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The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially

Transformers News: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially

Monday, September 30th, 2024 5:19PM CDT

Category: Movie Related News
Posted by: william-james88   Views: 49,928

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It looks like word of mouth did no favors for Transformers One in its second weekend. It opened very poorly last week and has plummeted in its second weekend, ending up third place at the domestic box office behind The Wild Robot and Beetlejuice.

While it was expected that the Wild Robot would get first place this weekend, it lays the smackdown on Transformers One’s candy ass by opening 10 million dollars higher that the later did. Which means that the reason Transformers One did less truly comes down to the brand. Parents chose to bring their kids to the Wild Robot and not Transformers, plain and simple. As bad as Transformers did last week, it did even worse this week, dropping over 60%.

The global numbers are not better. It opened in China to 8 million, which is a far cry to previous Transformers films. When looking at the week-end charts worldwide, the film ends up 4th behind The Wild Robot, Devara Part 1 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
In total internationally, the film has only made 32 million across 61 countries. Added to the domestic numbers, the film has made 72 million globally. It needs to make approximately 190 million to break even, using industry standards. Even if it makes that, it will be the worst performing Transformers film by a country mile, making even less than half what Rise of the Beasts made.

The Wild Robot didn't just beat it in terms of box office debut but also in terms of critical reception. While both films have a 98% user rating, when it comes to critics, 98% recommend the Wild Robot while 88% recommend Transformers One.

Transformers News: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially

Transformers News: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially

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Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184702)
Posted by -Kanrabat- on September 30th, 2024 @ 7:21pm CDT
Mistake #1 was to not make the movie in the same style as the intro of the Bee Movie.

And mistake #2 was the minimal marketing. Sure, the usual fans were already sold with the toys and overall fidelity. But the casuals were ignored. A shame.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184703)
Posted by Sabrblade on September 30th, 2024 @ 7:33pm CDT
-Kanrabat- wrote:Mistake #1 was to not make the movie in the same style as the intro of the Bee Movie.
No. That was no mistake because this movie is gorgeous. There is no reason to make a fully animated film look photorealistic if there is nothing actually realistic in the movie to juxtapose it with (hello Disney's Lion King remake).
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184704)
Posted by Nexus Knight on September 30th, 2024 @ 8:32pm CDT
Honestly, I think the biggest mistake that they had was releasing alongside the second Beetlejuice movie (which had all the marketing and is a follow-up to a supposed classic) and Wild Robot, which was always going to be likely to draw in a bigger family following. I plan to see the latter, so I can't comment on the quality of the movie, but based on what I've seen marketing-wise... yeah, it's not shocking it's doing better. And I freaking loved TF1. I'm going to see it again with my brother soon, but I think it suffered the most from a poor release window. If it had released a week earlier like planned awhile ago, I feel it may have had a better chance to do super well before being dethroned bt Wild Robot.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184705)
Posted by -Kanrabat- on September 30th, 2024 @ 8:36pm CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
-Kanrabat- wrote:Mistake #1 was to not make the movie in the same style as the intro of the Bee Movie.
No. That was no mistake because this movie is gorgeous. There is no reason to make a fully animated film look photorealistic if there is nothing actually realistic in the movie to juxtapose it with (hello Disney's Lion King remake).


Personally, I too, find the style of the movie to be perfect.
But marketability dictate that it would have fared way better in the hyper realistic style.

The Lion King remake was totally unnecessary and was quite uncanny with their hyper realistic cartoon style. But it made enough money to warrant a sequel. A sequel that is panned by the hardcore, but the casual are exited to see. Comparing to what my family say VS what the comments/forums/content creators says.

So, it is sad to say, buy TF1 in super realistic Bee Movie intro style would have sold more tickets. Way more.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184711)
Posted by SkyFire Prime on September 30th, 2024 @ 10:33pm CDT
Why do we have to boost imagines of it as failing?

Guys, if this fails, it will truly be the last good Transformers Movie. It has to succeed in some way.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184712)
Posted by Glyph on September 30th, 2024 @ 10:44pm CDT
Well, we never know "what would have happened if X" or that there will be no good TF movies in the future, ever, so... By all indications, this movie should return a modest profit in the end and hopefully at least one sequel. But it's certainly not performed as well as we / Hasbro / Paramount were hoping, and there's little point pretending that isn't the case.

Where it's succeeded is in being well-reviewed and well-received by its (modest) audiences, and we can expect that more people will eventually watch it on streaming / disc than saw it in the cinema. So one big thing it can do is help rehabilitate the brand, which doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation at the movies right now, and maybe get more people interested in seeing the next one.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184713)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on September 30th, 2024 @ 11:35pm CDT
-Kanrabat- wrote:Mistake #1 was to not make the movie in the same style as the intro of the Bee Movie.

And mistake #2 was the minimal marketing. Sure, the usual fans were already sold with the toys and overall fidelity. But the casuals were ignored. A shame.
Agreed on both counts.

The movie as it is looks pretty good. But it never establishes the illusion that these are actual living beings. For all of Bayverse's faults, when I was looking at the screen I was convinced (or at least could easily pretend) that I was looking at metallic living beings.

If we had gotten the style of the opening scene of Bumblebee, which was the best part of the movie aside from perhaps the fight scene with Bee and the triplechangers, it would have gone a long way in helping the general audience decide to see it. The way TFOne looks, we all knew it was gonna be an animated movie, and not a movie with CGI in it.

Now I can imagine how expensive that type of rendering can be for that long of a movie, but it most definitely would have boosted the box office. Probably not enough to turn a profit, so in the end financially this was the smarter choice, but if money was no object, it would have looked much better the other way.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184714)
Posted by Bumblevivisector on September 30th, 2024 @ 11:55pm CDT
Yeeesh, will's description's making me picture a future Robot Chicken sketch where The Wild Robot literally lands on Cybertron beats up the entire population.

The video mentioned that TF ONE still did better than TWR outside the U.S. this weekend, and that's making me wonder what countries each film was released in. But no amount of data mining can change the totals.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184715)
Posted by Sabrblade on September 30th, 2024 @ 11:57pm CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:The movie as it is looks pretty good. But it never establishes the illusion that these are actual living beings.
:BANG_HEAD:

Rodimus Prime wrote:The way TFOne looks, we all knew it was gonna be an animated movie, and not a movie with CGI in it.
Photorealistic CGI is still animation. It's impossible to make a truly live-action movie if there's nothing actually shot in live-action in the movie. No matter how realistic it appears, photorealistic CGI is still animation. I go back to Disney's "live action" remake of The Lion King. That movie was 99.9% animated with photorealistic CGI with no actual live action shots in it other than the opening shot of the sun rising over the horizon at the beginning of the movie. After that, everything for the remainder of that film was completely animated.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184716)
Posted by Glyph on October 1st, 2024 @ 12:29am CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:For all of Bayverse's faults, when I was looking at the screen I was convinced (or at least could easily pretend) that I was looking at metallic living beings.

Really? Because one of the big issues I had with the Bayverse films was that the robots never felt right in the scene to me - they always seemed floaty, or the physics didn't sell, or some other thing. They always just looked like special effects IMO, and not at a level I expected from ILM. #shrug#

Rodimus Prime wrote:If we had gotten the style of the opening scene of Bumblebee, which was the best part of the movie aside from perhaps the fight scene with Bee and the triplechangers, it would have gone a long way in helping the general audience decide to see it. The way TFOne looks, we all knew it was gonna be an animated movie, and not a movie with CGI in it.

Matter of taste I suppose - for me, the Cybertron section was one of the less interesting bits of the film, and the most jammed-in-for-fan-service. (Not the bits I most disliked - that would probably be the very Bay-esque little brother / cringe stepdad.) The designs were vastly improved from the previous films though, in that they actually looked like Transformers ( :-P ), but a whole movie that looked like that would have been (a) incredibly expensive and (b) targeted very much at older fans, not new kids and casuals. I thought the animation in the rest of the film, particularly between Charlie and Bee, did way better both at actual character acting and in feeling realistically grounded in the scene, over the same 'robot PAWNCH!' bouncy action we'd seen before. IMO, YMMV, etc.

I maintain that the timing of release - back to school, sandwiched between Beetlejuice and TWR, staggered by almost a month overseas - did far more to hurt its chances than the style. But who knows, in the end - there's a lot of variables in play.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184717)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 1st, 2024 @ 1:10am CDT
Glyph wrote:but a whole movie that looked like that would have been (a) incredibly expensive and (b) targeted very much at older fans, not new kids and casuals.
And here I think we've reached the crux of the matter, that it all comes back to the longstanding belief that live-action is superior to animation because, supposedly, live-action is for grownups and mature audiences while animation is for children, losers, and stupid people. That photorealism is somehow better than illustrated artwork.

The thing is, Transformers is a brand that thrives as illustrated art, whether moving pictures or stilled drawings. It's at its best when it's not trying to be super hyper-realistic as it's more focused on telling good stories with engaging characters, regardless of whether it looks like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, a Jack Kirby drawing, a PlayStation 2 game, or a Flash animation.

At the end of the day, Transformers doesn't and shouldn't belong to one specific demographic. Not adults, not kids, not fans, not casuals, but everyone. Transformers is and should be something that everyone can enjoy, as given in this excellent short video that the entire fandom could stand to watch and learn from:

Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184721)
Posted by Glyph on October 1st, 2024 @ 5:13am CDT
Amen to that, in the general!

In the specific, as an animation junkie and proponent of "it's a medium, not a genre"... that bias that sees non-hyperreal animated movies as "kids' stuff" and turns adults away is unfortunately a big factor. Unless you're a proven big name like Pixar or Dreamworks - and often even then! - you've got an uphill struggle if you're putting out an all-ages animated feature. There are always some standouts - Spider-Verse, Arcane etc - but the bias is sadly pretty pervasive.

But we also can't attribute everything to that - after all, the film currently kicking TF1's ass is another, much more polished-looking all-ages animated feature from Dreamworks. When I said a whole movie that looked like the BB movie's Cybertron scene would be targeted at older fans, I wasn't (only) talking about the "realistic" rendering but about the whole aesthetic: heroic-proportioned bots leaping around the place, blasting and punching each other to shreds over a constant backdrop of explosions. Though I haven't seen it yet, my understanding from the discussions is that that aesthetic would have been badly mismatched with TF1's overall tone and story style. (The other thing to note is that it would have been much more expensive, and on current performance would likely have turned TF1 from modestly profitable to a financial flop.)

I hear that the full movie has some gorgeous visuals, particularly vistas and individual scenes, but that initial trailer (the only thing I've really seen besides the Kayou cards, by intent, which puts me in a similar position to much of the prospective audience) looked fairly mid-tier on the level of both character design and animation - more like a game cutscene than a full movie in places. The character designs are serviceable but not really much more than that, pretty generic and interchangeable, and the animation was weirdly stiff at times (B-127 turning and running was a standout in my memory, along with that shot of Dread/Darkwing looking like a cheap, cobbled-together game extra). For contrast, TF Prime, while much less advanced in the rendering and 14 years older, managed some excellent character animation on a much lower budget!

If there's one thing I can assume for The Wild Robot, based on Dreamworks' past record, it's that it will be polished to a high sheen, with characters carefully tuned for audience appeal. That polish & appeal in the design is what I felt was lacking in TF1's marketing presentation, and the cut of the initial trailer ("Badassitron" #-o ) really wouldn't help raise it to must-see rather than meh if I wasn't already invested as a TF and animation fan. Which is a crying shame, because from everything I've heard the rest of the movie is excellent.


--EDIT--
I'm probably coming off as more negative than I mean to. I'm tired. Really just rambling on designing for appeal and the need to make the story, presentation and marketing all line up the same direction for the target demo.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184725)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on October 1st, 2024 @ 10:12am CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:The movie as it is looks pretty good. But it never establishes the illusion that these are actual living beings.
:BANG_HEAD:
Bang your head all you want, it still won't change the fact that not everyone thinks like you. What you have are opinions and others are allowed to have differing ones.
Rodimus Prime wrote:The way TFOne looks, we all knew it was gonna be an animated movie, and not a movie with CGI in it.
Photorealistic CGI is still animation. It's impossible to make a truly live-action movie if there's nothing actually shot in live-action in the movie. No matter how realistic it appears, photorealistic CGI is still animation.
Fair enough. So let me rephrase. The animation in Bayverse looks much more organic than in TFOne. Again let me stress that I really liked TFOne. I even liked the animation. But just as with TF:Prime or TF:TM before it, I knew I was looking at animation. In Bayverse, I was able to suspend my disbelief and think I was looking at a real living alien machine on the screen who had just as much life as the human characters. With TFOne that's not the case. I still prefer the complete lack of humans, so no real complaints. But speaking strictly of the art style used, Bayverse still looks more believable.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184726)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on October 1st, 2024 @ 10:26am CDT
Glyph wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:For all of Bayverse's faults, when I was looking at the screen I was convinced (or at least could easily pretend) that I was looking at metallic living beings.

Really? Because one of the big issues I had with the Bayverse films was that the robots never felt right in the scene to me - they always seemed floaty, or the physics didn't sell, or some other thing. They always just looked like special effects IMO, and not at a level I expected from ILM. #shrug#
To each her/his own. Bayverse wasn't perfect visually by any means. But as I explained in my response to Sabrblade, I still had easier time believing I was looking at a real living being in the live action films. Perhaps because real humans were also included in the scene?
Matter of taste I suppose
Full stop. You suppose correctly.
I maintain that the timing of release - back to school, sandwiched between Beetlejuice and TWR, staggered by almost a month overseas - did far more to hurt its chances than the style. But who knows, in the end - there's a lot of variables in play.
Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release. Just seems that the producers already knew this would mainly appeal to TF fans so they just put it out there and didn't bother serious marketing to children. Which should anger Hasbro because that damaged their promotion of the toyline.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184727)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 1st, 2024 @ 10:31am CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release. Just seems that the producers already knew this would mainly appeal to TF fans so they just put it out there and didn't bother serious marketing to children. Which should anger Hasbro because that damaged their promotion of the toyline.
It seems they went with September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the G1 cartoon. But a May release would have better coincided with the actual 40th anniversary of the whole brand. ;)
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184728)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on October 1st, 2024 @ 10:53am CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release. Just seems that the producers already knew this would mainly appeal to TF fans so they just put it out there and didn't bother serious marketing to children. Which should anger Hasbro because that damaged their promotion of the toyline.
It seems they went with September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the G1 cartoon. But a May release would have better coincided with the actual 40th anniversary of the whole brand. ;)
Absolutely Agreed. May 8th to be exact. It was a Wednesday, would've given the movie a nice 5-day opening.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184729)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 1st, 2024 @ 10:58am CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release. Just seems that the producers already knew this would mainly appeal to TF fans so they just put it out there and didn't bother serious marketing to children. Which should anger Hasbro because that damaged their promotion of the toyline.
It seems they went with September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the G1 cartoon. But a May release would have better coincided with the actual 40th anniversary of the whole brand. ;)
Absolutely Agreed. May 8th to be exact. It was a Wednesday, would've given the movie a nice 5-day opening.
The only real competition it would have faced had it been released in May would have been Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and IF. Which, admittedly, is some pretty steep competition, but we'll never know what might have happened, alas.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184731)
Posted by TFIta369 on October 1st, 2024 @ 11:23am CDT
it lays the smackdown on Transformers One’s candy ass

I cringed. #-o
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184732)
Posted by Glyph on October 1st, 2024 @ 12:00pm CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release.
It seems they went with September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the G1 cartoon. But a May release would have better coincided with the actual 40th anniversary of the whole brand. ;)

As I understand it, it was supposed to be July 19 for the summer crowd, but pushed back to September 13 (presumably for final crunch because it wasn't ready) then again to September 25 to avoid the Beetlejuice premiere. Which then, ironically, only gave it one week before TWR.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184733)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 1st, 2024 @ 12:04pm CDT
Glyph wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:Agreed on the timing. This should have been either a June release or even a March or April release.
It seems they went with September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the G1 cartoon. But a May release would have better coincided with the actual 40th anniversary of the whole brand. ;)

As I understand it, it was supposed to be July 19 for the summer crowd, but pushed back to September 13 (presumably for final crunch because it wasn't ready) then again to September 25 to avoid the Beetlejuice premiere. Which then, ironically, only gave it one week before TWR.
September 20.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184735)
Posted by Glyph on October 1st, 2024 @ 12:43pm CDT
Yeah, that (brain fart, 13 + 7 != 25)
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184768)
Posted by JazZeke on October 1st, 2024 @ 4:30pm CDT
Transformers One is even better on the second go-around. Something about expecting the emotional beats and dramatic moments lets you savor them even more. Honestly this time I cried during Orion's ascension into Optimus.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184770)
Posted by Immortal Starscream on October 1st, 2024 @ 6:15pm CDT
such a shame, because the movie is absolutely amazing. I feel this is mostly due to branding. People are sick of hyping up movie franchises only to get a lackluster, brainless, boring or dumb flick. But then again, many box office flops have gone on to be regarded as some of the greatest movies of all time. Citizen kane, john carpenters Thing, the 1986 TF movie. (ok ok, its not on the level of the last two, but it was a flop that most people here regard as gold)
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184774)
Posted by william-james88 on October 1st, 2024 @ 11:20pm CDT
Bumblevivisector wrote:Yeeesh, will's description's making me picture a future Robot Chicken sketch where The Wild Robot literally lands on Cybertron beats up the entire population.

The video mentioned that TF ONE still did better than TWR outside the U.S. this weekend, and that's making me wonder what countries each film was released in. But no amount of data mining can change the totals.


Yeah, both films have odd stagerred release dates making it hard ti get a sense of their momentum internationally

And glad you liked my description, we have to find some fun in all this
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184775)
Posted by Quantum Surge on October 2nd, 2024 @ 12:17am CDT
So much for trying to boost TF out of #SaveTFONE LMAO, this flick's biggest defenders at least tried staying offline for once to be outside their homes rather than rinse and repeat the same "Bayverse and/or any non-G1 series bad" bs they'd say on forums or social media. :lol:
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184776)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 2nd, 2024 @ 12:24am CDT
Quantum Surge wrote:So much for trying to boost TF out of #SaveTFONE LMAO, this flick's biggest defenders at least tried staying offline for once to be outside their homes rather than rinse and repeat the same "Bayverse and/or any non-G1 series bad" bs they'd say on forums or social media. :lol:
Funny you should say that. When watching a video on YouTube going over the racers listed in the Iacon 5000, I happened to spot the following ridiculous comment posted in the Comments section below the video:

That is all wrong!

The transformers that are combiner members such as Silvetbolt and other Aerialbots, and Motormaster and other Stunticons did not exist yet during the time of Orion Pax and D16 because Optimus Prime and Megatron created them respectively when they were already here on Earth with personalities given to them by Vector Sigma. Also, Beast Machines TFs such as Tankor etc. should not have been there. Again this is the fault of the animators who did not research by knowing who were the original or Generation One TFs from the very first TF cartoon series :-x :evil:
So dumb. :roll:
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184778)
Posted by #1 Signal Lancer fan on October 2nd, 2024 @ 9:28am CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
That is all wrong!

The transformers that are combiner members such as Silvetbolt and other Aerialbots, and Motormaster and other Stunticons did not exist yet during the time of Orion Pax and D16 because Optimus Prime and Megatron created them respectively when they were already here on Earth with personalities given to them by Vector Sigma. Also, Beast Machines TFs such as Tankor etc. should not have been there. Again this is the fault of the animators who did not research by knowing who were the original or Generation One TFs from the very first TF cartoon series :-x :evil:


Have they never encountered a reboot before?
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184779)
Posted by blackeyedprime on October 2nd, 2024 @ 12:15pm CDT
The bland robot designs might not have helped it, judging by the images on those cards alone -it even makes the new quality street wrappers look good.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184780)
Posted by #1 Signal Lancer fan on October 2nd, 2024 @ 2:31pm CDT
blackeyedprime wrote:The bland robot designs might not have helped it, judging by the images on those cards alone -it even makes the new quality street wrappers look good.


I will say that there is an in-story reason that the characters look similar to one another.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184782)
Posted by Glyph on October 2nd, 2024 @ 3:50pm CDT
Figured as much, but perhaps the cog upgrade could have done a bit more reformatting to individualise their designs by scale, silhouette etc. I don't dislike the designs - they do look more like a classic Transformers aesthetic to me overall - but just find them a bit bland.

I suppose the fact that they're transforming into Cybertronian vehicle modes makes it harder to distinguish them in a way that reads obviously as vehicle kibble - G1 bots were mostly built out of blocks, but the way that you could always see a car windshield or tank tracks, along with the clear colours, helped distinguish even the ones that shared a basic model. Seems like this often an issue with prequel series (see TWW / IDW histories / WFC games, or even post-86 G1) when the artist needs to come up with a new design that doesn't really transform into anything recognisable.

(Plus, an in-story reason can always be rewritten if needed to support the designs, they're not locked to some pre-existing canon that Must Not Be Touched.)
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184785)
Posted by First-Aid on October 2nd, 2024 @ 10:10pm CDT
Lets face it. A lot of us grew up with Transformers as animation (cartoon), so for us this isn't a big jump. Two generation though know Transformers through the live action movies so they saw this as a deviation from their norm (think of Geewunners when Beast Wars came out, that type of deviation). ALmost 20 years of live action, CGI Transformers rather than animation. And before you say "There WAS Transformers animation!", the ratings say that virtually no one watched it. Earthspark was being outwatched by Golden Girls reruns at its PEAK...so no one was watching it (this data was presented on another thread).

I feel like this movie, if it had come out after the original TF in 2007, would have done much better. Now, after 7 established live action movies where people aren't going to watch the characters, they are going to watch the CGI and see what can be accomplished next, this seems like a step back in technology. The movie is outstanding, and only the whiniest die-hard Geewunners are going to disagree because Geewun. But the launch date was poor, the marketing was atrocious, and the general public (NOT the fans, the general public) were expecting something different. This is not THEIR Transformers, it's OUR Transformers. And it simply points out that we are not as influential as some people would like to think and our take on the franchise is probably outdated.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184786)
Posted by -Kanrabat- on October 3rd, 2024 @ 4:39am CDT
Yup.

Pretty much what you said.

Many old fans here have a hard time grasping the concept that Bayformers ARE the nostalgic and "true" Transformers for a whole generation. A generation that is old enough to have already started the next one!

TF1 would have been way more popular if it would have stayed in the Bayformer style instead of that Earthsparkesque look.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184788)
Posted by #1 Signal Lancer fan on October 3rd, 2024 @ 8:37am CDT
-Kanrabat- wrote:Many old fans here have a hard time grasping the concept that Bayformers ARE the nostalgic and "true" Transformers for a whole generation.


I browse the Transformers subreddit and this has been a wild thing to encounter. I was fairly young when they came out myself, but its so weird to see people who have grown up with Bayformers their whole life and view it as their "classic" Transformers in the same way that I do the Unicron Trilogy and others do for G1.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184789)
Posted by CobraKai on October 3rd, 2024 @ 9:06am CDT
I saw more marketing for One than i did for Wild Robot. The issue is that Wild Robot has mass appeal while TF is more niche. While TF was fantastic in all respects, it only really appealed to TF fans and was never gonna bring in more audience members.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184793)
Posted by -Kanrabat- on October 3rd, 2024 @ 1:15pm CDT
#1 Signal Lancer fan wrote:
-Kanrabat- wrote:Many old fans here have a hard time grasping the concept that Bayformers ARE the nostalgic and "true" Transformers for a whole generation.


I browse the Transformers subreddit and this has been a wild thing to encounter. I was fairly young when they came out myself, but its so weird to see people who have grown up with Bayformers their whole life and view it as their "classic" Transformers in the same way that I do the Unicorn Trilogy and others do for G1.


As someone who was a child when the G1 cartoon aired for the first time, this sure ain't making me any younger. :(
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184800)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on October 3rd, 2024 @ 7:16pm CDT
-Kanrabat- wrote:TF1 would have been way more popular if it would have stayed in the Bayformer style instead of that Earthsparkesque look.
My point exactly.

And why is this thread even in the live action forum? There's nothing live action about it. Not the story or the media style.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184801)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 3rd, 2024 @ 8:16pm CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:And why is this thread even in the live action forum? There's nothing live action about it. Not the story or the media style.
Because waaaaaaaaaay back when word of this movie was first heard about in 2017 (before TLK came out), it was originally conceived as a prequel to the live action movies, born out of the same writers' room that led to the creation of TLK, Bumblebee, and ROTB. It only later veered off from that original vision further down the road in its production development. So we can't fault the thread forum location decisions of seven years ago for the outcomes of the present that were unforeseeable back then.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184802)
Posted by Glyph on October 3rd, 2024 @ 8:44pm CDT
Glyph wrote:
-Kanrabat- wrote:As for TF1, it should be in the CARTOON forums because it is 100% animated and it's its own thing, far removed from the L.A series. Both in style and story.

Maybe this one should be renamed to the Movie Forum?

Just sayin'. It makes a lot more sense to distinguish between movie vs TV vs comic than different styles of movies IMO.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184803)
Posted by Rodimus Prime on October 4th, 2024 @ 12:49am CDT
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:And why is this thread even in the live action forum? There's nothing live action about it. Not the story or the media style.
Because waaaaaaaaaay back when word of this movie was first heard about in 2017 (before TLK came out), it was originally conceived as a prequel to the live action movies, born out of the same writers' room that led to the creation of TLK, Bumblebee, and ROTB. It only later veered off from that original vision further down the road in its production development. So we can't fault the thread forum location decisions of seven years ago for the outcomes of the present that were unforeseeable back then.
That was 7 years ago. When it became obvious that it was not only going to be completely animated, but the story will be on it's own, or at least not attached to Bayverse, it could have been moved. Mods can do that. Or did that never get clarified until the movie was actually released?
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184805)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 4th, 2024 @ 1:07am CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:Or did that never get clarified until the movie was actually released?
Bingo.

Lorenzo even keeps going back and forth on it being its own thing or tied to the other movies. In this interview from just three days before the movie's official release date, he claimed it takes place 300 million years before the 2007 movie, which, now that the film has been released, we can fully say is an insane claim.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184806)
Posted by JazZeke on October 4th, 2024 @ 1:31am CDT
Rodimus Prime wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:And why is this thread even in the live action forum? There's nothing live action about it. Not the story or the media style.
Because waaaaaaaaaay back when word of this movie was first heard about in 2017 (before TLK came out), it was originally conceived as a prequel to the live action movies, born out of the same writers' room that led to the creation of TLK, Bumblebee, and ROTB. It only later veered off from that original vision further down the road in its production development. So we can't fault the thread forum location decisions of seven years ago for the outcomes of the present that were unforeseeable back then.
That was 7 years ago. When it became obvious that it was not only going to be completely animated, but the story will be on it's own, or at least not attached to Bayverse, it could have been moved. Mods can do that. Or did that never get clarified until the movie was actually released?

Or perhaps this forum should just get renamed "TF Movies Forum" to cover all TF films, especially since the hope is for more animated movies in the future.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184808)
Posted by DeathReviews on October 4th, 2024 @ 8:13am CDT
I'm not sure why Beetlejuice2 is still doing well compared to Transformers. BJ2 was OK, but it wasn't great. It had at least three separate antagonist arcs, each one with it's own LONG build up. And each one resolved so abruptly that they were all a letdown. And they threw in a MacArthur Park song/dance parody that would have made a decent enough 30-second gag, but got blown out to nearly 10 minutes. They could have cut that bit out and spent more time with a more satisfying resolution to at least one of the other plot threads.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184812)
Posted by chuckdawg1999 on October 4th, 2024 @ 12:28pm CDT
Just as an aside, remember that Hasbro said ROTB was a success because the toys sold well and they made more than in previous quarters. Let's wait to see what Hasbro says about TFOne.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184820)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 4th, 2024 @ 2:22pm CDT
Delete
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184858)
Posted by Tyrannacon on October 6th, 2024 @ 3:48pm CDT
I saw it today and I admit, I was completely wrong to be so hard on this film from the start when I heard about it. I think they did a fantastic job and I really appreciated the little details thrown in there to the other continuities where it felt like everything was sort of acknowledged while it was doing its own thing. What's more in doing its own thing they did an amazing job at the same time.

As for the acting, I mean I understand now why they didn't cast Cullen or Welker now. I genuinely get it as the cast sounds infinitely more youthful, but they sound like the characters I love. I definitely feel that the first trailer for the film is a disservice to the greatness this film managed to reach. It is definitely one of my go-to pieces of media when I want to immerse in Transformers material, definitely. 8.9/10 in my mind.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184876)
Posted by partholon on October 7th, 2024 @ 11:21am CDT
on plus side the films up to 97 mil now and it STILL has to open in the more lucrative regions of Europe.

on DOWN side its getting its streaming release date , according to Forbes, on October 20 to 22 depending on your service provider.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers ... iere-date/

thats FECK all time from the UK/GERMANY released dates, like literally a little over a week. so it looks like Hasbro and co have thrown the towel in on the box office front.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184877)
Posted by Sabrblade on October 7th, 2024 @ 11:32am CDT
-Kanrabat- wrote:I just came back from the movie and yup.

Hands down the BEST Transformers movie so far. Everything clicks, everything makes sense, and not a single cringe moment, nor forced current day "message". This will make TF1 TIMELESS. It will be as good in 50 years as it is right now.

:APPLAUSE:
Welp, looks like someone found one such timely message in the movie:

Transformers One Is the Pro-Labor Allegory the Animation Industry Needs Right Now
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184878)
Posted by Big Grim on October 7th, 2024 @ 11:37am CDT
partholon wrote:thats FECK all time from the UK/GERMANY released dates, like literally a little over a week. so it looks like Hasbro and co have thrown the towel in on the box office front.

That's bananas. Still, I wanna see it on the big screen.

Do we know why there's been so much time between US launch and the UK one?

~ Grim
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184882)
Posted by #1 Signal Lancer fan on October 7th, 2024 @ 3:07pm CDT
I've seen some big-ish influencers start to praise the movie as underrated on Youtube over the past few days. Maybe these endorsements will give the movie a much needed boost.
Re: The Wild Robot Beats Transformers One both Critically and Commercially (2184887)
Posted by Glyph on October 7th, 2024 @ 8:29pm CDT
partholon wrote:on DOWN side its getting its streaming release date , according to Forbes, on October 20 to 22 depending on your service provider.

thats FECK all time from the UK/GERMANY released dates, like literally a little over a week. so it looks like Hasbro and co have thrown the towel in on the box office front.

It'll be available on streaming literally before it even releases in French cinemas (Oct 23).

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