Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

[LordGigaIce]

My personal opinion is that GI Joe needs to embrace the Adventure Team aspect as the military one is just too controversial these days.
You can still have Cobra as the villains, you can even have them affiliated with the US government. But you gotta get away from the reliance on the "US military or nothing" mentality.

 

[Sabrblade]

as the military angle had lost a lot of ground as a selling point since the 80s.

ESPECIALLY after 9/11 happened.

 

[The Predaking]

I like the idea that they were setting up in the last movie. Make them a secret organization that gets called in to help in dire situations where the normal military is out gunned. Give them some of their Iconic vehicles as over-powered compared to modern day military vehicles/weapons, heck you can even go the Crossover route for the TF movies and have the TFs be some of the vehicles. That would work well against Decepticons or Cobra terrorist forces.

 

[lastmaximal]

Just make it Overwatch, comparisons be damned.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

It's weird that '80's Joe and Transformers have diverged so much, because they're almost two sides of the same coin.

They both feature two teams of combatants separated into goody good guys and eeeeevil badguys, made of up characters that have goofy, descriptive names and typically some character quirk or gimmick or special skill. The typical adventure is the bad guys coming up with some ridiculously over the top scheme and then being stopped by the good guys.

One is just cool guy military dudes and vehicles while the other is alien robots that turn into vehicle and tapedecks and stuff.

Understandable though; the 2000's really made the whole "military fighting terrorists" stuff a lot less palatable for easy breazy entertainment.

Makes me wonder what would happen if a bunch of alien robots popped up and started a fight.

 

[Superomegaprime]

I think one of GI Joe's problems is the fact that its seen more of a bunch of soldiers fighting a fictional enemy during a era where there is a lot of conficts around the globe and people are not really intersted in seeing that sort of thing, plus action figures are on the decline in general, for Gi Joe to be truly sucessful again, it needs something that wows audiences alteratively, have Gi Joe change into M.A.S.K to play up the vehicles that change asspect!

 

[lastmaximal]

It's weird that '80's Joe and Transformers have diverged so much, because they're almost two sides of the same coin.

They both feature two teams of combatants separated into goody good guys and eeeeevil badguys, made of up characters that have goofy, descriptive names and typically some character quirk or gimmick or special skill. The typical adventure is the bad guys coming up with some ridiculously over the top scheme and then being stopped by the good guys.

One is just cool guy military dudes and vehicles while the other is alien robots that turn into vehicle and tapedecks and stuff.

I think that minimizes the brand identities way too much just to make the "same coin" description work. By that token GI Joe is also He-Man, also TMNT, and also Silverhawks. Coffee is also "almost" water, except it "just" has extract from ground coffee beans in it.

The "military dudes" and "alien robots that turn into stuff" aspects are not as incidental as that makes it seem. And they've certainly informed the brands' differing fortunes. The hyperfocus on the armed (and army-ed) conflict aspect and military trappings has become an albatross for GI Joe brand over the years, while Transformers has been able to leverage those aspects in various ways across its reinventions -- from "they turn into organic animals now" to "their war, our world" to "that Camaro/VW bug is a person?!" to "almost everything in this mall has been brought to life, from that potted plant to that cupcake".

 

[The Predaking]

Which is why I think reintroducing GI JOE in the TF films would be a great idea. They have these special weapons/gear/vehicles and they can actually help the autobots fight the Decepticons. Heck, they might even upgrade some of the more peaceful Autobots into combat capable warriors.

 

[lastmaximal]

I feel that kind of undermines the Transformers themselves, who are supposed to be this super (well, reasonably) advanced race. I can buy into humans being able to keep up, but not the Cybertronians particularly needing their help.

Unless it's to fight another alien threat (a Cybertronian colony offshoot maybe), and the humans somehow have an element or mineral that works better as a power source or ammunition against them, and it's kept a secret from the Cybertronians (and the onscreen Joes) until the climax that it's being harvested from a barely-alive ancient NBE who's been kept in cloaked stasis. This does retread a lot of old plot devices, but it ticks a lot of those boxes and creates useful story conflict.

 

[Blot]

And, let's face it. G.I. Joe isn't exactly of mainstream popularity anymore. It's really only adults who remember the ARAH cartoons from Sunbow and DiC that still care about it.

And even this overlooks that for the longest time the Joe fans loathed the Sunbow and (especially) DiC cartoons and only worshiped at the altar of Larry Hama's comic run.

 

[lastmaximal]

Yup. Again, counterproductive.

It says a lot that those comics (and Devil's Due and IDW) have been the most consistent available/performing media for the brand since its heyday. Aside from how comics as a genre/commodity is also struggling, that suggests the brand's fortunes are tied to a specific demographic -- one is just not big, broad, or profitable enough to sustain the brand to the level that Hasbro would probably aspire to.

 

[Cybersnark]

I still think the best possible approach to a modern G.I. Joe line was Renegades; a crack underground band of heroes up against the sinister evil CEOs, corrupt politicians, crooked cops, and well-intentioned-but-misinformed military. Turn the villains into thinly-veiled allegories of whatever the hug Musky or Bezos or the GOP are doing this week, just somehow less cartoonishly evil and inept.

Transformers-wise, I tend to imagine NEST more as a support/backup organization; they're the political attaches and ground crew who help repair/maintain/house the fighting robots (much like an anime, except that the TFs are both mecha and pilot in one). Give them a secret base like NERV HQ and let them offer commentary while the TFs are fighting.

 

[Sabrblade]

I feel like the biggest hindrance to Renegades being a success was how a lot of people just couldn't get past the premise of it being "A ripoff of the A-Team".

Whenever I tried to describe the show to anyone who hadn't seen it, that was always the first thing they called it.

 

[lastmaximal]

It was a nice angle that worked for the show. But I did hear that a lot, mostly from people who would then claim they WANTED to like the show but somehow couldn't get past the fact that the central conflict (gasp) had been used elsewhere before. Idk if it's a media literacy issue or just a need to feel superior by way of "I've seen this before". Either way, counterproductive.

(I never really cared, but from the outset, my problem was I had very minimal attachment to these characters as introduced and had no real investment in them clearing their name.)

I think the villainy would have to be less... white-collar, although boy I'd love to see Roadblock bust up some union-busting morons.

I like the idea of different groups whose backgrounds lend themselves well to lighter, fun stuff. Maybe this skews younger, but I want to get as far away from "this platoon shoots that platoon" as possible. No soldiers, no terrorists, none of that.

(This is lightly informed by my minimal awareness of Rescue Bots.) Focus on rescues and adventure/exploration. Make GI Joe or whatever the group's name is (because branding aside that's baggage now too) a laboratory-supported team that tests equipment. Fire suppressant gels, stuff for digging through rubble and finding survivors, flood control, etc.

A later season can have some members get funded or hired by an eccentric who wants to find hidden ancient artifacts. They can run into rival treasure hunters, an Indy expy, corrupt capitalists, etc as they go through the usual jungle/desert/ocean/space whatever locations.

And then it turns out the rescue/testing lab and whatever thing was just a front for an international organization that was working on bringing (back?) an elite team of heroes to stop an upcoming zombie (or whatever) outbreak...

 

[Lobjob]

I mean, I wouldn't hate any of the retreading, if done right.

Already, if only a few things we changed we'd have-

NEST as GI Joe

Dylan Gould and his entire conspiracy could be a version of Extensive Enterprises and an extension of Cobra itself.

Cemetery Wind could be an insurgent branch of Cobra within the government.

KSI could be MARS Industries profiting off of Transformers tech.

Like, I wish this would have been anyone's thought in 2007 but here we are.

 

[lastmaximal]

This is one thing I'm not a fan of with shared universes and crossovers; they kind of operate in the opposite direction of worldbuilding because things "need" to overlap.

Transformers movie worldbuilding is a mess despite Barber's very-missed efforts, of course, but I like that KSI exists and is not MARS (even if the TF movies kind of squandered the worldbuilding opportunity anyway), and so on.

But yeah, with crossovers, that'd be redundant, and so this company has to be that company. Every analogous reporter that isn't Hector Ramirez will get a complaint. And so on.

 

[Lobjob]

This is one thing I'm not a fan of with shared universes and crossovers; they kind of operate in the opposite direction of worldbuilding because things "need" to overlap.

Transformers movie worldbuilding is a mess despite Barber's very-missed efforts, of course, but I like that KSI exists and is not MARS (even if the TF movies kind of squandered the worldbuilding opportunity anyway), and so on.

But yeah, with crossovers, that'd be redundant, and so this company has to be that company. Every analogous reporter that isn't Hector Ramirez will get a complaint. And so on.

Like, Transformers doesn't need GI Joe, but if these things would have happened, Transformers would have at least dragged GI Joe with it in to the lime light.

 

[Sabrblade]

Transformers doesn't need GI Joe

And therein lies the root of it all, the very core reason as to why the crossovers between these two have always felt lopsided instead of equally balanced.

 

[lastmaximal]

Like, Transformers doesn't need GI Joe, but if these things would have happened, Transformers would have at least dragged GI Joe with it in to the lime light.

Only if it turned into a full-blown crossover, which the Joe brand sadly didn't merit then and doesn't merit now. It's the sort of thing that only works as an Easter egg, because I'd much rather have Cemetery Wind be "the machine of a vengeful government agent who now has an axe to grind" than "this is how we shoehorn GI Joe into this".

Attaching GI Joe to Transformers in the last few decades is like your slovenly, unappealing roommate calling in a favor and insisting you bring them along to a party that you (not they) were invited to. It's entirely for their benefit, not yours, and everyone's going to see through it anyway.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

Honestly, we might all be overthinking it.

Maybe all that needs to happen is a TF movie where they turn into Joe vehicles instead of their normal alt-modes. Replace the human characters with Joes and call it a day.

It honestly can't be any worse than Age of Extinction.