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With Bumblebee getting praise from critics and fans alike, Paramount and Hasbro are both looking to continue the live action film franchise and not waste a minute. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura has provided us with the very first details for the next Transformers film. You can read the quotes he gave to Slash Film below, but the major take away is that the next film will be a BIG Transformers film rather than a smaller character based film, and while it will be going a different direction than where the Michael Bay movies left us (i.e. probably no Unicron), it will not be a full on reboot. The fact that we get both appearances of Simmons and Bumblebee's Camaro mode in the Bumblebee movie is proof enough that what came before will not be fully ignored going forward, but the goal is still to give fans something new.

Take that as you will. Oh and Lorenzo also states clearly why he is not a fan of Unicron (which may give us a hint as to why the only live action TF film to have Unicron was the worst in the series so far).

“Reboot, I always hate that word because for one, I’m not sure I really understand what it means.” “We are going to do another big Transformers movie. It is going to be different than the ones that we’ve done before.”

“It’s not like we look at the elements of what we did before and go, ‘Well, let’s not do this’ or ‘Let’s not do that'.” “It’s more about how do you evolve the experience for the fans. Let the fan have a new experience.”

“When we did the first movie, at first there was a lot of pushback that we weren’t doing it the way it was done before." “My feeling was always that if we’d done it, you would’ve gone, ‘Well, I’ve already seen it.’ So how do you evolve things forward is I think the hardest thing because you’ve got to retain why people love it, but at the same time if you give them the same experience, they’re going to be bored with it.”

“Okay, I’m going to be controversial.” “I’m not a fan of Unicron. It’s too big. It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be in the series someday. I don’t know that I’ve thought much about it honestly because we’ve been focused on this movie.”

“I think we’ve learned something in this movie about tone that I would think the next big Transformers movie is going to have.” “It’s not like we’re going to copy it but we’ve learned something. There’s more freedom than I think we originally thought in terms of what we can do.”

I can see where he's coming from, and the reboot thing doesn't surprise me. I bet the way they see it, they've got twenty years if films to put in

So... Is Transformers 6 gonna happen now? Are we gonna get it? Or is this a new Transformers film all together?

They already did put Unicron in these movies, he was in The Last Knight. Why's he acting like they haven't?

Sabrblade wrote:They already did put Unicron in these movies, he was in The Last Knight. Why's he acting like they haven't?

He was probably trying to forget it.

So, Bonventura is going to repeat the annoying thing Age of Extinction did by not following up on the previous movie's big dangling question/plot hook (Cybertron's fate in the case of AoE, Quintessa's scheming and the rise of Unicron in the case of this). And we probably still won't get an answer about Sam's fate. The movieverse is now back in the doghouse for me and may well be dead to me. Unicron worked in 1986, he worked in Beast Wars Neo, he worked in what is for good reason called the Unicron Trilogy, he worked in Prime, he worked in IDW. "“I’m not a fan of Unicron. It’s too big. It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally." he says? Unicron isn't supposed to be relatable! He's supposed to be an enormous, looming, cosmic-scale menace! A threat to end all threats, the end of days personified, that sort of thing! And the MCU has recently employed that sort of villain very successfully.

If you're reading this Mr. Bonaventura, then a reboot is either starting the story over from scratch (a true reboot) or at minimum throwing out prior story material in the continuity and telling the further story as if those events never happened, going in a different direction. Sometimes this is good (the reboot of the Star Wars Expanded Universe), sometimes not so much. And if you don't like Unicron? Too bad. He's the hand you were dealt. You want to improve this franchise, you won't do it by making continuity worse. What will improve this franchise is exposition that harmonizes the established narratives and worldbuilding, and bringing in the long-missing element of Autobots providing disaster relief.

"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Uh, you ever heard of spoilers? The movie isn't officially out yet and I didn't know that Simmons was gonna be in it. Might wanna hide that or something

This guy can't even remember what he's put in his own movies. Which is understandable, the Bayformers films from the second one forward were all such a mess, full of contradictions.

Hopefully, they'll use this new Bee movie as the springboard and kind of forget about everything Bayformers.

Not a reboot eh? Can we call it a soft reboot then? After the last few flicks, I'd be inclined to call it a comeback.



Oh, sorry, guess I won't.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:So, Bonventura is going to repeat the annoying thing Age of Extinction did by not following up on the previous movie's big dangling question/plot hook (Cybertron's fate in the case of AoE, Quintessa's scheming and the rise of Unicron in the case of this). And we probably still won't get an answer about Sam's fate. The movieverse is now back in the doghouse for me and may well be dead to me. Unicron worked in 1986, he worked in Beast Wars Neo, he worked in what is for good reason called the Unicron Trilogy, he worked in Prime, he worked in IDW. "“I’m not a fan of Unicron. It’s too big. It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally." he says? Unicron isn't supposed to be relatable! He's supposed to be an enormous, looming, cosmic-scale menace! A threat to end all threats, the end of days personified, that sort of thing! And the MCU has recently employed that sort of villain very successfully.

If you're reading this Mr. Bonaventura, then a reboot is either starting the story over from scratch (a true reboot) or at minimum throwing out prior story material in the continuity and telling the further story as if those events never happened, going in a different direction. Sometimes this is good (the reboot of the Star Wars Expanded Universe), sometimes not so much. And if you don't like Unicron? Too bad. He's the hand you were dealt. You want to improve this franchise, you won't do it by making continuity worse. What will improve this franchise is exposition that harmonizes the established narratives and worldbuilding, and bringing in the long-missing element of Autobots providing disaster relief.

Dude, they couldn't even decide if cold hurts Transformers or not in the first film. They don't have stories. They have action set pieces loosely tied together with crude, fratboy humor and annoying characters who scream and sweat all the time. So yeah, they're going to pick up those plot threads because the makers of those films didn't worry if there was a plot or not. Bay's films were aggressively stupid.

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Well, the same could be said about Thanos, but we're getting Avengers 4. There is two ways around this problem- One, don't include human characters. This is something that I feel is undesirable, as a good human character allows us to connect to the world that the writers build. Two- Be clever with your writing. Marvel Comics Transformers proved that their human characters could be helpful when dealing with Unicron. True, they were superhuman, but they were still relatable enough for the audience to connect with them.

I feel if you're going to put Unicron in the story, build up to him. I once again point to the MCU's Thanos. It took 10 years and over 20 movies worth of buildup to get to the Snap. And while Transformers doesn't nearly have the clout (as of now) to pull something like that off, they could layer his buildup over the course of several small, more contained stories.

P.S.: I realize that Sabrblade's comment was probably just a snarky thing, I just wanted to point out how it could be possible to dodge that particular reasoning.

Although I completely understand what he's saying here, I don't agree with all of it.
What I agree with: Unicron is too big of a bite for Paramount to chew right now. He is, simply, too big. Period. However you take that. in mass, in relatability, in every aspect. Literally what everyone is praising the Bumblebee movie for is the simplicity and "small" scale that it provides and offers. Which is something different from any past Transformers films. For Paramount to get all excited at this movie's critical success and jump head-on into the next large scale Transformers movie with Unicron and all the works is literally recycling the same mistakes of the past. Yes, Avengers properly executed an all-powerful villian who can end worlds and has such a large "scale" of a character, but that was after first building 18 [well made, well written and thoughtfully told] films to lead up to it after over 10 years. The Transformers franchise DOES NOT have that, love them or hate them. This is Paramount's chance to slowly move on from the mistakes that the most recent Transformers films have been in order to start small and move their way up. Don't get Unicron involved. Don't get the Quintessons invlolved. Don't overcomplicate things. We've covered Bumblebee, and begun cleaning the slate of the Transformers franchise from there. Now take it slow, but keep the pace accordingly. Make an Orion Pax origin movie, a War on Cybertron movie, and begin telling the stories that Transformers fans always wanted. Stories that the world would love transformers for. And after we get a solid basis of Transformers, lead up to give us our grand finale of Unicron. Make him the ultimate antagonist. He IS the ultimate villain of the Transformers Universe, so treat him as such. If Thanos was Iron Man's second or third villian in 2010, nobody would have cared. It wouldn't have made sense. The value of his character exists mostly in the climax, time, and effort put into leading up to him.

What I do not agree with: I'm not sure what the deal is with movie producers and representatives being so vague and discomforting with the information they provide about these movies. Especially the Transformers movies. I'm not sure what it is, but something about how he says all of this makes me very nervous for the future of Transformers, despite the success of Bumblebee. The things he's saying, the way he's saying it, feels like they can't just admit their mistakes of the past and move on from it. He very well knows what a reboot is, why it would be important in this case, or what it means to not reboot it. Playing dumb doesn't do anybody any good, and makes them look like the only reason they "happened" to get this movie right is because of Travis Knight as their director. He's playing word games, and it gets very frustrating after 10 years of them doing this.
I'm just incredibly grateful that Travis Knight is at the head of these movies now, and their biggest mistake would be trying to find someone else for the future films.

Fingers crossed.

In that Unicron picture, we finally see Unicron's big balls!

Nexus Knight wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Well, the same could be said about Thanos, but we're getting Avengers 4.

Yeah, but, Thanos is, like, somewhere between the sizes of Thor and the Hulk, not planet-sized.

jtanimator wrote:Although I completely understand what he's saying here, I don't agree with all of it.
What I agree with: Unicron is too big of a bite for Paramount to chew right now. He is, simply, too big. Period. However you take that. in mass, in relatability, in every aspect. Literally what everyone is praising the Bumblebee movie for is the simplicity and "small" scale that it provides and offers. Which is something different from any past Transformers films. For Paramount to get all excited at this movie's critical success and jump head-on into the next large scale Transformers movie with Unicron and all the works is literally recycling the same mistakes of the past. Yes, Avengers properly executed an all-powerful villian who can end worlds and has such a large "scale" of a character, but that was after first building 18 [well made, well written and thoughtfully told] films to lead up to it after over 10 years. The Transformers franchise DOES NOT have that, love them or hate them. This is Paramount's chance to slowly move on from the mistakes that the most recent Transformers films have been in order to start small and move their way up. Don't get Unicron involved. Don't get the Quintessons invlolved. Don't overcomplicate things. We've covered Bumblebee, and begun cleaning the slate of the Transformers franchise from there. Now take it slow, but keep the pace accordingly. Make an Orion Pax origin movie, a War on Cybertron movie, and begin telling the stories that Transformers fans always wanted. Stories that the world would love transformers for. And after we get a solid basis of Transformers, lead up to give us our grand finale of Unicron. Make him the ultimate antagonist. He IS the ultimate villain of the Transformers Universe, so treat him as such. If Thanos was Iron Man's second or third villian in 2010, nobody would have cared. It wouldn't have made sense. The value of his character exists mostly in the climax, time, and effort put into leading up to him.

What I do not agree with: I'm not sure what the deal is with movie producers and representatives being so vague and discomforting with the information they provide about these movies. Especially the Transformers movies. I'm not sure what it is, but something about how he says all of this makes me very nervous for the future of Transformers, despite the success of Bumblebee. The things he's saying, the way he's saying it, feels like they can't just admit their mistakes of the past and move on from it. He very well knows what a reboot is, why it would be important in this case, or what it means to not reboot it. Playing dumb doesn't do anybody any good, and makes them look like the only reason they "happened" to get this movie right is because of Travis Knight as their director. He's playing word games, and it gets very frustrating after 10 years of them doing this.
I'm just incredibly grateful that Travis Knight is at the head of these movies now, and their biggest mistake would be trying to find someone else for the future films.

Fingers crossed.

It's worth pointing out that Travis Knight is going back to laika studios, he's just remaining involved at the same level Michael Bay is and Spielberg is, as an executive producer. Rumours are they are looking elsewhere for directors.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote: You want to improve this franchise, you won't do it by making continuity worse. What will improve this franchise is exposition that harmonizes the established narratives and worldbuilding, and bringing in the long-missing element of Autobots providing disaster relief.

I really dont think it matters. The transformers films have been rewriting themselves for the convenience of every new release. We are waaaay past the point of repairing continuity. Also,I dont think anyone really cares. Bumblebee has truly wrecked any continuity there may have been and yet stays within Bayverse and its the most loved film since the first one.

In the end, if they give us a good flm, where we enjoy ourselves while watching it, then I think thats fine. Its already asking a lot for this franchise.

Also, no one likes exposition, especially screenwriters

jtanimator wrote:Although I completely understand what he's saying here, I don't agree with all of it.
What I agree with: Unicron is too big of a bite for Paramount to chew right now. He is, simply, too big. Period. However you take that. in mass, in relatability, in every aspect. Literally what everyone is praising the Bumblebee movie for is the simplicity and "small" scale that it provides and offers. Which is something different from any past Transformers films. For Paramount to get all excited at this movie's critical success and jump head-on into the next large scale Transformers movie with Unicron and all the works is literally recycling the same mistakes of the past. Yes, Avengers properly executed an all-powerful villian who can end worlds and has such a large "scale" of a character, but that was after first building 18 [well made, well written and thoughtfully told] films to lead up to it after over 10 years. The Transformers franchise DOES NOT have that, love them or hate them. This is Paramount's chance to slowly move on from the mistakes that the most recent Transformers films have been in order to start small and move their way up. Don't get Unicron involved. Don't get the Quintessons invlolved. Don't overcomplicate things. We've covered Bumblebee, and begun cleaning the slate of the Transformers franchise from there. Now take it slow, but keep the pace accordingly. Make an Orion Pax origin movie, a War on Cybertron movie, and begin telling the stories that Transformers fans always wanted. Stories that the world would love transformers for. And after we get a solid basis of Transformers, lead up to give us our grand finale of Unicron. Make him the ultimate antagonist. He IS the ultimate villain of the Transformers Universe, so treat him as such. If Thanos was Iron Man's second or third villian in 2010, nobody would have cared. It wouldn't have made sense. The value of his character exists mostly in the climax, time, and effort put into leading up to him.

What I do not agree with: I'm not sure what the deal is with movie producers and representatives being so vague and discomforting with the information they provide about these movies. Especially the Transformers movies. I'm not sure what it is, but something about how he says all of this makes me very nervous for the future of Transformers, despite the success of Bumblebee. The things he's saying, the way he's saying it, feels like they can't just admit their mistakes of the past and move on from it. He very well knows what a reboot is, why it would be important in this case, or what it means to not reboot it. Playing dumb doesn't do anybody any good, and makes them look like the only reason they "happened" to get this movie right is because of Travis Knight as their director. He's playing word games, and it gets very frustrating after 10 years of them doing this.
I'm just incredibly grateful that Travis Knight is at the head of these movies now, and their biggest mistake would be trying to find someone else for the future films.

Fingers crossed.

Say unicron is to big for movie and humans wouldn’t be able interact with unicron here is marvel movie Stan lee made cameo appearance in with planet sized villain humans and whole planet interact with it GALACTUS if it can be done in this movie and guardians of galaxy two fighting ego planet unicron can be possible in transformers live action movie I forgot to add death star in Star Wars movies

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Summed up perfectly, mans always gotta be the hero to find it relatable!
That's why Transformers movies need people in them!

padfoo wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Summed up perfectly, mans always gotta be the hero to find it relatable!
That's why Transformers movies need people in them!

Yep, and that's why people won't be able to relate to Disney's upcoming Lion King remake, guaranteeing that movie to utterly bomb for sure.

What if the TF movieverse does take the Marvel approach to revealing Unicron? So that's at least 10 spin-off movies/sequels of world building with little hints dropped in the end credits. Then a big push to confront the threat with, let's say combiners, city bots or something. Unicron transforms and smashes them. Then we spend an hour and half with Bee/Hot Rod/whoever and a few humans traversing Unicron's innards fighting "antibodies" to blow up his brain. I don't know, doesn't sound like good movie viewing to me. But hey, at least the humans interact with him

Sabrblade wrote:

padfoo wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Summed up perfectly, mans always gotta be the hero to find it relatable!
That's why Transformers movies need people in them!

Yep, and that's why people won't be able to relate to Disney's upcoming Lion King remake, guaranteeing that movie to utterly bomb for sure.

I found the recent Apes films to be a great example of how we can have a CG non human character as the star and have some humans as supporting cast.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

padfoo wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:"It’s so big it’s beyond any sort of relatable thing I think, for me personally."

Translation:

"Unicron's too big for our Hollywood human stars to interact with in a way that would satisfyingly enable them play a pivotal role in his defeat."

Summed up perfectly, mans always gotta be the hero to find it relatable!
That's why Transformers movies need people in them!

Yep, and that's why people won't be able to relate to Disney's upcoming Lion King remake, guaranteeing that movie to utterly bomb for sure.

I found the recent Apes films to be a great example of how we can have a CG non human character as the star and have some humans as supporting cast.

I think most would consider putting in actual human characters alongside the animal characters to be a cardinal sin for The Lion King.

dragons wrote:

jtanimator wrote:Although I completely understand what he's saying here, I don't agree with all of it.
What I agree with: Unicron is too big of a bite for Paramount to chew right now. He is, simply, too big. Period. However you take that. in mass, in relatability, in every aspect. Literally what everyone is praising the Bumblebee movie for is the simplicity and "small" scale that it provides and offers. Which is something different from any past Transformers films. For Paramount to get all excited at this movie's critical success and jump head-on into the next large scale Transformers movie with Unicron and all the works is literally recycling the same mistakes of the past. Yes, Avengers properly executed an all-powerful villian who can end worlds and has such a large "scale" of a character, but that was after first building 18 [well made, well written and thoughtfully told] films to lead up to it after over 10 years. The Transformers franchise DOES NOT have that, love them or hate them. This is Paramount's chance to slowly move on from the mistakes that the most recent Transformers films have been in order to start small and move their way up. Don't get Unicron involved. Don't get the Quintessons invlolved. Don't overcomplicate things. We've covered Bumblebee, and begun cleaning the slate of the Transformers franchise from there. Now take it slow, but keep the pace accordingly. Make an Orion Pax origin movie, a War on Cybertron movie, and begin telling the stories that Transformers fans always wanted. Stories that the world would love transformers for. And after we get a solid basis of Transformers, lead up to give us our grand finale of Unicron. Make him the ultimate antagonist. He IS the ultimate villain of the Transformers Universe, so treat him as such. If Thanos was Iron Man's second or third villian in 2010, nobody would have cared. It wouldn't have made sense. The value of his character exists mostly in the climax, time, and effort put into leading up to him.

What I do not agree with: I'm not sure what the deal is with movie producers and representatives being so vague and discomforting with the information they provide about these movies. Especially the Transformers movies. I'm not sure what it is, but something about how he says all of this makes me very nervous for the future of Transformers, despite the success of Bumblebee. The things he's saying, the way he's saying it, feels like they can't just admit their mistakes of the past and move on from it. He very well knows what a reboot is, why it would be important in this case, or what it means to not reboot it. Playing dumb doesn't do anybody any good, and makes them look like the only reason they "happened" to get this movie right is because of Travis Knight as their director. He's playing word games, and it gets very frustrating after 10 years of them doing this.
I'm just incredibly grateful that Travis Knight is at the head of these movies now, and their biggest mistake would be trying to find someone else for the future films.

Fingers crossed.

Say unicron is to big for movie and humans wouldn’t be able interact with unicron here is marvel movie Stan lee made cameo appearance in with planet sized villain humans and whole planet interact with it GALACTUS if it can be done in this movie and guardians of galaxy two fighting ego planet unicron can be possible in transformers live action movie I forgot to add death star in Star Wars movies

Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer is the example of what not to do. Everyone called fox out for the treatment Galactus got then and I think we'll see a more traditional take when marvel tackle him.

I agree with him about Unicron. He's a silly villain. A Transformer the size of a planet would blot out the sky with just the tip of his finger, not be about the size of a skyscraper in the animated movie. (Scale was never their strength)
Plus, Unicron gets recycled far too much. Oh, here's Unicron again. Why am I supposed to care? Because he's the guy from the animated film who blew up?