Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Money, violence, sex, computer graphics, scatalogical humor, racism, robots designed to be rednecks but given European accents, and maybe another sequel to the saga... what's not to love? TF m1, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon and now Age of Extinction.
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Sparky Prime
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Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by Sparky Prime »

Hasbro announced today at a Toy Fair investors preview that they will be ending the current Transformers movieverse. Bumblebee: The Movie will be the last entry of the series and Transformers 6 has been canceled. Hasbro has no plans for another live action film yet but they, along with Paramount, intend on resetting the Transformers movieverse, although it sounds like they won't start planning for a few years, 2021.
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andersonh1
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by andersonh1 »

Sparky Prime wrote:Hasbro announced today at a Toy Fair investors preview that they will be ending the current Transformers movieverse. Bumblebee: The Movie will be the last entry of the series and Transformers 6 has been canceled. Hasbro has no plans for another live action film yet but they, along with Paramount, intend on resetting the Transformers movieverse, although it sounds like they won't start planning for a few years, 2021.
Wow... so one underperforming sequel later, and they're starting over? I wonder what different approach they'll take?
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by Dominic »

I heard slightly differently.

The upcoming "Bumblebee" movie will be the start of the new movies, rather than closing out Bay.

Either way, the movies are getting a reboot.



Wow... so one underperforming sequel later, and they're starting over? I wonder what different approach they'll take?
I suspect the biggest change will be tone.

Bayformers started before Marvel studios properly launched. (The Hulk movies seems to be counted selectively. If Marvel Studios wants to sell the longevity of the franchise, they count it. If they are selling "good movies with superheroes....", they ignore it.) When Bayformers launched, nobody expected the movies to be good, let alone credible. Good comic book movies were rare, and not universally recognized as good. And, a movie that tied in with a toyline would have an even bigger jump to reaching credibility.

Bay worked because audiences had such low expectations for the movies.

But, Marvel has since proven that comic book movies can not only be good, but be recognized as such. It would make sense for Hasbro to push for something different (especially with audiences seeming to tire of Bayformers). There will probably be fewer dumb set-pieces and the like.

I cannot say that I am upset by the idea of a reboot.

Bayformers ran for ~10 years. That ain't bad for a franchise that was expected to tank after one movie. And, Marvel is hitting a point where they have to change things, if only because the original cast ain't getting younger.

I did not dislike Bayformers as much as some people (on this forum and elsewhere) do. But, I was never in love with Bayformers. There were some tie-in comics that I liked (particularly "Reign of Starscream"). But, the primary media (aka "the movies") was always lacking in one or more things.

I sat through all of the movies at least once. There were things that I liked *about* the movies, but not enough to make me like the actual movies. I would never tell a non-fan to sit through a Bayformers movie. They are, at best, passable action movies, and nothing worth seeking.
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

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Dominic wrote:I heard slightly differently.

The upcoming "Bumblebee" movie will be the start of the new movies, rather than closing out Bay.
Upcoming? Bumblebee has been out for 2 months now. Also, this thread is over a year old. It's interesting to see how things have changed since then though. Last year, as the link I posted says, Hasbro did consider "Bumblebee" the last of the Bay universe films. It had been intended to sort of bridge the gap from The Last Knight (which established Bumblebee on Earth during WWII) and where he'd eventually end up in the 2007 film. But this year, they have changed their story, calling the Bumblebee movie "a new storytelling universe" instead. Apparently, after the commercial failure of "The Last Knight" and early test screenings of this film, they decided to take "Bumblebee" in a new direction, cutting out what had tied it to the previous films and adding some new elements to set it apart.
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by Dominic »

I am skeptical of this. How could a major movie, about a franchise that I sort of pay attention to, be out....and me not know about it?


Admittedly, things have been hectic. And, having pneumonia probably did not help. But, seriously?
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by Shockwave »

Dominic wrote:I am skeptical of this. How could a major movie, about a franchise that I sort of pay attention to, be out....and me not know about it?


Admittedly, things have been hectic. And, having pneumonia probably did not help. But, seriously?
Yep, it's been out a while. My girlfriend and I saw it at the drive in a couple weeks ago. Also, there's a video on youtube by Moviebob who talks about this and it's interesting and worth checking out.
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by andersonh1 »

I haven't seen Bumblebee yet, so it's hard to comment on whether or not it's a good start for a reboot. But while I found a lot to enjoy about the Bay films, there was a lot I didn't like, and I can't say I'd mind a new start.
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by JediTricks »

We knew this a year ago viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2057&p=51505&hilit=reboot#p51505

This is what Brian Goldner said back in Feb '18, nobody listened.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

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JediTricks wrote:We knew this a year ago viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2057&p=51505&hilit=reboot#p51505

This is what Brian Goldner said back in Feb '18, nobody listened.
That post you linked was from June, and doesn't cite anything officially calling it a reboot... As the link I posted last year says, Hasbro's position back in February 2018 was that it was part of the Bay films. To my understanding, the decision to make it a reboot didn't happen until pretty late into post-production, several months later. It was noted by people who saw a test version of the film in March 2018 that scenes like Sector 7 already knowing about the Transformers was re-shot to make it their first encounter with Transformers in the final version of the film. And we know they were still doing re-shoots in October, which is pretty much last minute to be making changes to the film when you consider it was released in December. Yet the official word hadn't changed in all that time that I'm aware of. It wasn't until Toy Fair this year that Hasbro (finally) officially acknowledged it to be a reboot.
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Re: Current TF movieverse is over, to be rebooted

Post by Dominic »

I was not paying close attention at this point last year. But, I took the rumbling from Hasbro (or maybe I thought it was the studio) to mean that they would make a decision based on where they thought the franchise was going. If they thought Bayformers was viable, they would treat " Bumblebee" as a prequel. If they decided Bayformers was not viable, "Bumblebee" would be a clean start.

(Oddly, I think that I have seen Bumblebee figure sets that treat the new movie's character as being another form of the Bayformers' character.)
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