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I will first and foremost reiterate that for the live action Transformers films, it's best to enjoy them as singular entities rather than try to map out any kind of continuity, even though the films do often attempt connecting visual or story elements. The next film, Rise of the Beasts, will be no different, hence my earlier article about it not making a difference if it's a reboot or not.
People have since written in and commented, offering good points. The best one being that while the tropes of the live action Transformers films may be inevitable (and even enjoyed by many fans), at least a reboot of the continuity would mean that the films don't lead to the unconcluded story set up in The Last Knight. That is an excellent point, and for the reasons I will point out below, that may be what this franchise plans on doing with this film. That does mean, however, that while the continuity changes, the live action films would still be in the same universe, set up by Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg (aptly called Bayverse by many). And there in lies the question, would fans be ok with preserving the Bayverse but branching off into an alternate storyline/continuity within?
I bring this up because there were rumours of a test screening for the Rise of the Beasts, which included elements of time travel, connecting the Rise of the Beasts movie directly with the earlier Bay era movies and changing the past so that the storylines don't end up in the same direction as the previous Bay films, creating a new timeline. There was never solid evidence of these screenings, so not much attention was given to them. Those story elements are starting to resurface with the mention of the Transwarp Key (or Keys), which we know will factor into this movie, and that was mentioned in the accounts of the test screenings. It may have been a lucky guess but, regardless, the "Transwarp" element does come from Beast Wars canon and it was the Transwarp Drive which let the Maximals travel through time originally. All to say, time travel can factor into this movie.
Other outlets have written similar articles comparing this possible plot point to the X-Men franchise where time travel was also used to create a diverging timeline within the same universe, creating new potential storylines (like the Apocalypse and Dark Pheonix film). As I read all this and put it together, I wonder if the fans who were asking for a reboot would be satisfied by this. While it would help the storytellers for future films, it still provides zero indication of fans getting what they want, which is a film focused on the robots with very few (to no) humans. It just means that the Unicron plot point from Transformers The Last Knight is abandoned, which would anger other fans. So ultimately, it looks like this doesn't benefit any fan. Those who want the Bayverse to die don't get that, and those who want to see a satisfying conclusion to the story the live action films were telling don't get that either.
But maybe this middle ground of a divergent storyline would satisfy some fans, hence the question this article asks: would fans be happy with an alternate timeline within the Bayverse?
Transfomers Studio Series designer King Samlock is back to give us details on the designing process for the two Rise of the Beasts toys revealed yesterday. There was an assumption, way back before the film delay, that while the mainline toys would be based on preliminary concept art, the Studio Series toys would be of the finished models and that's not entirely the case. As you'll see below, was working with what they were given to make toys that should match what we see on screen but there was still some guesswork, making them not entirely accurate. Like Battletrap's missing engine block and adding stripes on Bumblebee's car mode.
The designer discusses how Battletrap, for instance, was designed based on concept art and we learn through the blurb accompanying Bumblebee that the toys and the film were worked on at the same time. Some of the most obvious differences are in the paint apps department where Hasbro provided more paint apps than needed for Bumblebee's car mode, having the stripes on the offroad Camaro continue onto the back. Here are the full notes below, enjoy!
SS-99 TF7 Rise of the Beasts Battletrap
“POWER IS PRIMAL”
This robot design is terrifying, and we absolutely love it. Making his live action debut in ROTB is Battletrap!
Based on a licensed wrecker body GMC C70, Battletrap’s vehicle mode features a blower out of the hood, and a menacing tow truck boom off the rear. When transformed into bot mode, he retains some of the awesome spiked brush guard on the chest, with an exposed engine block protruding out the center. The arms maintain portions of the wrecker crane, so that they can be utilized as melee weapons, and he features a large spiked wrecking ball that can be an extension of his arm. His head design is unlike anything that we’ve seen before in transformers, with a vented eye covering that looks a bit medical.
I was lucky enough to be able to partner with Yuya Onishi on this design, and he did an amazing job of delivering on both forms. This figure is a blast to transform, and features an huge range of articulation include waist and ankle tilt. His vehicle mode even features a functioning dually wheel setup in the rear.
The deco on Battletrap was a blast to put together, and delivers a color palette that is very break frame from our traditional movie villains. He gets some nice two toning on the grill, weathering on the crash bar, stripes down the side, and is complete with “Bernie’s Towing” on the door. The concept art depicted a lot of amber lighting from the cab interior for Battletrap, so we used a nice translucent orange on the windows and wrecker lights to accentuate the overall tone of the design. Overall this has to be one of the most exciting characters to come out of the trailer, and I am so excited to finally be able to share him with you!
NOTE: I won’t be sharing full Screen to Toy asset breakdowns prior to the films release out of respect to our studio partnerships.
What are your thoughts on ROTB Battletrap? Are you excited to see this new character on screen? What was your reaction to the trailer? Let’s hear about it below!
SS-100 TF7 Rise of the Beasts Bumblebee
“POWER IS PRIMAL”
What a perfect book end to the first one hundred studio series figures. Bumblebee’s debut as a 1977 Camaro from his appearance in the 2007 film being figure #001, and his modified off-road form of the 1977 Camaro in the 7th installment of the live action Transformers film for Rise of the Beasts being figure #100.
Despite sharing some visual similarities to the Camaro form factor, this release is 100% new tooling. The figure does an incredible job of evolving the on screen bot from The Bumblebee Film into an off-road capable, rollbar heavy, winch ready, over-fender wearing juggernaut the blazed an unbeaten path with Cheetor by his side.
Built by the legendary team at @hendrickperformance , this practical vehicle is absolutely insane. Every detail of this build was precision crafted to bring the conceptual car design to life.
Ittoku Kuwazu was such a wonderful design partner to have on this item, and did an amazing job of bringing this character to life. I tried to keep a good balance of paint on the vehicle mode, with some exciting color reveals as it was transformed into the robot mode. I tried to keep the rear of the vehicle as visually interesting as the front, with many of the new components shifting to the back of the Camaro, with additions of the rear louver panel, spoiler and the blacked out tailgate. Despite being developed at the same time as the film, i find these ROTB figures to be incredibly successful at replicating their on screen designs. Though I might have gone stripe heavy on this guy coming off of the Dark of the Moon deco.
NOTE: I won’t be sharing full Screen to Toy asset breakdowns prior to the films release out of respect to our studio partnerships.
What are your thoughts on ROTB Bumblebee? Are you amped to see him in the film? What was your reaction to the trailer? Let’s hear about it below
We published an article the other day to set up expectations for the upcoming Transformers Rise of the Beasts film which simply meant to show that the ongoing debate of this series being rebooted or not was irrelevant IF it didn't change what many fans often begrudged the Live Action Transformers movies for. One week has passed and the article feels almost prescient since the trailer did indeed reveal that the film was not a clear cut reboot, with several visual call backs to the Bay films. And an article/interview from BET revealed more details about the human component which the trailer did not show much of.
So we have familiar live action visuals, some focus on the humans, but a Bay-style live action Transformers film would not be the same without a random MacGuffin. And guess what, we now have news of such a thing. On Battletrap's Studio Series toy bio, we learn that the two human characters will have an encounter with this villain when it hunts for the Transwarp Key.
Battletrap fires a barrage of blasts at Noah and Elena to secure the Transwarp Key.
Now will that be the main MacGuffin? What does the Transwarp key open? We don't know, but this gives you an idea of what the film entails since the teaser trailer gave us nothing plot related, which is typical of teasers.
The director of the next (and 7th) live action Transformers movie, Rise of the Beasts, spoke to BET after the trailer dropped. Steven Caple Jr. spoke about the importance of telling a Black and Latino story through the film, along with the song chosen for the trailer and how that fits into this story and representation.
“It’s been two years now — Anthony [Ramos, who plays the lead male role] and I talk about having this type of opportunity but also understanding it’s our time. For us to be in this position where we can tell a story about our culture, our people, and see ourselves portrayed on the big screen blending in with these vast genres is special. There are not too many people on the actor or director side to be in this position on this scale and scope, and we’re doing our best to carry this weight. No matter how many times [Anthony] and I look at each other on set, tired and all, we realize we’re able to do something special and for a reason. We created something special, and it feels great to be in this position — super honored and blessed.”
“The movie takes place in the 90s when the album Ready Or Die was released, so that’s why [Juicy] was the perfect record to choose. His voice and what he meant in that era and time captures much of what we’re doing in the film. Fishback, who originally is from Brooklyn — her character and Ramos's character have a lot of big dreams and hit glass ceilings but ultimately become the heroes saving the world discreetly as that’s how the Transformer laws are. You have these average folks transforming into something huge and special we didn't know existed, so the record was a right move — it was our anthem on set, so we played Biggie or Anthony was singing [The Tempations].”
In terms of how the seventh installment will elevate the franchise, Ramos feels the new characters, especially with Black and Brown people in leading roles, will play a factor.
“We have new elements and characters, with Black and Brown people in the lead roles,” he said.
“Things have expanded, and with me being from New York, where the story is set in Brooklyn, this feels like it’s for all my homies in the projects. [Steven] and the creative team allowed us to tell a story in a major franchise like [Transformers] in a part of New York that doesn’t always get highlighted in this kind of way. The series saw Shia LeBeouf and Mark Wahlberg as the lead, and now it’s me. It was Megan Fox, Nicola Peltz, and now Dominique. This film incorporates the Beast wars, the Terrorcons — it’s going crazy.”
We thank Sabrblade for letting us know of some more Transformers Rise of the Beasts movie news. Not only did we get a trailer today but we also got a list of the voice cast. And there is an original voice actor from the Beast Wars show in the mix, David Sobolov. While he played Depthcharge in the original show, he will play both Rhinox and Battletrap in the film. Rhinox is rumoured to have very few lines but Battletrap seems quite prominent in the trailer. And we now know that Scourge, who can be seen maiming Bumblebee in the trailer, will be voiced by none other than Peter Dinklage. We also have news that a character called Stratosphere will be in the film. There is no confirmation yet on whether or not this is the same plane character from the Bayverse toyline or not. The info comes from Deadline, check the full list of names below.
Deadline Hollywood wrote:EXCLUSIVE: A slew have just boarded Paramount’s upcoming ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ including Peter Dinklage (as the voice of Scourge), Liza Koshy (as the voice of Arcee), John DiMaggio (as the voice of Stratosphere) and more https://t.co/UOLLPnkEFm
Big day for Transformers fans as it is the official launch date for the Transformers Rise of the Beasts marketing campaign and our first official look at the film.
We get to hear Peter Cullen as Optimus prime and Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal who spends quite a bit of time in his gorilla mode with only a brief look at his robot mode at the end. That goes for the other 3 maximals in his movie (Rhinox, Airazor and Cheetor) who are seen more in their alt modes, at least in this trailer. We also get a very good look at Mirage's robot mode and his power which does have a G1 theme to it. We also see Arcee and Bumblebee very well. We get to see the shot of Arcee hanging onto Wheeljack's van alt mode which was previously shown to industry insiders.
The villains are less obvious in this trailer though we do get a good look at Battletrap in both of his modes. You'll let us know what you think!
The big marketing push for Transformers Rise of the Beasts is upon us. It begins December 1st and we already have new posters up in the UK. They are Autobot and Maximal symbols filled with QR codes. The codes bring us to the Paramount youtube page so with these posters out in the wild now it's pretty clear that a video/trailer for the film is meant to be out very soon. The photos were posted by Lebastian on Twitter.
We'll keep you up to date on more info when it comes!
There's been a very tiring argument within the Transformers community for years as to whether or not the new Live Action films we are getting are part of the same universe as previous live action Transformers films directed my Michael Bay. But in reality, the argument is pointless since Bay is still involved no matter what, the designs still feature aesthetics from the Bay era and this would not be the first soft reboot anyway.
We'll just look at the facts. Firstly, neither Hasbro nor Paramount want to totally disassociate themselves from the legacy of the Bay era films, nor dissociate themselves from Bay himself. Those films inspired a new generation of Transformers fans and brought in billions. So you'd never hear the word "reboot" from them so as not to alienate fans of the franchise. Plus both Travis Knight, director of Bumblebee, and Steven Caple Jr, director of Rise of the Beasts, along with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, said that these "not made by Bay" films are within the live action universe we already know of. That was even one of the reasons why we couldn't have Megatron in the Cybertron scene in the Bumblebee movie. And fans thinking that either the Bumblebee movie or the upcoming Rise of the Beasts film have nothing to do with Michael Bay are wrong. Michael Bay was on set of Rise of the Beasts with Steven Caple Jr, the director, as the film was being shot. He is a hands on producer here, and you can see him in this Instagram video below:
Now in terms of designs, everything we have seen so far is indeed a departure form the 2007 film which had very alien designs. But that ignores 5 films since then where designs did evolve under Bay as well. So even if this is a "reboot", that doesn't mean that those who didn't like the live action designs will suddenly fall in love with them now. We just saw the toy for the upcoming film and here it is next to a toy of a character from a Bay directed film. Which is which? Can you tell from just the design cues? It looks like they both crawled out of the same factory. Simply said, we will still have complex designs with multi layered armor, a staple of live action movie designs.
Just to answer the previous questions in case you truly did not know, the figure on right is Hot Rod from a film directed by Michael Bay and the figure on the left is Battletrap from the new film, which Michael Bay is producing but not directing. And that brings another trope diehard fans hate about live action films: name slaps. Like with Bayverse Crosshairs and Crankcase, this Battletrap is just a reused name of a G1 toy with no reference to that character, which in this case had a very unique gimmick. This is a trend we saw in the Bay films and it is alive and well here. Plus, Bumblebee retains the same face he had from the Bay directed films, along with the car radio voice and the Camaro alt mode, offering a loose continuity with the previous films. I'd hope an actual reboot would forgo the design cues from the biggest staple of the Bay era, Bumblebee. But instead, we are getting all these design throughlines.
Also, if this is a "soft reboot", that doesn't mean it's not within the Bayverse. It would be (at least) the second soft reboot of its kind in the Bayverse, after all. After the initial trilogy, Michael Bay changed things up in Age of Extinction and the Last Knight. Optimus got a major redesign, looking more like a superhero than a robot made of car parts, and the faces looked more human, especially the faces of the villains (like Lockdown). That change in design carried over to the Bumblebee movie villains like Shatter and will probably carry over to the Rise of the Beasts villains as well. Any evidence of incongruence to continuity story is far from being a smoking gun when a film like The Last Knight exists. In that film, everything we saw before was retconned and continuity flew out the window.
That's why in the end, it really doesn't matter if this film is labelled as a reboot or not. You can call it a reboot if you like but remember:
- No one at Hasbro or Paramount is calling it that
- It is labelled as TF 7 in all toy listings as well as on set
- Michael Bay is still involved and on set
- There are still reused G1 names with no connection
- Design elements are carried over from previous films; Bumblebee still has the Bayverse face, radio voice and Camaro alt mode
Plus, you'll still get scenes focused on humans, including a scene where the main male character goes for a job interview (again). Trying to piece it with the other films will make as much sense as piecing The Last Knight with the rest (let's not, let's just choose sanity). Regardless, we saw with Bumblebee that we can still get a good story with a greater emphasis on the bots within a film that was meant to be a prequel to the Bay films. So nothing is stopping this film from being good too, regardless if it is in the Bayverse. And also, most importantly, nothing spares it from being terrible if it's not in the Bayverse either.
New pictures have been uploaded to Baidu showing the upcoming Rise of the Beasts mainline converting role play mask. This is a mask of Optimus Primal's gorilla mode which transforms into Optimus Primal in robot mode. We had seen it out of the package a good while ago but now that we have it in package, there is new info to take in. Firstly, this mask is not packaged in Cyberverse line but in the Rise of the Beasts mainline packaging. This means that our early info on many ROTB toys being released in Cyberverse has changed. Turns out, only 1 toy was sent to the Cyberverse line so far while Hasbro has held off releasing the rest and will release them in proper Rise of the Beasts packaging. And that's great for us since it means we get to see the movie character models on the box. Here we get to see a new shot of Optimus Primal in his gorilla mode. We see skin and fur, stretched over a mechanical interior.
Hi all,
Here's something that seems to have slipped under the radar: WDW News Today is reporting four new collectible Transformers-themed medallions are now available from a vending machine at Universal Studios Florida.
Each medallion features a Movieverse design on the obverse face: Autobot and Decepticon symbols set against a design reminiscent of that seen in Rise of the Beasts promotional material, and Bumblebee and Optimus Prime robot modes accompanied by their names. Prime also appears to use his ROTB design. All four coins have the same NEST logo on the reverse side.
The medallions are US$5 each or US$15 for all four and WDWNT reports the machine accepts cash or credit cards, however customers can only use their credit card when purchasing a set.
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