There has been a lot of talks of reboots by fans, but the truth is Paramount can never commit to that. While the prequel movies like Bumblebee and the upcoming Rise of the Beasts won't directly reference the later (chronologically wise) films aside from Bumblebee's radio voice, face and alt mode choice, they are still part of this broader live action franchise, which has its die hard fans. Steve Caple Jr., the film's director, is very aware of this but and as a G1 fan he will be making this new movie his own thing while still being within the very loose and often contradictory chronology that fans call the Bayverse. The interview below from
comicbook.com gives you a sense of how he will be meshing his movie within all this. It talks mainly of Optimus Prime's character and it is our best look yet at how Paramount is juggling this whole franchise and bringing in more classic G1 elements without committing to a full on reboot.
"The main hero is Optimus, as we all know and love," Caple said. "We're bringing Prime back, paying direct homage to Generation One. I care so much about this character that I really wanted to dive into Transformers, and I saw a Bumblebee and I was like, okay, Bumblebee had his own movie, but I want to discover more about Optimus Prime, dig underneath the surface, get underneath the metal, if you would, and like explore who he is and his experience here on earth, you know?"
"I know everyone has been asking like crazy, are we going, G1, are we going to G1?" Caple continued. "The answer is, yes, we are going to G1, the Prime."
The movie takes place about a decade before Michael Bay's Transformers -- and Caple plans to use that as an opportunity to explore a kind of "Year One" approach to Optimus Prime, and give fans a sense of how he became a great leader.
"It's 1994, and in a way, both the animated series and the Bay films treat Optimus the same in the sense of who he is as a leader, what is his drive?" Caple said. "All those things. What we've done is we're bringing it back to where you see how he becomes, what you're familiar with. And that's big new news."
And, yes, it isn't just a question of him spending 10 years on Earth. There's more to it than that, and fans will get to see what his "emotional" tie is to the planet, according to the director.
"When you say got to where he is, you mean 'we need to protect these earthlings and this biological planet,'" Caple explained. "The way to look at it is he's new to earth and he doesn't have a connection to earth the way we met him in the Bay films and the way we met him in the animated series where he's already a protector of Earth. And so in this film, it's forming, why does he have a link to humanity? And why does he have a link to earth? And that's emotional...At the beginning of Bumblebee, we showed, he escaped from Cybertron his home planet. And so in a sense, he's he literally is like an ex-pat here, right? He's landed. He's, he's an alien and he's never been here before. And so it allows us to get underneath say the stoicism of what we're traditionally presented in an Optimus."
Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 6:04 am
The Beetle was the car 
(this is a joke)
