Transformers: Rise Of The Final Concerns

The time is coming. Next week Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts will hit theaters and we’ll finally learn if the movie is any good or if any of the early concerns I had will come to pass. Well, as I’ve been trying to make some headway in the YouTube backlog being sick gave me I came across a video by TJOmega from April that introduced a few concerns about the upcoming film.

This alleged prequel has already shown issues of continuity errors, but I found another TJOmega video that shows this isn’t new. The continuity of the live-action movies has been so screwed up that you start to realize why new Marvel Studios contributors hate the shared universe idea…because they can’t keep continuity straight with one series! It shows a level of not caring about not just the franchise but general storytelling and previous writers that continues to betray the Hollywood ego: my story is all that matters even when it’s a group project.

So let’s look at these two videos as TJ goes over potential problems going into the seventh Transformers film and I’ll thrown in a few thoughts of my own. After all, it’s still my website and he’s not even making content for my site. He makes content for his own YouTube channel that I linked to above and you should totally check it out. He’s also reviewing some of the early toy releases for the movie.

We’re a little further along and more trailers, teaser clips, and TV spots are out. We know that the story involves the Maximals wanting the Autobots to help protect Earth from the arrival of Unicron and his Terrorcon acolytes. This is in keeping with other versions of Unicron the Marvel comics, the Armada comic, and the original animated movie plus a few Japanese series. I’ve seen the Maximal designs and I’m not impressed. The few robot modes I have seen–Primal, Cheetor, and Rhinox–suffer from the same issues as the early Bay designs, only with the beast mode fur giving Cheetor a way to stand out. I still say Garry Chalk should have voiced Primal for the same reasons they keep bringing Peter Cullen back to voice Optimus Prime. Then there was the aforementioned interview with a focus on urban settings despite that not being the jungle they should be focused on. The end-ish result (the final film would be the final result) isn’t really impressing me.

I join TJ in being concerned about the revolving editors. If this turns out to be a hodgepodge like Joss Whedon’s Justice League it’s not going to look good for this franchise, which has thus far only had once success with fans and critics in the form of Bumblebee. There’s also a question as to whether or not this is a prequel to the Bay films or if they should stand on their own. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the current producer, seems to want to keep the series going but it’s a question if that’s what the writers and post-Bay directors want as I mentioned before with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then again, it’s not like they let a discernable timeline get in the way of telling the story they want, whether it’s good or not. TJ Omega’s second video for this post explains that garbled history, including the movies I didn’t watch. (I rage-quit in the early minutes of Age Of Extinction and didn’t come back until I heard so many positive claims about Bumblebee.)

Michael Bay cares more about what he thinks is cool than what’s good or continuity. His sole interests are hot cars, hotter women, and explosions…which I guess can also get hot. It was Bay who brought Bumblebee’s radio thing back in Revenge Of The Fallen because he thought it was funny and he finished the script during that year’s writer’s strike because we seem to get at least one every couple of decades. The current one seems to be over streaming royalties and AI scripting programs. All Bay wants to do is what looks so awesome to his not yet matured sense of entertainment so I expect the issues there. The random references by both Bay and the writers didn’t help much either. Nobody really paid attention to multiversal continuity…which has always been a mess between the comics and cartoons, especially the comics Simon Furman wrote but that’s a different discussion.

Bumblebee does seem to be Travis Knight trying to mess with continuity. It is possible that Optimus went back into space until he was forced to return when signs of the All-Spark showed up in the form of a pair of glasses on eBay. How Unicron shows up as Earth in the future and attacking Earth in the present is a bit confusing. TJ’s multiverse idea does have seeds in other takes on Unicron and my theory that when Primus and Unicron fought they were actually shredded through the multiverse, explaining how Unicron operated in Armada and grabbing an alternate universe Galvatron as his general when attacking the US Marvel universe in addition to the reformatting he’s done before. The Blendtrons, using leftover Fuzor molds not seen in the Beast Wars cartoon, in the Japanese Beast Wars sequels and the Mini-Con idea that backfired in Armada also benefits the idea of Unicron playing games, but this is the only way any of this works. The Bayverse still happened but in an alternate universe. It’s kind of what DC is trying to do keeping the DC Extended Universe while replacing Zack Snyder’s continuity with James Gunn’s continuity.

As for me, I’m approaching this the same way I approached the previous live-action movies after the Bay films finally chased me off. If I hear it’s good I’ll put it on the Finally Watched list, but Rise Of The Beasts currently has me less excited than Bumblebee and I waited on that one a long time.