[Librarian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guyver Spawn

I feel like Prime's tone is what I would want in a TF live action movie.

It's funny you mention that. Prime was produced by the writers of the first movie. Same writers from early Fringe too.

That's why Prime has a lot of influences of what the first movie was supposed to be in character lineup. Like Arcee.

Hasbro has been 'allegedly' trying to push more towards a Prime/Animated/G1 amalgamation, which is what the Bumblebee movie leans more on. This is why Lockdown and Dinobots were in AOE. TLK had Cogman as setup for something else later. And other content got cut or pushed back because TLK was too cramped.


No clue on Bumblebee but they seem to likely be keeping the 110+ minute approach. The current consensus is that theater prices need to match length of content to really get more out of the cost through the run time for the experience. So they want to stay closer to 120 minutes for the bigger live action films. Solo films have more room to move though in that regard, but they still want movie-goers to feel like they get the right kind of minutes to dollars conversion so they don't feel short changed.


They seem to be likely keeping the current 5 movies maybe, because TLK was massive setup for later stuff. But by removing Bay from directing there might be more freedom to approach the movies differently, but he may still be helping in producing, but with a more hands off approach.

But they do seem to be experimenting with aesthetic choices, and seeing where things go. If Bumblebee flops, they've got one animated feature still in the pipeline, but otherwise will go back to the drawing board. If Bumblebee does well, they may start looking into ways to better reconcile it to the other 5 and go forward with more influences from Bumblebee's movie, as well as maybe some other side movies. So nearly everything right now hinges on Bumblebee's success. But I expect the next forward going movie will be a really good one too. There was a lot of small things TLK foreshadowed that should be allowed to play out, that Bumblebee seems like the pause before that shift forward. So this new aesthetic is likely here to stay with the forward movies starting to fill out better to match through story driven reasons.

Or they could soft boot the story and do more prequels that eventually end with Prime and his original movie team back in space waiting on Bumblebee's signal. But there does seem to be a want to do the next forward movie, or two forward movies to wrap up the universe, and then prep for a more wide sweeping anniversary movie later.

Bay did a lot for the franchise, but tbh, I'm glad some new directors will be taking lead for it going forward. Especially if the story path they are going is what I suspect. After ROTF, I kind of don't trust Bay at all with characters like that. Not after what he did to the triplets. He's kind of of the Furman school of thought on fembots. For him it's mostly fodder to axe off, or use for comedy. Though he does tend to have his human female characters get story defining moments that alter the course of the war. It's his female cybertronian use that tends to get treated as comedic value or shock value.


Any direction they take though, this upcoming movie looks like it's the exact thing that's needed to give the films more heart. So going forward from here, I expect all the films to be focused more on the heart of the franchise, and less on the hurried/rushed filler.

Hasbro tends to lean on the star wars model. No need for reboots, fill out the story better, and pick up areas that need exploring or dive into the new geo-politics in character centered ways that feel more personal, less rushed and unfeeling. Bay had some great heartfelt moments, but because of how overpacked each movie is, they tend to get overshadowed and forgotten. So lowering the focus to more a personal level seems to be increasing the scale better by giving more emotional attachment to the characters and scenes instead of solely capitalizing on nostalgia.


So this movie is supposed to be the adrenaline shot to make you care about the franchise again, and let them go forward in more character focused ways about cybertronian/earth relations. And depending on how well it's received will likely dictate what they do next, but the next live action after it will likely be very Bumblebee centered too. In a "We saw where he's at, we saw where he came from, now let's see where he's going" kind of way.