The Transformers Cinematic Universe

[Asura]

I realise this question would have been answered decades ago but… what’s the benefit in robots transforming into animal forms?

I only found this out relatively recently (having not watched the shows when they were out).

Spoilered, in case any of this factors into the new movie.

Less likely to be in the movie:

->Open Spoiler<-

To summarise semi-correctly in the interest of brevity, the characters' ships get flung through a wormhole and emerge in orbit around a planet. This planet has abundant life, along with a resource which they need, but also emits radiation which will kill the Transformers and any mechanical life. So they modify themselves to transform into animals, because they're like the Terminator; they have biological tissue on their outsides that shields them from the radiation.

More likely to be in the movie:

->Open Spoiler<-

Beast Wars is a stealth midquel to G1 Transformers, as they were thrown both across the universe and back in time without realising it. There's an episode where they visit the crashed Ark ship from the original show, where all the G1 characters are "asleep". The events of the original show are why the Earth has this radiation, or something.

This is super rough, relating a summary I saw a couple of years ago. But it's the general gist.

EDIT: Oh, forgot one more thing. Pragmatically, having the figures transform from robot to animal means you have 2 things to play with, just like with the cars. But animals have moving limbs and stuff, so it's like having two action figures in one. I assumed that's why the idea was originally considered in real-world terms.

[Dogg Thang]

Oh I had no idea the concept involved biological tissue. That’s kind of interesting. And yes, obviously the playability of the toys is the real reason, just like the Dinobots all the way back in G1. They were very cool but the explanation of their existence was kind of a stretch, except I guess dinosaurs probably weren’t all that smart. In a world of humans, they’re hardly robots in “disguise”.

[Neon Ignition]

Quick News: Boys, Turismo, Transformers, Turtles - Dark Horizons
Transformers One has been delayed till 13 September 2024

[Protocol Penguin]

I realise this question would have been answered decades ago but… what’s the benefit in robots transforming into animal forms?

In Beast Wars? In the TV show and fiction, the planet the main characters were on (which turned out to be prehistoric Earth, but heavily modified by fifth-dimensional aliens called the Vok who were possibly descended from humans) had poisonous Energon embedded in it. So the fleshy beast modes protected against the Energon.

Real life reasons? By far the biggest selling action figures in the (ultimately failed) Transformers Generation 2 toy line in the early ‘90s were reissues of the Dinobots, so with Transformers sales flatlining, Hasbro took a gamble and made a whole range of animalistic Transformers. It did very well, and is probably the main reason why Transformers still exists as a money-making franchise.

[Asura]

We went to see this last night. Honestly, it's weird because it's not an amazing movie, but it's probably the best Transformers movie.

Except for the first 5 minutes of Bumblebee.

I'll avoid major spoilers at first, then spoiler other stuff.

First, it formalises that Bumblee was a reboot, which was good to see. Bumblebee was set up in such a way that they could bridge it to the first BayFormers movie if they needed to; they didn't fully commit to it being a reboot. This film makes that canon; the Bay films don't exist.

Second, what I meant above is that of the movies, this is the one which feels most like the Transformers cartoon. It's all super-weapons, maniacal plans, melodrama. And the fight scenes are competent, as in, you can see what's going on and it's not just a load of tinfoil and paint flakes stuck in a food processor.

There are no fully annoying characters. No-one's a moron (outside of the melodrama). One of the robots has a crap design and accent (with a really painful, doesn't-land joke) but that's swiftly over, so none of that crap the Bay films were full of.

Honestly I think if you liked Bumblebee you'll enjoy it.

OK spoilers...

->Open Spoiler<-

The film is the formal kickoff of the Hasbro Cinematic Universe, with the human hero straight-up being recruited into GI Joe at the end. Kinda comes out of nowhere but it was fun nonetheless.

The plot rests on something that might teleport Unicron to earth orbit. I think the only problem I have with that is the MCU movies (and modern movies in general) have spoiled me a bit. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think it was much more common years ago for movies to have dastardly, world ending plans that never come off, and despite how bad things get, the major thing happens in some far-off place, the evidence is sealed away, and the world just goes on spinning. These days I kinda want those big things to actually happen. I want the world to know who Spider-Man is, I want the vampires to take over, I want the nuclear bombs to go off, and I want the characters to have to struggle amid the chaos of the ongoing plan.

Like, take Blade. In the older movies you got the sense the vampires can't win because Blade needs to be a low-key thing contained to buildings and nightclubs, and if the vampire apocalypse happens, then it's the whole world and it needs to be this huge thing. So the movie is all about the tension of something that might happen. One of the nice things about the MCU is that Marvel went with the idea that "normal people" in that world now know who Iron Man is, that aliens exist, that Captain America was a super-hero. People don't know everything but their world is fundamentally different to ours. Ironically this is how The Transformers 80s show worked.

Maybe they're building to it. That's fine. But it was a shame to have a big Unicron reveal, only for Unicron to be somewhat ineffectual.

I'm picking on something specific though which is doing the movie a disservice. There was a lot to like. Prime is actually a short-nose cab now. Mirage is great, which is important as that could've gone badly. And the bulk of the drama concerns the Transformers, which is the way it's meant to be.

[Neon Ignition]

For me, I feel ROTB is less a reboot and more just doesn't care much for continuity issues. There's one major contradiction to the 2000's era films but barring that they all sit side by side with little to differentiate them. The animated movie is next though, hopefully a good chance of getting the peak entry

[Neon Ignition]

https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1778475129791447334?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1778475129791447334%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

They've officially locked in Transformers VIII which is confirmed to be following up on the tease from the last film and merging in the GI Joe franchise

[Neon Ignition]

Paramount goes wild - the logo for the next film coming out

[QualityChimp]

they’re hardly robots in “disguise”.

This is why I kinda lost interest after G1.

I know there's this great comic strip that takes the piss out of the really, really niche disguises that some of the G1 alt modes have:


However, after G1, they just abandoned the whole "Robots In Disguise" tag.

This Optimus Prime truck literally has "OPTIMUS PRIME" written on the side, and yet he's more disguised than some of the later designs that you'd guess straight away was a robot if you saw it parked up, what with it's futuristic lines and GIANT CANNONS.

[Neon Ignition]

For me, almost every TF design outside of G1 is awful. It's impressive the success they've had with so many redesigns that look worse than the OG's.

It's also sounding like I'll need to edit Transformers One out of the thread. Rumbles are that it's not a prequel to the existing films and is its own thing that is incredibly heavily geared to very small children.

[Lebowski]

You could go even further what the hell is going on with the dinobots they make no sense whatsoever, they're big metal robot dinosaurs instead of big metal humanoids, that's no disguise at all id say them turning into massive metal dinosaurs is even more alarming for humans.

But you could explain it all away and say well they're aliens and don't know that the cars and objects they scanned are crap disguises as they don't know human customs, Cosmos obviously went to area 51 to get his diguise .

That second pic is a cybetronia truck they can transform on cybertron so that can move faster or transport things easier. In the first episode of the series bumblebee looks like some sort of manta ray thing when he's on cybertron it's only when they get to earth that telletran 1 goes out and scans stuff that they change to earth based stuff.

[QualityChimp]

See, I like the Dinobots and in the comics, the Ark computer got frazzled in the crash to Earth and looked at the dominant life at the time, which was dinosaurs, but didn't make them with scales etc.

Okay, I'll accept that was a Cybertron vehicle, but how the hell was Rodimus Prime in disguise?!