New Bumblebee Movie trailer this week

[Lord_Zed]

Chances are they are trying to pull a Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Goldblum effect with the Cybertron scenes and they will comprise only 2% of the movie.

That said I think the G1 designs are just so blocky and cartoony, you can't really get them to look lifelike, without diverging from the source a lot.

[Dan]

Like a few others, I feel that the Cybertron scenes look like something from computer game cut scenes. However I should stress I mean that in terms of design rather than quality. I think part of my problem is over a decade of the Michael Bay movies might have conditioned me to think of a certain look as how one does 'realistic' alien transforming robots. My perceptions may change over time.

I notice that the key characters on Earth still fit within the existing live-action aesthetic while also including something of a G1 feel. I think they work and one thing I'm loving is we get to see clear transformation sequences, something the Bay movies increasingly avoided.

Mind you, those two new triple-changers are just showing off for the humans, turning from aircraft to cars for a few seconds before turning into robots. Sheesh!

As to the movie itself, I'm hopeful. Some of my favourite G1 cartoon episodes involved small casts, including humans, like Autobop and The Killing Jar, and smaller scale story-telling can sometimes feel bigger than an all-out extravaganza.

One more thing about the Cybertron scenes - the setting itself looks like a proper science fiction metropolis. The glimpses we got in the past movies always seemed more like a crystalline wasteland than a cityscape.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Right now Blitzwing looking too much like Starscream is the only negative I am seeing.

G1'esque Shockwave, Soundwave, Ravage, Optimus, Starscream & Skywarp. Bee being a VW Bug, some new Triple-changing Decepticons - its all looking good!

[Smint]

The trailer looks good, but to be honest, I'm kind of disappointed that Travis Knight seems to be leaning into the G1 designs - it seems to be pandering to 'geewunner' fanboys and disregards the continuity and design language the previous movies have established, giving ammunition to people who criticise what they see as a lack of continuity between Transformers movies when this one is meant to be a prequel, not a reboot.

I like the movieverse design aesthetic because it actually showcases the Transformers as complex mechanical aliens - the classic Floro Dery designs were too simple and terrestrial-looking to be believable as alien.

I highly doubt his intention was to pander to "geewun" fans. As with adapting any material you take certain liberties but try to remain faithful to the source material which it seems that's what his goal is. In this case he chose G1 as the source material because it's arguably the most beloved era. It's great that he understands this.

And it's not exactly 80's G1. You can still see plenty of the complex mechanics underneath the external parts. The main difference is being able to recognise what each bot transforms into instead of being a vomit of metal parts. That's great design IMO.

Thankfully Travis Knight understands what the "geewun" fans want. Something that's far closer to G1 aesthetics but that doesn't necessarily mean 80's cartoon blocky robots. To the mainstream audience they couldn't care less. They're just happy to see more robots and explosions.

First time i've been excited about a TF movie since bayformers 1.

[drifand]

No idea why bee no voice then and still no voice now, that imo is the only bad thing I picked up.

[Thurmus]

No idea why bee no voice then and still no voice now, that imo is the only bad thing I picked up.

Cause when he was injured and scanned the VW he was badly damaged and they haven't been able to fix it?

That is like saying "I can't believe Davo had his spinal cord cut and couldn't walk and now 20 years later he still can't walk. What's up with that?"

[Lord_Zed]

Like a few others, I feel that the Cybertron scenes look like something from computer game cut scenes. However I should stress I mean that in terms of design rather than quality. I think part of my problem is over a decade of the Michael Bay movies might have conditioned me to think of a certain look as how one does 'realistic' alien transforming robots. My perceptions may change over time.

An interesting point, we wont know till the final cut come out, but I tend to agree the Cybertron Transformers don't necessarily look poorly rendered , but rather it's the contrast between the two. In the Earth scenes everything appears to be aimed at realism with simulated natural lightning and integration, while the Cybertron scenes look more like they are out of one of the Marvel Space movies, where everything is lit with crazy colours. I don't mean this as knock on films like Guardians of the Galaxy, but when they go to the giant planet shaped like a head, or have a brightly coloured spacedogfight it doesn't really look realistic, but nor is it trying to be.

In this trailer though it tends to make it a bit split, are they going for that grounded look, or a comic book look?

That said, with all the talk of the Cybertron scenes no one has mentioned the other most notable thing in the trailer, which is you can actually tell what's going on in the action scenes they showed.

[drifand]

Cause when he was injured and scanned the VW he was badly damaged and they haven't been able to fix it?

That is like saying "I can't believe Davo had his spinal cord cut and couldn't walk and now 20 years later he still can't walk. What's up with that?"

We talking about transformers here. Not a crippled human being becoming robocop. So when Optimus looses his hand you saying his hand doesn't come back when we seen it so often it gets repaired. (yeah basically whats up with that exactly)

My rant is the story seems to be not good that Bee has never had a voice. It would have been nice to show how he lost it at least. He turned into a brand new spanking car and his voice is still not repaired. (how many episodes are we with bayformers?)

[griffin]

The big flaw of Bee's voice is that the Allspark Cube was able to rebuild Frenzy from a head and regenerate a dead Megatron... but when Bumblebee touches the cube to shrink it, his voicebox isn't repaired. Not to mention reformatting when scanning a new form, that has the bot rebuit into somthing brand new... the voicebox is unaffected?
And after 7 years on Earth, Ratchet didn't have a chance to repair it.
As Deadpool once said about forcing a plot device... that's just lazy writing.

[Smint]

Cause when he was injured and scanned the VW he was badly damaged and they haven't been able to fix it?

That is like saying "I can't believe Davo had his spinal cord cut and couldn't walk and now 20 years later he still can't walk. What's up with that?"

I really dont understand this analogy. At this point in the series Transformers can literally come back from the dead. But Bumblebee's voice box cant be repaired?

Talking in radio signals was cute for 1 movie or 2. But I would really be endeared to him if he could actually talk and had the personality of G1 Bumblebee. He really was that best friend character. I would pay to see that.