The more I think about the whole "reboot or not" debate surrounding Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts, and this movie, the more I begin to realize that all these post-TLK movies seem willing to mainly/only keep continuity with the 2007 movie, but none of the sequels.
Bumblebee threw out TLK's claim of Bee having been on Earth since World War II and many other Transformers having come during various points in history, but still uses Sector Seven, a younger Agent Simmons, purposely omits Megatron from the opening sequence on Cybertron (since he'd be frozen inside Hoover Dam on Earth during that time), and ends with Bumblebee scanning a pristine version of the old Camaro he'd have at the beginning of the 2007 film.
Rise of the Beasts ignored TLK's depiction of Unicron as being within the Earth by instead opting for the more traditional appearance of him as a massive monster planet separate from Earth (though, the movie also subtly hinted that the Maximals and Terrorcons came from the future, meaning ROTB Unicron did as well, but I digress), but also took steps to ensure that the greater world at large remained oblivious to the existence of the Transformers per the initial status quo of the 2007 movie. Creator comments also described Optimus's character arc in this movie as being meant to show how he becomes the person that he is in the 2007 movie.
Now, while those two movies seemed to have only disregarded the messy movie that was TLK (and Steven Caple Jr. even admitted that he didn't care for either it or AOE), going by what we can see in the trailer for TF One, it seems very possible that it may end up ignoring the events of both ROTF and DOTM as well. TF One seems to be drawing heavily from the backstory created for the Aligned continuity, which took some aspects from the 2007 movie's backstory, but greatly contradicted what both ROTF and DOTM added to said first movie's backstory.
So it seems that what we have here is less of a hard reboot like so many have been insisting, and more of a case of the 2007 movie occupying multiple expanded universes consisting of different movies. A "sequel continuity" (2007 plus ROTF, DOTM, AOE, and TLK) and a "prequel continuity" (2007 plus BB, ROTB, and One), if you will. This is basically like how the Beast Wars cartoon occupies multiple expanded universes of its own (the BotCon one, the Dreamwave one, the 2006 IDW one, the Japanese G1 one, and the Wings Universe), or like how the Marvel G1 comics are followed by the Marvel G2 comics in one universe, followed by the Fun Pub Classics fiction in another universe, and followed by Regeneration One (and preceded by both Transformers '84 and Secrets & Lies) in yet another universe.
Is all of this complicated, confusing, and convoluted? Yeah. But that's what happens when different creators all want to play in the same sandbox, but not with each other. It happens. A lot.
Bumblebee threw out TLK's claim of Bee having been on Earth since World War II and many other Transformers having come during various points in history, but still uses Sector Seven, a younger Agent Simmons, purposely omits Megatron from the opening sequence on Cybertron (since he'd be frozen inside Hoover Dam on Earth during that time), and ends with Bumblebee scanning a pristine version of the old Camaro he'd have at the beginning of the 2007 film.
Rise of the Beasts ignored TLK's depiction of Unicron as being within the Earth by instead opting for the more traditional appearance of him as a massive monster planet separate from Earth (though, the movie also subtly hinted that the Maximals and Terrorcons came from the future, meaning ROTB Unicron did as well, but I digress), but also took steps to ensure that the greater world at large remained oblivious to the existence of the Transformers per the initial status quo of the 2007 movie. Creator comments also described Optimus's character arc in this movie as being meant to show how he becomes the person that he is in the 2007 movie.
Now, while those two movies seemed to have only disregarded the messy movie that was TLK (and Steven Caple Jr. even admitted that he didn't care for either it or AOE), going by what we can see in the trailer for TF One, it seems very possible that it may end up ignoring the events of both ROTF and DOTM as well. TF One seems to be drawing heavily from the backstory created for the Aligned continuity, which took some aspects from the 2007 movie's backstory, but greatly contradicted what both ROTF and DOTM added to said first movie's backstory.
- Namely, the TF One trailer shows what look to be the corpses of the Thirteen, with D-16 giving particular attention to what looks to be the dead body of Megatronus, The Fallen. Whereas ROTF was all about The Fallen's survival into the present day and being the living mentor of Megatron. The Thirteen themselves are also an issue since there were only Seven Primes in ROTF.
- The Aligned backstory also had Optimus acquiring the Matrix of Leadership in the distant past on Cybertron long before he ever first came to Earth, whereas ROTF had him first acquire the Matrix on Earth in the 21st century, after it had been hidden away on the planet within the Tomb of the Primes since ancient times. And sure enough, we see a glimpse of Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime, Matrix and all, in this trailer.
- And then there's Sentinel Prime, who appears to the be blue guy being tortured by a Quintesson in the trailer. In the Aligned backstory, he died on Cybertron during this past era. If he dies in this movie, too, then that goes against DOTM saying he departed Cybertron aboard a spacecraft named the Ark, crash-landed on Earth's moon in 1961, and was reawakened on Earth by Optimus Prime in the 21st century (and had also made a deal with Megatron regarding the conquest of Earth).
So it seems that what we have here is less of a hard reboot like so many have been insisting, and more of a case of the 2007 movie occupying multiple expanded universes consisting of different movies. A "sequel continuity" (2007 plus ROTF, DOTM, AOE, and TLK) and a "prequel continuity" (2007 plus BB, ROTB, and One), if you will. This is basically like how the Beast Wars cartoon occupies multiple expanded universes of its own (the BotCon one, the Dreamwave one, the 2006 IDW one, the Japanese G1 one, and the Wings Universe), or like how the Marvel G1 comics are followed by the Marvel G2 comics in one universe, followed by the Fun Pub Classics fiction in another universe, and followed by Regeneration One (and preceded by both Transformers '84 and Secrets & Lies) in yet another universe.
Is all of this complicated, confusing, and convoluted? Yeah. But that's what happens when different creators all want to play in the same sandbox, but not with each other. It happens. A lot.
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