I think they can make wheeljacks new head work but if it only serves as visual joke about him being a nerd it'll probably suck.

Impatiently waiting to see his face in a trailer

 

It’s the same argument I’ve seen with toys. Figures come out that are genuinely bad, and they’ll have the defense of “yeah but this old toys also sucked” or “this old toy was worse”. For some reason something being bad or something having poor choices means those same things are for some reason ok to keep repeating.

 

Bizarre how they desire to defend that which shouldn’t be defended.

 

I can provide my reason for it, it's because simply aside from the design? We know nothing about Wheeljack in this movie as far as his role is concerned and compared to the Bay films? The pieces to me are falling into place that they might give a reason for Wheeljack's changed appearance. I suggested it'd be easy to just have an exchange where someone comments on his appearance and he just shoots back that he wanted to try fitting with the locals. Someone suggested maybe in this new body his G1 head could possibly be like a battle mask, it's not like Que where you really get the impression that the reason for the design, especially when you watch the behind the scenes for DOTM, was Michael Bay's contempt for the cartoon look. It is weird that he'd have a different head from Bumblebee... but I'm shocked nobody aside from a few people seem to be thinking about what this could mean since everyone else generally tries to stick within the BB aesthetic give or take a few changes either to blend more Bayverse elements in (Which I suspect is done to expand upon how that was basically what Bumblebee was aiming for, a hybrid of the two styles.) or accompany the alt modes and incorporate elements from other incarnations like we see with Arcee. This to me seems less like a sign of the end-times and more like a potential Blitzwing scenario where something's off but we'll get an explanation later that in this case is likely not going to be just "We initially planned on this idea but then switched gears because this was gonna be a reboot.".

 

Or how about when people criticise said thing about some of those figures another common response is "Just wait for a rerelease bro." or "Just look for the old one on ebay." which are both unironically pointless things to say.

 

Honestly given a few days to think about it, this whole back-and-forth is really starting to seem to me like it's basically Blitzwing 2: Energon Boogaloo. Remember when that happened? We saw the Starscream-esque bot in the trailers of Bumblebee, got that "leak" that said it was Starscream but then we learned the character was Blitzwing from Travis Knight and some panicked, stating it's just gonna be the Bayverse but in a G1 tech-suit though he said we would get an explanation and we all just accepted later it was both a mistake on his part and also a relic of when it was supposed to be a prequel? Honestly, what if it's something similar here? Not on the part of it being a relic of something mind you but what if there is a reason.

Hear me out, I've seen the arguments given about Mirage and Wheeljack being frustrating because seemingly they go through the trouble of being faithful to the original designs with changes and in the case of Bumblebee just being his old Camaro look but cleaner except for these two and with Mirage... well it's just a matter of accepting that it's weird he's the Porsche and not Jazz and that at least he has some of the hallmarks of what you'd expect Mirage to have in terms of build, color layout and abilities which are accurate to his toy bio which leaves Wheeljack the odd man out... and that's just it. He's the odd man out in a film we basically know nothing about his role in aside from he has this new head design and he's a van and people have said "Well this is why we should be angry.".

And honestly? I'm not so sure. To me, that should more inspire thoughts about if there will be an explanation for his appearance. Is this just a look he gave himself to try and be more personable to the locals? Is this just how he is casually and could it be possible the more familiar details come out when it's time for battle? Thing is, we won't know until we see more of Wheeljack or someone when this thing inevitably gets shown off at a few events and we get interviews asks about this and they choose to answer. Like the idea that after BB was confirmed to be a reboot they'd just go back on that immediately and slap Wheeljack with a new design just because they're giving the finger to continuity just comes off as odd to me more than anything. I think we should honestly wait for more info and see where this leads.

 

Not sure if it's been suggested elsewhere in the thread (I've read most of it, but still...) but if they give Wheeljack a G1-style "battle mask" during action sequences it would actually sort of sync up with his BBM appearance since that was during a huge battle scene when he would have, in theory, had his battle mask deployed (I guess he lost his glasses in the all the commotion, LOL.)

Anyway, I hate this head design. It's boring, trite, and ugly, and the rest of the design is pretty dull and uninspired too. I didn't realistically think they would use the brown van parts to give him a big "leather" work apron and a pair of gloves, like a blacksmith (that would probably be too clever for the movies) but I was at least hoping for something more creative than... whatever this is.

 

That's really giving TOO much credit to these movies to actually give us cohesive storytelling and reasonable explanations. I wouldn't put it past them to simply just have these Transformers come on screen already complete with no reason for Wheeljack to look different than he did on Cybertron. In fact, if they DO show him land on Earth, he'll probably look like his new Earth robot, just with Cybertronian parts.

 

It isn't about G1, it's about not looking like crap. The head is terrible and no matter how much you want to pretend otherwise, it sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the Autobots. The fact that they made it look completely different from the previous movie's version is just the cherry on top.

 

And I agree... but we should also remember here, this is not a movie made by Bay. This is not a movie written by our usual suspects and it seems to be more clearly continuing off of Bumblebee. I know we're still 1-6 (For some people 2-6) in terms of the win-loss ratio for these films which means cynicism is easy to let in but at the same time? There's not much here beyond Lorenzo (Who let's face it Bumblebee proved will just say anything and really shouldn't be listened to.) and Bay being one of the producers... which is not much considering he was also a producer for Bumblebee. I'm just saying there's more here to suggest we should at least take a moment to consider that.

 

Bro, that head is straight-up flames. Gorgeous, props to the artist.

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It's pretty great: it's both distinct / different but still retains the Wheelack-ness that fans love.

 

Or maybe those deploy as goggles when he's working and when it's time for business they retract.

Honestly, if they go this route? It'd be the same as Optimus' mouth. Butt ugly in most instances and preferred to not be there in any capacity... but you just throw up your hands and go with it because the mouthplate's still present at least in some scenes.

 

Wasn't the reason Armada Wheeljack was given that name because Archer or someone else thought the name sounded aggressive like carjacking?

 

Huh, Tfwiki says nothing about why the name was chosen: it's entirely possible that was why.

 

I think that was mentioned under the Orson persona.

 

The problem with that reasoning is this - If they know people would enjoy that enough to go through the hassle of modelling and rigging that...why not just stick with the BB Movie head that they already had? Or at least give just give it a slight upgrade like they did with the Arcee face. As opposed to starting from scratch to make something that looks a lot worse.

 

Me everytime I check new posts in this thread and see it's the same bitching and moaning.

 

Yeah, I think I heard about that explanation in a recent TF Slag Podcast video. Apparently, Archer thought the Wheeljack name "didn't sound like an Autobot".

Not sure how legitimate that account is, but considering Protoman seems to be friends with Archer, I'd be inclined to believe it.

 

Well there's a few points I want to make. The first is they were gonna have to redesign these guys to begin with. The Cybertron models are pretty well-known at this point to have been made quickly in order to turn Bumblebee into a reboot with them making a handful of unique parts that could be swapped around and reused for time. The only one who was a proper, fully finished new model was Optimus and maybe a few others. If you look at Arcee for instance and compare her to the Studio Series or even just the original CG model of Bumblebee. They look similar but a lot was done, especially in the face and body proper that looks different but still distinctly G1. The next is while we know we're in a rebooted timeline? I'm certain a few elements of the films are going to be kept because it would work for the story, stuff like the Transformers being able to adapt to their environment by analyzing and downloading info and whatnot.

I'd imagine for Wheeljack, assuming for a moment the battle-mask idea is what they went with? They must've thought of or started with the BB movie as a basis like everyone else but then thought about the character himself. Maybe this is me giving too much credit but considering we're talking a director, actors and the writers (Though mainly it seems to be Joby Harold who's most notable here.) who seem to be Transformers fans? I wouldn't be surprised if they thought "Well Optimus has been allowed to have a face in recent incarnations and Bumblebee has a battle-mask so why can't another character?" and then they also thought about how they gave Arcee her visor from the 86 movie and Optimus Primal who always has had the plate be a battle-mask and not his actual face and then could've gone through what Wheeljack's character is known to be which is that he's a scientist who often is a bit quirky and kind of a crackpot so why wouldn't he maybe choose to have a look like this? At first people are worried and maybe even angry but if they trust in the story? Maybe we see the reveal of the mouthplate coming up and the side fins and then the crowd is enamored. They'll question the alt-mode but they'll get past it and accept it as a new take on this familiar character. Then he becomes like Optimus, you hate the casual look but you accept why they did it and are happy his original head is still there and hope there's a toy later that has that design. And I think this because... well, why would Mirage have his ability from his toy bio and a fairly G1-inspired appearance? Why would other characters have modified BB movie designs but not him specifically? Why would they dig so deep into Primal as to actually give him his flail which never appeared in the BW show? I mean you'd think if that was the case they wouldn't be above changing up the beasts or everybody but Prime and Bumblebee. There's too much here to suggest that this is just them being short-sighted.