cited as a problem in development.

So basically Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, no, wait, you're apparently trying to make things as low tech as possible because inexplicably CGI is so prohibitively expensive for some reason (despite being significantly cheaper in the past twenty years)...so more along the lines of the original 80's Total Recall. Or the crappy Judge Dredd film nobody liked. Or basically every Niel Blowkamp film ever if you just assumed it did not primarily involve the slums of South Africa, specifically Chappie or District 9.

Seriously, why bother making a spin off film if it's just going to end up being more or less the exact same film anyway? What you've done is taken a concept you originally proposed being Lockdown going around playing bounty hunter on the not-Dinobots...except now to keep costs down it's actually just really exotic Earth locations and people in costumes...and instead of visiting alien planets he now just bums off to Earth because of a reason other than the one he actually says is his reason in AoE. And then he does stuff on Earth which is not hunting Dinobots at all.

Why does Earth need to be involved? What's wrong with going all CGI? If doing total CGI is a problem then just make the bloody runtime shorter.

 

Maybe a little more refinement on this and I'll totally warm to the design  

 

I am simply throwing ideas out there. I am the type that rather prefers practical sets and vehicles if possible. Sure some things are going to be CGI, but is preferring practical effects when they can possibly be used a bad thing? Is trying out new things for the Transformers live action films bad automatically? A lot of Star Wars is shot in remote Earth locations. The opening scene in AOE was a remote Earth location. A movie with a lot more of that, albeit in other places, could be awesome. Earth is an amazing planet with a lot of amazing environments. Also, I never said that other planets should be abandoned. I simply said you could have Lockdown on Earth for part of the film. These are possibilities, not things set in stone.

Also, who says Lockdown can't hunt both Dinobots and Decepticons and other things? He considers the Autobot-Decepticon war a blight on the universe, and he views it at his duty to help rid the universe of both factions. It's abundantly clear he was hunting both factions based on his words.

Either way, Lockdown is seriously one of the best possible characters for a spinoff...
1) He's a popular character.
2) He captured the Dinobots!
3) He's an antagonist in AOE for sure, but since he's a neutral bounty hunter he can also hunt bad guys and consequently be an anti-hero of sorts depending on the story. He usually doesn't think much of humans and other species he encounters, but he's not treacherous either, so he would honor deals he made with native species on different worlds and what not. Given his stance he could also fight Decepticons.
4) He has traveled between stars and galaxies, so he is a great way to see stories play out on planets other than Earth and Cybertron.
5) He has a whole crew he can work with. In AOE we see him ordering his Steeljaws to find the intruders on his ship. I'd love to see those Steeljaws actually join him on a hunt in a jungle or something.
6) The spinoffs need to feel different from the main films, and a bounty hunter's adventures could definitely feel different.

This is really getting off topic anyway, so I'll just finish by saying that a Hot Rod with a custom-made Cybertronian car mode would have been awesome.

 

I'll wait till i see him as Rodimus...at least he looks more transformable now.

 

Isn't this made by Ven Laszlo?I don't see it anywhere other than on his page.