Did I miss people sharing their thoughts to TF:One, or did it simply strike people as so thoroughly uninteresting that no one had thoughts?

Fine, I’ll rattle on a little bit.

Art Style: it’s basically been forever since we have seen a boxy transformers style reminiscent of G1 or CHUG in animated form, and it’s a shame they aren’t doing that. Visually it seems like yet another attempt at being different, but it only feels different when you at least occasionally go back to the status quo.

Tone: I don’t hate silly, but… do I believe that they will balance silly with developing characters and telling a story? Not in one 90-120 minute movie. I don’t like most comedy-action movies. I’d rather have singing.

Prequel: Sigh. Not sure what it’s a prequel to, or whether it is yet another reboot, but it doesn’t look fresh so much as it looks like another shuffling of the various origins.

Bromance: Orion and Pre-Megatron (henceforth referred to as Pregatron) as buddies makes the entire Transformers universe feel tiny. We know that Cybertron will be empty and desolate at some point, and having that just be caused by these two not getting along is just dumb. I’m not a big fan of the Great Man theory. The buddy thing works in EarthSpark, because the war brought them together, and it makes sense that they would try to forge a friendship as part of the peace.

Bumblebee: Bumblebee is not supposed to be funny or cool. He’s a kind of dull nerd of no skills that everyone likes anyway in G1, and all the new interpretations that make him more important remove our everyman viewpoint.

Elita-1: if you’re writing a bromance, you don’t include the girlfriend. There just isn’t room for the character, and she will make the dynamic weird getting between Orion and Pregatron. If they did something interesting like make her and Bumblebee a couple, or add a Bumblebee-Pregatron coupling to balance, it could work, but if she’s just Orion’s girlfriend it’s going to require balancing a lot more than I expect them to be able to.

GustavoWombat wrote:

> Did I miss people sharing their thoughts to TF:One, or did it simply strike people as so thoroughly uninteresting that no one had thoughts?

Last week was a busy week for me and I completely missed that this had dropped. Have now rectified that.

> Fine, I’ll rattle on a little bit.

> Tone: I don’t hate silly, but… do I believe that they will balance silly with developing characters and telling a story? Not in one 90-120 minute movie. I don’t like most comedy-action movies. I’d rather have singing.

This feels like one of those trailers that heavily plays up the silly stuff to pull kids into the theatres--especially with animated films, you see them marketed with the goofy scenes and gloss over the dramatic stuff. There's certainly room to make a much better balanced film--not that I'm convinced it will happen, and I'm *certain* that Bumblebee will be like this the entire way through.

> Prequel: Sigh. Not sure what it’s a prequel to, or whether it is yet another reboot, but it doesn’t look fresh so much as it looks like another shuffling of the various origins.

Pretty sure it's yet another reboot, just focusing on a different place in the timeline.

> Bromance: Orion and Pre-Megatron (henceforth referred to as Pregatron) as buddies makes the entire Transformers universe feel tiny. We know that Cybertron will be empty and desolate at some point, and having that just be caused by these two not getting along is just dumb.

To be fair to them, this is not a new concept, it's one that's been explored before (and a lot of the fanbase seems to love the idea that Optimus and Megatron went from buddies to enemies). I agree though... One of the things I like about G1 is that Orion Pax was some complete unknown who gets the matrix at random / by a coincidence of time-travel / Fate.

> Bumblebee: Bumblebee is not supposed to be funny or cool. He’s a kind of dull nerd of no skills that everyone likes anyway in G1, and all the new interpretations that make him more important remove our everyman viewpoint.

I presume Orion is our everyman viewpoint this time around. To be honest, I don't think G1 Bumblebee is all that great a character, even if I do have the nostalgic fondness for him. That said, this version of Bumblebee is just Here for the Kids--but now I come to think about it, I'm not sure which version of Bumblebee *is* the best from an artistic standpoint. They all set a pretty low bar of Trying Too Hard.

> Elita-1: if you’re writing a bromance, you don’t include the girlfriend. There just isn’t room for the character, and she will make the dynamic weird getting between Orion and Pregatron. If they did something interesting like make her and Bumblebee a couple, or add a Bumblebee-Pregatron coupling to balance, it could work, but if she’s just Orion’s girlfriend it’s going to require balancing a lot more than I expect them to be able to.

The impression I get is that she's an afterthought. She'll be the love interest, because A: Duh, and B: when they realised they'd have to include a female character, they figured they'd just use Optimus girlfriend. See also this article on the Movie where they talk about the Orion, Megatron, Bumblebee and "their friend Elita-1". Did she even speak in the trailer? Prediction: She'll be a tough-talking bad-ass who starts off disliking our main characters but they'll gradually win her over.

But you make me think about how awesome it would have been if they replaced her with Chromia and skipped any romantic stuff. (And Transformers has a real problem with their main female characters being pink, so this would solve that too.)

Pretty sure I saw Blackarachnia / Airachnid briefly, which gives them room to have some diversity of female character... unless she's there to seduce Megatron to the dark side and/or give Elita somebody to fight so we don't have co-ed battles.

Who else was in the trailer? Did I see Sunstreaker and Sideswipe? There's got to be a breakdown of that somewhere right?

Velvet Glove (who is going to need a reason to watch this *other* than the main cast...)

VelvetGlove wrote:

> GustavoWombat wrote:

>> Bromance: Orion and Pre-Megatron (henceforth referred to as Pregatron) as buddies makes the entire Transformers universe feel tiny. We know that Cybertron will be empty and desolate at some point, and having that just be caused by these two not getting along is just dumb.

> To be fair to them, this is not a new concept, it's one that's been explored before (and a lot of the fanbase seems to love the idea that Optimus and Megatron went from buddies to enemies). I agree though... One of the things I like about G1 is that Orion Pax was some complete unknown who gets the matrix at random / by a coincidence of time-travel / Fate.

It's not a new concept.

I suppose it has been relegated to comic books up until now, so it's sort of a new concept for cartoons and movies. But I still don't like it. Their personal conflict slaughters nearly their entire race.

If they kiss, I will take back all of my objections. (Why else would Orion Pax have lips if not for kissing?)

>> Bumblebee: Bumblebee is not supposed to be funny or cool. He’s a kind of dull nerd of no skills that everyone likes anyway in G1, and all the new interpretations that make him more important remove our everyman viewpoint.

> I presume Orion is our everyman viewpoint this time around.

I don't think the chosen one who gets the matrix, the girl and the Bumblebee is a great everyman viewpoint.

> To be honest, I don't think G1 Bumblebee is all that great a character, even if I do have the nostalgic fondness for him. That said, this version of Bumblebee is just Here for the Kids--but now I come to think about it, I'm not sure which version of Bumblebee *is* the best from an artistic standpoint. They all set a pretty low bar of Trying Too Hard.

I have a fairly good grasp of G1 Bumblebee, which might be inaccurate, but it works well enough -- he knows he's competent, but he's still a bit insecure in not being a fighter and not contributing as much as the better fighters. He has a bit of a hero worship of Optimus, and mix of excitement about seeing the world through the eyes of his human friends and taking those friends as equals rather than novelties.

I don't get any sense of whether he is more loyal to his friends or his cause -- but it's never seriously put into conflict. For instance, if Optimus decided that the only way to keep the humans safe was to take over, I don't know what Bumblebee would do. It's an unexplored part of his character. (He can definitely be manipulated in the short term with his compassion for his friends)

Armada Hot Shot is a brash version, missing the insecurity, replacing it with ambition.

Animated Bumblebee is a little sociopath who everyone treats like the sweet, insecure little guy from G1.

And then it goes completely off the rails with the Movieverse and TF:Prime making him the warrior that G1 Bumblebee wanted to be. It cuts that difference between who he wants to be and who he is. He gets a vocal impediment instead of a character.

But that G1 character (or at least my misinterpretation of him) is genuinely a good character. Not quite main-character energy, but relatable.

GustavoWombat wrote:

> And then it goes completely off the rails with the Movieverse and TF:Prime making him the warrior that G1 Bumblebee wanted to be. It cuts that difference between who he wants to be and who he is. He gets a vocal impediment instead of a character.

Relatedly, this is why I really don’t like Transformers: The Movie. Hot Rod goes from being A wanting to be X to becoming X by magic and that’s that and it all works out for him. There’s no real tension to the character at any point. There’s no discovery that being who he was at the start was good too, or that growth is hard and takes a lifetime, or anything.

Rodimus is a great character in Season 3, when he realized that he isn’t who he thinks he should be. I really wish we got to see more of him after giving up the Matrix, and discovering how much the experiences he had as Rodimus changed him

But, on its own, it’s like if the movie “Big” with Tom Hanks had the boy wish to grow up, and then he just went off and got a job, bought a house, etc., and didn’t have any of the emotional conflict that is the heart of that movie.

That’s my hot take — “Big”, one of the best American fantasy movies, is better than “Transformers.” To be fair, Transformers came out in 1986, and Big came out in 1988, so the makers of Big had two years to discover that characters can have depth and growth and internal conflicts and tensions. I don’t think that was a thing in 1986.

GustavoWombat wrote:

> If they kiss, I will take back all of my objections. (Why else would Orion Pax have lips if not for kissing?)

Oh, dear god... he's totally going to be snogging Elita, isn't he? Now I definitely don't want to see this.

But I think your call would actually be much more marketable. Can you imagine the fanart and fanfiction and videos and tiktoks that would happen if Orion and Megatron kissed? Gay couples appear a lot in kids' films these days, and yeah, maybe mainstream is not ready for Optimus Prime to have a gay kiss, but the film would become an instant cult classic.

I mean, if the rest of it doesn't suck...

> I don't think the chosen one who gets the matrix, the girl and the Bumblebee is a great everyman viewpoint.

No, but the hero's journey always starts with the hero being our everyman. Follow your dreams, movie-going public! One day your inner hero will emerge!

> I have a fairly good grasp of G1 Bumblebee, which might be inaccurate, but it works well enough -- he knows he's competent, but he's still a bit insecure in not being a fighter and not contributing as much as the better fighters. He has a bit of a hero worship of Optimus, and mix of excitement about seeing the world through the eyes of his human friends and taking those friends as equals rather than novelties.

> I don't get any sense of whether he is more loyal to his friends or his cause -- but it's never seriously put into conflict. For instance, if Optimus decided that the only way to keep the humans safe was to take over, I don't know what Bumblebee would do. It's an unexplored part of his character. (He can definitely be manipulated in the short term with his compassion for his friends)

It's a really good take on the character that's absolutely founded in canon, but that's not the same thing as the character being executed well in the cartoon. Like, I love Arcee, but Sunbow Arcee has no real depth to her--you have to create a composite from the slightly inconsistent appearances across her few episodes. Wheelie is a near endless source of inspiration for me story-wise, but he's a *terrible* character on the show.

I feel like Bumblebee and Spike were going for very similar archetypes, but the cartoon did a better job at making Spike a compelling character (again, low bar). Bumblebee feels more contrived to me.

You are, by the way, spot on with the Hot Rod stuff, including that the most interesting version of Hot Rod should have been post-Matrix Hot Rod.

Also, most excellent hot take on Big being better than Transformers. I never appreciated before just how much its makers must have been informed by its predecessor.

Velvet Glove (Truly, Optimus died so Tom Hanks might live.)

GustavoWombat wrote:

> Did I miss people sharing their thoughts to TF:One, or did it simply strike people as so thoroughly uninteresting that no one had thoughts?

I'm not too interested, but I don't want to spoil anybody else's fun. If people are excited about it, then I think that's great.

And I'm not saying that I hate it, in the same sense that some Star Wars fans hate the new Disney films so much that they compose these lengthy essays and hour-long YouTube videos talking about how much the new movies are ruining the franchise. Like, I can't imagine spending that kind of time and energy on something I disliked so strongly.

I think what happened is that Hasbro noticed movies like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and went, "Oh, wow, it's the same irreverant style of humor that's plagued theatrical films since the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why can't we do that for Transformers, too?"

I've touched on this a little bit in the past, but it's like modern moviegoers are so jaded and (yawn) unimpressed that films are afraid to take themselves seriously. Ever single Marvel film I've seen ends up setting up these dramatic moments and then immediately undercutting the drama with some jokey quip. It's bathos, which is the opposite of pathos, and it utterly destroys my interest in stories. It conveys the message that the only way you can like and care about things is if you do it ironically. It's the same attitude that editors of a certain encyclopedic wiki employ when they deliberately choose awful screen shots of characters or cringeworthy quotations to represent a given TV episode or comic book, because they're terrified of looking like they actually take this stuff seriously.

Imagine how utterly terrible The Empire Strikes Back would have been if, instead of playing it straight, Darth Vader ruined the moment by making jokes about chopping off Luke's hand. "If you only knew the power of the Dark Side! Join me, and together we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the Galaxy! Take my hand and... aw, man, sorry. Bad choice of words. Dude, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... Look, it just slipped out of my mouth... Look, I can send a droid to go find it, if you want. I'm sure it's still down there somewhere. We can just pack it with some ice... I mean, it was a clean cut..."

And, yes, that kind of humor actually has been done in a Star Wars setting, in Robot Chicken or Family Guy episodes, but those are obviously satire. There's the "real" version of the story that you can take seriously, and then there's also a silly jokey version that's just for fun. When it comes to stuff like the MCU or Transformers: One, there's no "real" version, there's only the parody version.

I'm not saying Transformers can never be fun. But humor is like a seasoning... it's best served by sprinkling it here and there, not completely overwhelming the taste of the main course. When a story is nothing but rapid-fire goofy gags, one after the next, I quickly become desensitized to it, to the point where it's no longer funny at all. The funniest humor in film and television is when you're not actively expecting it.

The idea of giant robots from outer space who turn into cars and planes is inherently silly, especially if you're an adult. The early issues of Marvel Comics was written by adults who didn't appreciate the concept, because they were ashamed to be working on a comic book about toys, so they peppered every early story with the same flavor of goofy, irreverant, quippy jokes. Factory workers who have been captured by Decepticons and whose lives are in jeopardy, but they complain about their pizza being cold. Stuff like that. But I find it highly telling that fans don't praise those early stories. The fandom as a whole seems to like the later Simon Furman stories much better, when the stakes are high, the stories are epic, and lives are on the line. When the characters in a story can't even be bothered to take their own predicament seriously, then as an audience member and a paying customer, why should I bother?

Zob (it's like we're all spending hundreds of dollars buying children's toys and spending hundreds of hours watching children's cartoons but we're all afraid to admit that we actually like it unironically)