Why it Makes No Difference if the Upcoming Transformers Film is a "Reboot" or Not

There's been a very tiring argument within the Transformers community for years as to whether or not the new Live Action films we are getting are part of the same universe as previous live action Transformers films directed my Michael Bay. But in reality, the argument is pointless since Bay is still involved no matter what, the designs still feature aesthetics from the Bay era and this would not be the first soft reboot anyway.

We'll just look at the facts. Firstly, neither Hasbro nor Paramount want to totally disassociate themselves from the legacy of the Bay era films, nor dissociate themselves from Bay himself. Those films inspired a new generation of Transformers fans and brought in billions. So you'd never hear the word "reboot" from them so as not to alienate fans of the franchise. Plus both Travis Knight, director of Bumblebee, and Steven Caple Jr, director of Rise of the Beasts, along with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, said that these "not made by Bay" films are within the live action universe we already know of. That was even one of the reasons why we couldn't have Megatron in the Cybertron scene in the Bumblebee movie. And fans thinking that either the Bumblebee movie or the upcoming Rise of the Beasts film have nothing to do with Michael Bay are wrong. Michael Bay was on set of Rise of the Beasts with Steven Caple Jr, the director, as the film was being shot. He is a hands on producer here, and you can see him in this Instagram video below:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUvg7ifJHwK/?hl=en


Now in terms of designs, everything we have seen so far is indeed a departure form the 2007 film which had very alien designs. But that ignores 5 films since then where designs did evolve under Bay as well. So even if this is a "reboot", that doesn't mean that those who didn't like the live action designs will suddenly fall in love with them now. We just saw the toy for the upcoming film and here it is next to a toy of a character from a Bay directed film. Which is which? Can you tell from just the design cues? It looks like they both crawled out of the same factory. Simply said, we will still have complex designs with multi layered armor, a staple of live action movie designs.



Just to answer the previous questions in case you truly did not know, the figure on right is Hot Rod from a film directed by Michael Bay and the figure on the left is Battletrap from the new film, which Michael Bay is producing but not directing. And that brings another trope diehard fans hate about live action films: name slaps. Like with Bayverse Crosshairs and Crankcase, this Battletrap is just a reused name of a G1 toy with no reference to that character, which in this case had a very unique gimmick. This is a trend we saw in the Bay films and it is alive and well here. Plus, Bumblebee retains the same face he had from the Bay directed films, along with the car radio voice and the Camaro alt mode, offering a loose continuity with the previous films. I'd hope an actual reboot would forgo the design cues from the biggest staple of the Bay era, Bumblebee. But instead, we are getting all these design throughlines.



Also, if this is a "soft reboot", that doesn't mean it's not within the Bayverse. It would be (at least) the second soft reboot of its kind in the Bayverse, after all. After the initial trilogy, Michael Bay changed things up in Age of Extinction and the Last Knight. Optimus got a major redesign, looking more like a superhero than a robot made of car parts, and the faces looked more human, especially the faces of the villains (like Lockdown). That change in design carried over to the Bumblebee movie villains like Shatter and will probably carry over to the Rise of the Beasts villains as well. Any evidence of incongruence to continuity story is far from being a smoking gun when a film like The Last Knight exists. In that film, everything we saw before was retconned and continuity flew out the window.

That's why in the end, it really doesn't matter if this film is labelled as a reboot or not. You can call it a reboot if you like but remember:
- No one at Hasbro or Paramount is calling it that
- It is labelled as TF 7 in all toy listings as well as on set
- Michael Bay is still involved and on set
- There are still reused G1 names with no connection
- Design elements are carried over from previous films; Bumblebee still has the Bayverse face, radio voice and Camaro alt mode

Plus, you'll still get scenes focused on humans, including a scene where the main male character goes for a job interview (again). Trying to piece it with the other films will make as much sense as piecing The Last Knight with the rest (let's not, let's just choose sanity). Regardless, we saw with Bumblebee that we can still get a good story with a greater emphasis on the bots within a film that was meant to be a prequel to the Bay films. So nothing is stopping this film from being good too, regardless if it is in the Bayverse. And also, most importantly, nothing spares it from being terrible if it's not in the Bayverse either.