Im theorizing on a whim here. We may have only seen three villains as on set vehicles. Nightbird, Battletrap, and Scourge. But we have five autobots, and four Maximals. We have an army of lanky skeleton things that are Terrorcons/Predacons. Scourge cant possibly be the main baddie.
I feel like BW Megatron is out of the picture at this point because we would have seen some marketing or a toy reveal. And many theorize G1 Megs is our post end credits grand entrance. So who?

 

Spoiler

Some weirdo who likes to eat planets or something apparently.

 

I actually disagree. I think BW Megs is the big-bad. In the original, BW Megs stole tech from his mentor....this movie seems to be based around recovering some kind of artifact/tech. I think BW Megs is the big-bad.

 

Same here. . .Especially given what Primal tells Prime in the early part of the trailer. . .

 

Considering what the test screening leaks that accurately predicted Stratosphere’s presence in the film essentially said…

Spoiler

The Terrorcons are collecting Transwarp keys to activate a Transwarp bridge that will bring Unicron into to Earth. The Terrorcons work for Unicron.

I’d say we pretty much already know who the big bad here is. Whether or not BW Megatron will appear in the movie remains to be seen, but I hope it’s some kind of cameo.

 

I'm unsure if Unicron himself will show up in this movie but from a world-building perspective one major issue with utilizing him so soon is that... In regards to Transformers he's arguably the most grave threat the universe could ever face, when it comes to stakes how can anyone afterwards be seen as a threat if the planet-eating giant was defeated by the heroes?

He's a force that needs to be built up over time.

 

Paramount wants their Thanos, unfortunately. It happened with TLK and it looks to be just as sloppily handled in ROTB.

 

That's the only way I can kind of justify it in my mind (even though it's still stupid): Paramount felt cucked when they weren't allowed to use Unicron in a hypothetical TF6 so instead of starting from scratch once more they're just gonna bring him in right away because they're not confident they'll be able to get another decade or so of movies and just hope the big CGI thing will sucker just enough people to go see their movie.

 

Nah, I think it's even dumber than that. They're literally making the same mistake Universal proper did when they tried setting up Dark Universe with The Mummy Remake.

They're forgetting to make an actual film instead of something that just does exposition. This is evident in how we're somehow jumping from Decepticons to a bunch of edgelord nobodies that are glorified Unicron Heralds, the concept of Beast Transformers, and ONCE AGAIN going into ancient human history because we know they did filming in the ruins in Peru.
In the first film.

Like, holy crap, how are we NOT getting more Decepticons to flesh that faction out? We still don't even know what the hell the Autobot/Decepticon war is about this time and we're already going to a war across time?

 

You can have a good Transformers movie with or without Decepticons or "A-list" robots. If this movie is subpar, it will be so because of the depiction of the story and characters that do appear and have absolutely nothing to do with characters that are not appearing.

 

Exactly. A good movie is a good movie. This movie could be about multiverse and involve different iterations of Transformers coming together to fight a giant cgi war, which of course would be bonkers for a sequel to Bumblebee and on paper sound atrocious. But like anything, if executed well with good pacing, good writing, and good action, a good movie is a good movie regardless of what the plot is.

 

Pretty sure he's not saying you can't do that, but... yeah, a good movie is a good movie regardless of the characters that show up. His comment doesn't appear to claim that you can't have a good TF movie with or without Decepticons or 'A-list' robots just pointing out there haven't been any good movies with the exception of Bumblebee, which while flawed is a step above the 5 previous films.

Wait: you're someone who seems to believe objectivity can't be applied to films... so what do you define as a 'good movie' or 'bad movie'? 'Good' and 'bad' are quantifiers denoting a films quality but you appear to believe that all films are of the same quality and can't be objectively analyzed, therefore technically meaning there is no such a thing as a 'bad' or 'good' movie in your world. How does that work exactly? Unless we start to redefine what words mean that premise doesn't make much sense...

 

The problem here is that ROTB, as a sequel to Bumblebee, already established the Decepticons as the main threat, the entire reason Bumblebee and the rest of the Autobots flee Cybertron. Since the movie itself was focused on Bumblebee being on the run, the Decepticons themselves being about as well defined as the bounty hunters from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid works because they ARE the driving threat of the film itself.

However, this creates a problem in that the most important question of all is still unanswered: why? Why are the Autobots and Decepticons fighting this time? A story relies on its villains to have a good motivation that has some justification, such as GLaDOS from Portal where it's revealed in the sequel that Apeture Science literally built in an "itch" that forces the chief AI of the Enrichment Center to continually test like a drug addict getting a fix (and how corruptive this is gets demonstrated when it's Wheatley in the driver's seat), or Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2/Pre-Sequel where he genuinely thinks he's the good guy despite trying to murder everyone, but he's also just a broken man because everybody betrayed and tried to kill him in the intequel game first (and basically caused him to become the threat that they were all trying to prevent him from becoming as a result).

As it stands with ROTB...we're not getting that. The Decepticons, the main driver of why the autobots are on Earth at all, don't seem to be even relevant as a presence in favor of these absolute nobody villains who have 'disposable' written all over them. We don't know why the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting over in the first place, there is no real foundation to build upon here. Why, then, is the scope suddenly exponentially expanding to include the Maximals and Predacons (which itself has to be a completely new plotline since the original doesn't apply as Prime was never asleep under Mt. St. Helens in the BB timeline), along with a trio of obviously disposable villains (repeating the trend of the Bayverse where the bad guys all die to a man and you can't build up a background threat worth a damn), and UNICRON likely being in the film because the Decepticons haven't even established a presence on Earth yet, let alone have their motivations be explained and they're already skipping ahead to the threat the Bots and Cons have to unite against already.

This is the problem all cinematic universes face all over again, where they're not doing the groundwork before jumping ahead. This very thread underscores the fact it's obvious that in the big picture, the Terrorcons are absolutely inconsequential.

 

I think Unicron will indirectly be the main antagonist, while Scourge will be the main target for the Autobots and Maximals.

 

Most likely scenario is that the main antagonist is Scourge, who is a servant of Unicron. When whatever plan Scourge is attempting to bring Unicron to Earth fails in this film, Unicron will set his sights on Earth and send another of his minions in the next film, most likely Cyclonus.

Unicron will almost certainly be the main overall threat of the planned trilogy as long as TF:RotB is financially succesful, however they are unlikely to waste him on this film beyond a cameo appearance in a flashback and/or a teaser near the end of the film.

With the Cybertron prequel film in 2024 which is likely focused around Optimus and Megatron, I doubt that Megatron is going to be the villain of the next mainline film also. They want to stray away from the Decepticons a bit.

I feel the Maximal introduction is being used to tease a potential spin-off, so Beast Wars Megatron would likely be saved for that spin-off movie.

As for if they'll set-up a sequel, I'd lean to them hinting towards Unicron sending another minion to Earth to help prepare for his arrival - in this case Cyclonus.

E.g.
2023 - RotB 1: Scourge
2024 - Cybertron Prequel: Megatron
2025 - RotB 2: Cyclonus
2026 - Beast Wars Spin-off: Beast Wars Megatron, inspired by the legacy of Megatron
2027 - RotB 3: Galvatron (Reformatted Megatron) + Unicron

That way we have Unicron show up at the 20th anniversary of the Transformers movie franchise.

Edit: An alternative option would be that RotB's two sequels are a two-parter focused primarily on Unicron.

 

Megatron, as the main villain of Rise of the Beasts: it can't work, because of Transformers (2007), where he is captured. The insinuation, from the shots of the trailer is a Unicron type villain, due to battle station looking apparatus coming from out of the ground, where Battletrap is seen running.

On a philosophical as opposed to scientific level (not as opposed to evidence level, because if the jump from AoE to TLK can illustrate anything, it's that Megatron can co-exist with himself, with no reference here to the BW Megatron), the philosophy from the evidence logic deriving from the application of external obviousness, I would venture that the main villain of Beasts won't be in the form of a living persona, but, in the form of a style of action

 

I have always claimed you can objectively describe films and other artistic or creative endeavors, but that you can't objectively judge something of that nature, because making a judgement of "good" or "bad" is itself subjective. When I say subpar, I mean subpar based on my personal preferences.

With that said, I don't think we can describe the villains as "wannabe edgelords," because we have not even seen the movie yet. Skepticism is fine at this point. There is nothing wrong with skepticism, but by the same token fans can't make final judgements or descriptions yet.

The thing is, because all Decepticons established as actual characters in Bumblebee are dead, there is no reason a Bumblebee sequel can't do something completely different in terms of antagonists. It's possible none of the Decepticons on Cybertron even know about Earth at this point! Therefore, why do the Decepticons need to be the threat on Earth at this point in time? Let there be a threat from a completely different group of Transformers! These movies are not required to have the major Decepticons appear before the Terrorcons!

If Bumblebee ended with Megatron or another major Con being teased, and then RotB completely forgot about him, then yeah, but Bumblebee didn't tease other Decepticons definitely coming to Earth! It teased other Autobots arriving. There is no issue there, and there is no indication Starscream and Soundwave and Shockwave even know about Earth.

 

The final boss will be Bay himself, appearing in a rain of explosion and fighting Optimus in a sick dance off, ended in OP ripping Bay's face while saying "Give me your face" while the Autobots cheered and BB tuning in to the song "Mamamia, here we go again"