"Hey, would you like to join our secret government group? We cattle prod your best friend if we ever see something that looks like them. Did it back in the 80s, in fact, hope to do it again sometime soon, maybe 2007 or so. What'ya say, sound fun?"
Transformers: One - New Animated Prequel coming September 20th, 2024 - New Toy Official Images!
- Thread starter Undead Scottsman
- Start date
it's funny how people are so interested in Sector 7 given the films dropped them before the first movie even hit the credits.
Probably becuase they are one of the most prominent organizations for dealing with extra terrestial stuff in the francise. And some were alot more active, but Sector 7 is the one that got related toys. You could pretty much have a whole faction of S7 bots., even if they aren't actually part of that faction. Though I feel the ultimate fate of S7 is something like NEST. Since S7 serves the idea that aliens are potentiall hostile and should be dealt with contained, which eventually leads into them learning that not all of them are and then we get something like NEST or EDC or something. Which gives the chance to have an organization like GIJoe, without actually needing GIJoe.
For me it comes down to a frustration with how inconsistent the franchise as a whole is at building its own mythology. Transformers is kind of unique in that it reinvents itself totally each time. Which isn't bad per se but it has its drawbacks.
Like you have GHOST, Sector 7, whoever Agent Fowler worked for, the EDC, SkyWatch, even GI Joe in certain continuities... and it's like why have all these throwaway orgs that exist for one isolated continuity before being memory hole'd when the next series comes out when you could use something like Sector 7 a bit more consistency and flesh out the overall Transformers mythos and world building just a bit more?
What's even funnier is that the one semi-mainstream TF series that actually used Sector Seven outside of the movieverse was, of all things, the BotBots cartoon.
Unit:E (A.K.A. Rik Alvarez's baby that barely was)
It's this for me. You could have a whole shelf just for bots with S7 markings. And even if it were just Stockade and Landmine, they represent two totally different sides of what Sector 7 does. Their alt modes cover everyday field work, and "Oh my God the N.B.E.s are loose" work. That's fun.
NEST is fun for the same reason. Other organizations are not.
Everything has its limits and exceptions.
For instance, I don't think we'd make it to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 with Idris Elba as Knuckles and Keanu Reeves as Shadow if they'd just gone ahead as originally planned.
That said... I don't think it was just fans dumping on Sonic's look, either.
But also, I think we missed out on a cult classic terrible movie with that other Sonic.
I still haven't seen Age of Extinction, Last Knight, or Rise of the Beasts. Am I not fan enough for the Transformers fandom?
I'm a pretty big fan, and I have to admit that I stopped seeing the Bay movies after Age of Extinction. I haven't seen The Last Knight to this day. We all have our breaking points.
Nah, we still got Rescue Rangers.
I did enjoy that bit.
Clearly Sonic has the most frightening fandom. I can't think of anyone else that's gotten a studio to just unconditionally surrender like that.
I was going to say "Well, we still have Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter," but then I saw you said "terrible," so...
Transformers One’s underperformance might have been the straw that broke the camel’s (or Cocks’) back. Via Bloomberg (Paywalled, I’m including a link to ResetEra’s forum with a number of excerpts), Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has announced that Hasbro will no longer co-finance films based on their properties.
For context: After The Last Knight’s box office failure (combined with several other major Paramount projects that year like Ghost in the Shell), Paramount lost financing from Chinese investors. Hasbro stepped up and “put their money where there mouth was” and started to help finance films based on their properties. While critical reception (on the whole) improved dramatically, the financial response continued to decline. Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts were only modest successes, while Transformers One dramatically under performed. Snake Eyes and Dungeons and Dragons were outright bombs.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN FILMS BASED ON HASBRO’S PROPERTIES WILL STOP! It just means that it will be up to the film companies to finance the films, as it was in the late-2000s. This would probably be most problematic for films like Transformers and GI Joe, whose sci-fi and action foundations generally result in more expensive films.
Meanwhile, Cocks’ continues to earmark $100-150 million per year for game development, with a particular focus on Exodus, a sci-fi adventure title headed by former BioWare veterans. There is another Dungeons and Dragons game in development while the GI Joe action/adventure game continues preproduction. The goal seems to be to release 1-2 games per year by 2026 (though, it is not specified WHAT kind of games Hasbro plans to have out).
For context: After The Last Knight’s box office failure (combined with several other major Paramount projects that year like Ghost in the Shell), Paramount lost financing from Chinese investors. Hasbro stepped up and “put their money where there mouth was” and started to help finance films based on their properties. While critical reception (on the whole) improved dramatically, the financial response continued to decline. Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts were only modest successes, while Transformers One dramatically under performed. Snake Eyes and Dungeons and Dragons were outright bombs.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN FILMS BASED ON HASBRO’S PROPERTIES WILL STOP! It just means that it will be up to the film companies to finance the films, as it was in the late-2000s. This would probably be most problematic for films like Transformers and GI Joe, whose sci-fi and action foundations generally result in more expensive films.
Meanwhile, Cocks’ continues to earmark $100-150 million per year for game development, with a particular focus on Exodus, a sci-fi adventure title headed by former BioWare veterans. There is another Dungeons and Dragons game in development while the GI Joe action/adventure game continues preproduction. The goal seems to be to release 1-2 games per year by 2026 (though, it is not specified WHAT kind of games Hasbro plans to have out).
Welp, that sucks. I think it's just a symptom of society moving away from going to the movies in general, unfortunately, as TF: One and Dungeons and Dragons were both actually really good movies.
This sucks, but it's understandable. This isn't a "Hasbro's broke" or "Cocks has no idea what he's doing" story. These movies just aren't making money anymore even when they're good. It's absolutely the right call to pause and figure out where to go from here.
There should have been a pause between TLK and Bumblebee as well. We don't know whether the fault for these bad decisions lies more with Hasbro or Paramount, but it's hurting both companies and it's time to stop.