Probably because Cullen and Welker have voiced multiple continuties.

 

Yes, Arcee is among the characters announced, but a VA is to be confirmed.

That's obviously given.

 

Yes, yes it is. Which is why a VA is not indicative of a continuity.

 

Just saying. When Bee and Wheeljack had different voices. Plus, is an air freshener indicative?

 

I don't see why they would include the air freshener if they weren't trying to make some kind of connection to the 2007 film.

 

Ah I see, I misunderstood. You are saying the airfreshner and voice actor equally irrelevant to it being in continuity?

I don't know the BB interior details is a bit stronger evidence of drawing a visual link to the '07 movie. As movies are a visual media, it is concerning.

 

@AleximusPrimus So it's a Days of Future Past style reboot where the Maximals and Predacons have traveled back in time from the post-TLK era to stop Unicron from reawakening, destroying the Earth, and devouring Cybertron and, in the process, their time travel shenanigans will alter the future, wiping out the Bayverse and allowing a new, loosely connected continuity to begin? And if that's the case then the Terrorcons have been sent back by Unicron to stop them, thus preserving the Bayverse and its dark, Unciron wins, ending.

Also, since it might be really spoilery if true:

Spoiler

Scourge isn't some rando working for Unicron, he's Bayformers Optimus reformatted and sent back to ensure the preservation of the original timeline.

It has a nice meta quality to it, with both sides literally battling for the future of the franchise. So naturaly, it won't be anything like this, probably just some vague noncommittal standalone adventure.  

 

If that is real, BIG IF, that sounds super freaking cool.

 

Both Lorenzo and the director Steven Caple Jr. talked about ROTB as if it takes place in the same universe as the Bayverse and Bumblebee during the Paramount virtual event - I feel that maybe some of what they said and how it was said gets slightly lost in translation when it's read in text form - I watched the event and I came away thinking that ROTB would be loosely connected to the Bayverse, not a complete reboot or a full on prequel.

I would be behind Paramount coming out and saying it's a reboot - I felt like that was the obvious route to go after Bumblebee but I don't really think it matters at this moment in time whether they do that or not.

Paramount not committing to either a reboot or prequel does not affect my enjoyment for this movie. If it has some brief references to the Bayverse that don't affect the overall plot why does it matter? ROTB will be no different from Bumblebee - you can view that movie as a prequel or a reboot it is up to you.

I think the bottom line is ROTB will be loosely tied to the Bayverse, it's not a reboot or a prequel - I think we just have to accept that's what it is currently until we get confirmation for otherwise, because that is what the evidence points to IMO.

 

That would be fucking awesome if true.

 

I don't think they'd ever do it, since that would require essentially admitting that the Bayverse sucks and is the worst timeline, but it would be really awesome.

 

It would be AMAZING!

 

Who says it can't lead into something good? They could probably squeeze in another movie or two (in the late '90s and early 2000s) before the events of the '07 movie. And then they could jump after the events of TLK and tell more stories in the present day. And those stories wouldn't have to be directly connected to the Bay movies. Take Angel Manuel Soto's movie, for instance. That's going to take place outside the US. They could have that movie inhabit the world of the other films, but not directly connect to them (outside of maybe a few references here and there, like maybe someone will mention the battle of Chicago or something).

I wouldn't say the Bay movies "got lucky". Love them or hate them, Bay crafted movies that connected with a lot of people. They didn't just 'accidentally' make billions of dollars. If Paramount wants to see DOTM-level profit again, it might be smart for them to figure out what people liked about DOTM, and try to emulate that while avoiding what people didn't like about TLK.

 

I feel like they should be paying attention to what people like about the first movie that slowly leaked out of every single subsequent film instead, to be honest.

 

My issue with that would be the fact that all the way up to 1994(92? Can’t remember) the timeline would have still been exactly the same as the Bay movies, with the pre-earth designs, the ancient history bullshit, Sentinel Prime and his “Ark,” frozen Megatron, the Pyramids, Optimus not having the Matrix, Megatron having like, 3 different “master plans” all going on at the same time, transformium and the Creators, Quintessa, and the lazily written Allspark macguffin.

 

This is a pretty entertaining idea to be honest, did you come up with it? I'd watch it.   It's also probably the only scenario which I'd accept it being in the Bayverse continuity, if they wiped out the original timeline so none of that BS ever occurred to begin with.

Now yes, this is a major reason why I doubt they'd do it because it'd have to involve basically admitting they fucked up the first time... which I just don't see them doing.

But I do think they'd gain back some lost favor by dumping the Bayverse into the garbage (in a theatrical manner) and hopefully replace it with something better. General audiences are fickle and hard to predict, but if being more like... Transformers is enough to make the Bayverse camp disengage then I don't really know what to tell them.

It'd kinda be like if the shitty Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil movie fans felt left out if someone made a better series of RE films more accurate to the games when they got 5 movies they can always go back and watch that won't go anywhere.

 

I honestly think it's possible that they'll keep in-continuity with the '07 film and possibly the first two sequels, but maybe steer away from the last two films (especially TLK). Maybe not flat-out decanonize them, but I could see them ignoring anything that happens in those movies. Do I want them to do that? Not personally, I'm not really a fan of picking and choosing...and I actually think AOE and TLK have a lot of good stuff in them that future movies could build on (while maybe ignoring some of the dumber stuff). But I do think it's a possibility. The '07 film is still generally well-liked among casual audiences and even fans, so there's no real reason to throw it out.

 

Well-liked? Perhaps, but a movie being liked doesn't make it well made from an objective standpoint. I really don't think the 2007 film has aged that well and a lot of the affection people have for it stems from nostalgia rather than the movie itself being well made or a good adaption. We really can do better overall.

There are plenty of bad films I think people tend to enjoy, there are bad films I enjoy but I also accept that this isn't a formula that should be emulated. I'd probably have a much less negative view of the 2007 movie if it was just a one-off like the Roland Emmerich Godzilla or that recent live action Power Rangers film instead of the same mistake being repeated over and over and over and over again.

 

That's the great thing about time travel, though, it's all fictional (or, at most, theoretical) so the rules are pretty flexible and you can use it to change anything you don't like. All of that stuff you mentioned could be erased, or they could pick and choose the parts they want to keep and those they want to get rid of, like Deadpool playing with Cable's time travel watch to "clean up the timelines."

Mostly, though it's not too dissimilar from what they just did with Kingdom (and if Hasbro/eOne does have greater creative input now then it wouldn't surprise me if they wanted the movies to be more "synergistic" with the ongoing toylines, comics, and cartoons) and Scourge is my brother's idea.

I could almost see them being ambiguous with the continuity, like showing a different version of Optimus than the Bayverse knight design, so they can have it go either way depending on how successful ROTB is. I guess I'd be okay with that, but I think I'd like it more if they made the direction connection (presuming they don't go full reboot from the start, which I think is sadly unlikely).

 

Yep snake eyes is made with even worse quality control than gi 1-2...what makes people think this new soft reboot series gonna be different under Lorenzo?