Exactly.

 

But disintegrating humans in slo-mo in something that is borderline gore in DOTM was okay?

Not really because of three major points:

1. Optimus Prime arriving on Earth in 1987...a full twenty years before he arrives on Earth in 2006. The only excuse I've seen for this is "oh he left Earth at some point inbetween" except the movie does not suggest this in the slightest.

2. Shatter and Dropkick are in the S7 base. You know what's also inside the base? MEGATRON and THE ALLSPARK. It's stated in the first film that Hoover Dam was built to block the electromagnetic radiation from The AllSpark from being detected...except given the two Decepticons are inside the dam it stands to reason they'd sense the most powerful Cybertronian artifact in existence in their general vicinity.

3. The entire plan Shatter and Dropkick have is to use a radio tower to contact more Decepticons. Except DOTM establishes SOUNDWAVE IS ALSO ON THE PLANET. Why do they need to ET Phone Home when they could reasonably just call him instead, since the first film established the Decepticons could communicate at least halfway across the globe with Hoover Dam inbetween them given Frenzy was inside the dam and all the other Decepticons weren't?

It took over $600 million, the lowest box office of the franchise at the time, and ended up at negative $100 million because of the sheer cost of production. Bumblebee may have made somewhat less but its budget was virtually half as much and so it did what TLK never could: TURN A PROFIT.

It's amazing how much people desperately downplay the damage TLK did.

Pretty much - they're playing a desperate game where they want to appeal to an audience that's sick of the bay films while retaining as much of the bay fans as possible.

To you I pose the same question as above - if it's a prequel to the same continuity as the bayverse, then as of DOTM establishing Soundwave was on Earth due to his role in getting the Apollo missions canceled in the 70s, why didn't Shatter and Dropkick just call the chief Decepticon communications guy instead of having to hotwire some random-ass satellite dish?

 

TLK is seen a failure because while yes it made more than Bee, but the film was expensive, its budget was about 200 million not to forget marketinng, so it needed to make more than 600 million to get its money back, i mean if TLK had the budget of Bumblebee, then the 600 million it made, would've been seen as a success, since it would've broken even once it reached 400M

 

Uh, and exactly what are those elements? The only thing I can think of is S7, but even that has nothing to do with the plot.

 

I dont look for errors with a magnifying glass. I sit back and enjoy what they got right over some popcorn. Never even thought about Soundwave.

 

To be fair we never did get any numbers until now. It's a pretty goddamn bleak thing when you made 600 mil, but once you crunched your numbers you realize you actually LOST 100 mil. It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around.

I mean, I'm not even slamming TLK. I actually REALLY liked AoE and TLK. Hell, I liked them more than I liked the first three. While TLK wasn't really a reboot or anything it felt fresh and I get spirit of what they were trying to do, even if what they tried was...not very successful. TLK was just a fun romp and I didn't feel insulted when I walked out of the theater. It embraced the dumb.

That being said I was saying for a long time that the movies needed a reboot. Because you just cannot keep something going forever unchanged. Fatigue and stuff starts setting in and I feel that certainly contributed to TLK's downfall. Hell, even now Marvel Fatigue is a real thing. Even Feige's plans for the MCU didn't call for it continuing forever. It's gonna roll out a whole new cast of characters and different stories. Effectively a reboot of sorts.

 

It didnt killed the writers room, they disbanded before The Last Knight even started filming.

 

S7 and simmons
Bees entire aesthetic especially the face
Bees lack of a voice
The 1979 camaro
No Megatron because he was frozen
Shatter and Dropkick were also very Bayverse

 

There are Bay fans?  

I agree about the disintegrating thing: I found the disintegration in DOTM and X-Men 3 more horrifying than the bloodiest goriest scenes in any other movie I've seen. So weird that that was ok for pg-13.

Despite my insistence that this was a reboot, I disagree on a few of your points. There's no reason Optimus couldn't have been to earth prior to the first movie. It is odd though, that in that movie he told Sam that they had learned Earth's languages from the world wide web and yet bumblebee is all, "I don't want to hurt anyone," in the Queen's English moments after arriving on Earth and before he had time to learn it from the web... which the Decepticons hadn't invented yet.

I don't recall any indication that the base they took Shatter and Dropkick to was the one at Hoover dam. In fact, if they were hiding Megatron there, that would be the last place they'd want to take them. They took bumblebee there in the first movie because they intended to freeze him and hide him like they had with Megatron. They wouldn't want to take functional transformers there and let them run around for exactly the reasons you gave.

Then why even get into the argument? If you're watching the movie without your brain then what good are your opinions?

 

Because you can't keep ANYTHING AT ALL when you reboot something. You can't homage legacy elements. No, a reboot must be absolutely, 100% different. If you even have 1% of even the teeniest element in your so called, idiotic reboot when you AREN'T REBOOTING AT ALL. Goddamn get it people. --Wisdom of Rated X(2nd edition) 13:3

I was a bit iffy on that one when I made the post. Most of the articles I found talked about the death of it after the TLK movie so I just threw it in there.

 

Bumblebee... An Elseworld Prebootquel?

Travis Knight said this movie was meant to be its own thing. So just I’m going with that. It’s like when Animated or Prime coexisted with the Bayverse. There were little nods to Bayverse in Prime, but it was still separate from the Bay movies while existing at the same time as those movies.

I’m calling Bumblebee the start of the “Bumbleverse” movies. I’m not gonna call it “Knightverse” (yet) seeing as how Knight may or may not return for the sequel.

 

What Travis said should be Cliffnotes for Lorenzo before he says anything in future interviews

 

Not to mention the only reason bumblebee did so poorly (aside from being released in the movie equivalent of the “death slot” against aquaman), was because of how absolutely atrocious TLK was (and I would argue AOE before it). With tf 07-DOTM there was a method to the madness, yes the films weren’t great, but the designs were cool, and there was an epic nature to them that was lost with the fourth installment (this could of course be my nostalgia talking). Both AOE and TLK left me with the same feeling as battleship...with a strange burning in the pit of my stomach like I’d just eaten some overly salted ramen. Taken together they’re poor self-parodies, individually they’re a group of cool ideas that never got beyond the idea phase, and a bizarre fever dream of a live action cartoon.

And I don’t see why this is even a debate anymore, Hasbro has said its a reboot, the most up to date statement from the producer that won’t stop talking is that its a reboot, and the director of the film has confirmed that while it started as a prequel, the final product is a reboot. It’s a reboot.

 

Bee's entire aesthetic is not even the same as his Bayverse counterpart. Every single part is redesigned from scratch. Did you just make that up?

Bee's voice isn't the same as it was in '07 (the accent is completely different).

They had to feature the Camaro no matter what as it's part of Paramount's contract.

They could have easily left in the original ending scene with frozen Megatron but they didn't. He wasn't mentioned to be frozen in the film.

Either way, nothing you mentioned had anything to do with the plot. The plot doesn't line up with '07 or any films that follow. If it violates objectively the single most important aspect of a continuity, how can you say Bumblebee is part of the Bayverse?

 

But...that's literally what Shatter and Dropkick are going to do. Call other Decepticons. Soundwave is another Decepticon on the planet. Among many, many other Decepticons based on what TLK evidently sets up.

You can not use the existence of Simmons in the film as proof of it being a prequel, because that acknowledges what exists in the later films, and then flippantly deny Soundwave...because he's established as having already been on the planet because of the Apollo Missions interference they virtually explain in detail in DOTM. Is he even called Simmons by name in the film?

People need to learn to let go, and TLK, as shit as it was, gave a decent ending as far as could be expected. People are just whining their assess off over one scene even Lorenzo admitted was tacked on last minute about Unicron.

Because apparently not enough people remember how well Live Action Galactus went over.

Because Spike Witwicky is supposed to be the exact same guy across continuities OH WAIT

And Prime's face isn't identical for the most part?

No, he did have one, and it's different from the one that he had at the end of the 2007 film. AND the one in TLK. So no, this one can't really count.

How do you know it wasn't a 1978 Camaro? The body work is virtually identical.

It's been known since March of last year that Megatron was in the film and was removed between pre-screenings and the final product. Plus, wouldn't you think S7 in its eagerness to trip over its own feet to work together with the alien robots would point out they might already have one of their own completely frozen in the basement? Right next to the big magic cube that makes technology come alive?

They had kibble. You can't really say the same of like, half the designs from AoE and TLK.

The only reason Prime and the other Autobots show up to Earth is after Bumblebee does the Bot-signal into space. The opening narration outright says

If he's already been to Earth, why would he call it an 'unknown planet'?

Except if we go off the original pre-screening cuts where Megatron was shown, that shows S7 is operating out of the Hoover Dam base almost exclusively.

 

Yeah i mean we first had reports of them disbanding before TLK came out and nobody paid attention to it, then after it was reiterated that they disbanded after TLK came out, then that is when people paid attention and began blaming TLK for it, even though we knew this before the film came out
Transformers Writers Room Concludes: Akiva Goldsman Scripting Transformers 5 - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

Yes they do say his name.

 

The fact Burns calls him “Simmons” doesn’t mean anything. That could be any Simmons. I’m sure there is more than one person in the world with the last name of Simmons.

Why it could even be Richard Simmons. 


Okay, not likely... unless Joel Schumaker is directing the next one.

 

You already know that people will do anything to shoot fire at Bay's Transformers.

 

It’s not that TLK caused the writer’s room to disband, it was never supposed to be a permanent thing. It has however apparently made them either scrap, or alter (see bumblebee) all of the skripts that the writer’s room was assembled to create.

I think what really irks me the most about TLK, and the reason I’ve become so hard on it recently, is that it has so much potential. The pieces are all there, a hot rod who’s personality matches the original, actual characterful robots, an epic storyline that borrows from past TF series...it’s just all wasted by a lack of plot to hold it all together, and left field choices like a certain character’s accent.