I think it's plausible and as long as scourge is tlk prime I think this is the direction they'll go. Rotb and the flash share joby Harold as a main writer and that film seemed to have a similar idea of rewriting the film's universe.

Transformers media frequently borrows from previous ones, prime had bee's radio voice from bayverse, bayverse had the earth being unicron from prime

Nemesis has never really had a consistent origin but i could see herald of unicron become a default choice.

 

Optimus referred to Earth as "an unknown planet" in the 2007 film's opening narration. Why would he say that if he's been here before? If this isn't a reboot, then that's yet another continuity error.

 

This is so like the xmen franchise timeline
In last stand (X3) and Wolverine 1 prof x was Patrick Stewart and was walking
I’m first class prof x was James M and already crippled

 

Ok so far the director said it FEELs like a true reboot, which makes it sound less like an actual reboot to me.
Also Both Hasbro and Paramoutn changed CEO during the production of this movie. Would the movie be influenced by this event??

 

Personal theory: Paramount and crew will cling onto the sentiment that this is a prequel film, despite the continuity making no sense. Not only do they know it doesn’t make sense, but they simply don’t give a fuck.

 

Well if a mere word seems to be enough to trigger debates, create buzz and, finally, put people in seats....

In truth, it's just like you said. They just don't care. It's a toy commercial movie with robots blowing stuff up. "Continuity", "mythology", "characters", "design aesthetics", "world building", "lore" and such, is only for those poor nerds who came in with built-in investment on the brand, thanks to the good work of previous storytellers. Lorenzo is only here to cash in.

 

I dunno, why would he say that given he apparently was in the hundred years war (1337-1453)?



This is the caliber of ignorance within Paramount leadership, and especially more than a couple of people who are in charge of making ROTB like Lorenzo.

 

God. Those photoshopped paintings just do my head in: they even slapped a cannon and little fucking feather on top of his head.

 

What's even more hilarious is that he's just standing there while every single other person in the entire battle is clearly charging the front lines. They literally couldn't be bothered to gen up a whole new image of Prime exclusively to 'shop into this one famous paining, just took some existing stock art of the original Movie Prime design, stuck some corny shit on it, and then dropped it into that image in post.

 

    Ugh god that makes it even worse... he's just standing there. At least that one image of Ironhide showed him doing something, or Hound... but god damn whoever thought this was a good idea.

 

He was taking a break..man.Existence was hard back then..even more for Primes.Maybe he was thinking what weapon to choose..c'mon man.It happens, it's so random that it would deifitely fit the real world..oh the chaos 

 

That image of Prime standing in the middle of that battle is akin to what Travis Knight was probably feeling when he signed on to do Bumblebee. Knight is just chilling trying to make his movie in the middle of the whole reboot/prequel shitshow happening behind the scenes at Paramount fuck studios. He’s right in the middle of the chaos and probably thinking: what did I get myself into.

 

Prime just thinking "oh primus I cant move I'll crush the poor fleshlings WHY ARE THEY STANDING THERE oh primus move please Im a sitting duck here"

 

I honestly didn't think we're supposed to take the paintings literally. They probably just took a bunch of transformers and put them in famous paintings/scenarios just to plant the whole "they've always been here" in movie watchers' noggins. Why would you design a whole bunch of random robots when you can just select a handful of recognizable ones. I don't think Optimus was really in the Battle of Waterloo cause they slapped a 2007 stock image in a painting and plopped a feather in his hat.

 

The secret history/Witwiccan shit in TLK just butchered the franchise beyond repair. I'll be honest I'd like to see what they could do with time travel messing with the Bayverse but ultimately the only thing they can do to make any sense of anything if they "continue" beyond TLK is to completely ignore that stuff or just make a comment about how Burton was a nut who liked to paint Transformers.

I'd be much more excited if the prequel possibility came right after Age of Extinction or Dark of the Moon.

 

Honestly, I think Burton simply being incorrect or exaggerating would be a fine way out. A lot of people tend to take stuff characters say in movies as hard canon, without considering that characters could be lying or wrong.

Like, even TFWiki definitively claims Optimus Prime "participated in the Battle of Waterloo", but we don't know that for a canon fact. All we know is that someone painted a photo of Optimus participating in that battle. Could've easily been painted after Optimus entered the public eye in the 2000s. You don't really have to stretch your headcanon that far to reach that conclusion, considering that kind of thing would absolutely happen. I'd argue it takes just as much headcanon to assume he did participate in that battle. Until they elaborate on that story, both options are equally valid.

Same with Bee being active in WW2. That one's a bit trickier to argue against considering we see a flashback, but we could assume the flashback was unreliable considering it was being told by a seemingly unreliable narrator. If we take into consideration Bumblebee acting like he never met Burton (despite Burton claiming otherwise) and also take the opening scene of the BB movie as "true" canon, we can easily say Burton was mistaken and maybe confusing Bumblebee for some other Transformer who was active in WW2. An elderly man being mistaken about things that happened half-a-century ago is not implausible. The propaganda poster could have been created later, just like the painting of Optimus.

On the flipside, we could take Burton's WW2 story as true and BB's opening as unreliable, considering the whole plot of that movie hinges on Bumblebee having a damaged memory. Although I do think it's better to take BB's flashbacks as the "true" canon, since there's nothing in the movie to indicate they're unreliable (unlike Burton misremembering things and being generally kooky). But I do think it's one possible way to reconcile the events.

I think there are a lot of ways of interpreting the big picture and having it all fit together fine without having to decanonize any of the movies or put BB and ROTB in a new continuity. That doesn't work if you take every detail as literal strict canon, but stories aren't meant to be viewed that way. Stories are supposed to be interpreted by the audience and viewed with the understanding that characters are flawed and events aren't always as clear-cut as they seem. There are plenty of real historical stories with unclear and seemingly contradictory details. A few things in a space robot movie not perfectly lining up doesn't instantly mean the new movies have to be a reboot.

 

Why bother showing Bumblebee and Hot Rod taking part in WWII? Plus, these movies cost literally millions of dollars to make, the fact they were this cheap is just inexcusable where they could have just used a protoform model in its place and been perfectly fine for a generic.

 

Speaking of Michael Bay…he just fired his longtime agent Ari Emanuel. His career has been in the shitter since The Last Knight bombed.

 

Uhhh, he's directed two other films, both of which did ok (even if they weren't massive successes), and produced like a dozen films, including a bunch of hits. Most directors would be glad to have their careers doing that badly, even after the glory days Bay had.

Maybe he's not happy with his agent and thinks he can do better, but Bay went from The Rock to Pearl Harbor to Transformers, he's no stranger to ups and downs.

 

Except of for the re-use of Bayverse Bumblebee design