This is the Starbase Yorktown, an incredible space station in Star Trek Beyond. Visually, this could make a great template for Unicron, or alternately Primus. His biography would be trickier to handle, but given that the Decepticon antagonists simply show up out of the past with only a brief background explanation - like in G1, where Unicron and the Quintessons and Primacron never met or connected - I don't think that's too serious a problem at this point. He's Unicron the planet-eater, it's simple enough.
This is the Bayverse. If he decided to have Unicron I could imaging him to be a giant robo space squid... or something really really small.
The problem wouldn't be making him planet sized, it would be trying to show him and the regular sized Transformers on screen at the same time. Even with a city sized character it won't be easy. The scales are just enormous. They got round it in the cartoons by just changing scale all the time.
I don't understand the 'scale' argument. We don't see Luke next to the Death Star in the same frame. We see the second Death Star's scale showing it next to a planet.
I would put Unicron in the category as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Starscream: someone whose alternate mode is a part of their character. Optimus is a red truck (fire truck, cab over, long-nose), Bumblebee is a yellow car (Vw or Camaro), Starscream is a jet fighter (Eagle, Raptor, Falcon). Unicron needs to be planetary, since he's a planetary threat. I'd say around five years ago, when we got DOTM and Pacific Rim, that the possibility of Unicron-size robots became feasible. But it was only around last year that we were able to get some impressive VFX involving landscapes. The Yorktown above is one example, others include the Starkiller Base from Star Wars 7 and the city-bending visuals from Dr Strange. These VFX mean that Unicron can be more than a floating orb in space.
As long as they don't do to Unicron what was done to Galactus in the F4 movie. . . Also, I recall reading somewhere that Unicron would be roughly the size of Jupiter. . .Or they may go similar to how (size-wise) Unicron was portrayed in Transformers: Prime. We shall see. . .
I have had plenty of disagreements in the past with you about the most recent films AB, but I have to agree with you on this point. I am not saying Unicron should never appear in the films. I just think he needs to be used with caution if he does appear. Most of the fan ideas involving Unicron that I have seen have been pretty bad.
I don't think Unicron should be used for cost issues. Bay has started taking steps in the right direction when he had more scenes in AOE focus on Optimus and the Autobots and he did so by having the animating team be more efficient with their materials. Unicron would ironically enough take time away from the Transformers just because of his sheer massive scale that would cost a lot of money that would have to go into rendering.
I don't see how scale is such a big issue either. The human Star Wars characters and the Death Star worked just fine. You could have a zoomed out shot of Unicron as a small planet transforming, and then get in close as the other characters zip around its surface or inner features.
I don't think the problem has ever been on the effects end of things. If anything Unicron would actually be a bit easier than our standard band of Autobots and Decepticons. When the Bay films have used Autobots and Decepticons on Earth it's required a massive load of extra work with lighting and shading to make it look like the robots were part of the shot and not special effects added in later on. But with Unicron being a space shot there are so many more cheats they could use since it's a CGI character against a CGI space environment. The only slightly tricky bit is finding a city that looks futuristic enough like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Trek Beyond did to have your human actors run around. Unicron in more of a story problem. Once you have defeated the ultimate big bad where do you go from there? Even Marvel/Disney nor Warner/DC have solved this problem as they have both introduced an ultimate big bad but neither is in a hurry to have the heroes defeat that ultimate big bad. Heck Justice League Unlimited didn't even try they just ended the series with the defeat of the ultimate big bad.
I got to agree with this. Unicron is one of the characters that is just not that easy to translate into film.
