Producer Lorenzo di Bonavetura once again sat down with Metro to talk a bit about Transformers: Bumblebee.
This time, he chose to dissect the mid-credit scene from the latest Travis Knight movie.
Due to the heavy spoiler nature of the subject, we have decided to keep the information after the jump.
Spoilers!
The producer explained that the movie is a prequel and the visiting Autobots went back to Cybertron to come back in Transformers 2007. The explanation also confirmed the fact that the 7 pods seen during the mid-credit screen are Autobots.
“Someone described Bumblebee to me as, ‘99% prequel, 1% not’,” Di Bonaventura tells Metro. “I was like, ‘What was the 1%?’ He said, ‘It is the scene where Optimus and all the other guys come to Earth at the end.’”
“I was like, ‘That doesn’t contradict anything we have said before. Who is to say they haven’t been around Robots In Disguise since then.’”
But while this sequence was always bound to cause a little controversy, Di Bonaventura was adamant that it be included for a very important reason.
“That scene was always imagined but in many different versions. We didn’t do that scene until we’d shot the movie. Because we felt the movie was going to dictate that scene a little bit. What happened is that you got to see Haliee return to her family. Bumblebee needs to return to his family. Otherwise what happened to poor Bumblebee? That was our thinking.”
“Plus Optimus said we are going to go to Earth. We are gonna regroup. And then we are gonna go back. In our minds they went back out. It had nothing to do with the other films, and was completely about the emotional journey of Bumblebee.”
TommyHawk
Don't need few years, Hasbro officially declared it a reboot.
Transformers Brand Info From New York Toy Fair 2019 Fan Media Panel #hasbrotoyfair – Transformers News – TFW2005
Again back to my point:
Fact 1: Bonaventura said its a prequel
Fact 2: Bonaventura is also sometimes full of shit.
Olivus Prime
This goes for most producers in film history. Of course they claim to be experts on the subject matter, as they are behind the film's financing and production and need to create an image of authority, when everyone knows that they have next to no clue about the story, themes or continuity.
I advise people to look up Kevin Smith's story of working with producer Jon Peters on Superman Lives. Peters claimed to be a massive fan of the character, but in reality knew next to nothing about Superman and made many suggestions that contradicted the character's ethos. Same when he was producing Batman.
It's nothing new, the bigger concern should always be if the people writing and directing the film know what they're on about.
peteynorth
And that'd be fine, were he presenting himself as you're presenting him. But from day one (like, 2005/6) this guy has presented himself as a subject matter expert, going out of his way to present himself as a gatekeeper to all things Transformers, and has been an insulting asshole in doing so. And it's not some answered interview question where he gets a detail wrong, it's him presenting some (completely invented) conversation he had with a friend to contradict all this nonsense about the latest TF movie not locking in perfectly with the prior movies. We don't expect him to be an expert on this stuff until he puts himself out there as an expert on this stuff in a condescending way. And when someone is condescending AND wrong, then yeah, it's fair game, they deserve to be torn a new one.
Olivus Prime
Salesman promotes his film inaccurately because he isn't a storyteller -> Said salesman is the worst human being ever and is damaging the future of the franchise. Quite a jump in logic there guys.
Bonaventura is a producer, he exists to get the film made and has/needs little grasp of the story. Don't bother aggravating yourselves by taking what he says so seriously.
Music
It's from a promo magazine for the 2018 Brand Licensing Europe Expo.
Rob
I try to be considerate to other people’s taste, but that is just haunting. His face is so ugly in the Bay designs.
Daimao
Weird! What is this from?
Galvatross
Yeah, I heard about that. I can see both the pro-reboot and pro-prequel opinions. I don't think it's definitely been confirmed either way yet.
Onilink
In this case… do not feed the troll, he's doing this on purpose
Music
An abomination is an understatement.
Now, this is what I would call a VW Bee with the Bayverse aesthetic (and yes, this is official). This is definitely what we would have gotten or something similar if Knight had not come on board.
View attachment 28170494
Darth Badguy
Apparently the test screening cut was much more connected to the earlier movies, with no cybertron scenes & a frozen (but G1 style) Megatron in Hoover dam.
Differences Between The Test Screening And The Final Version Of Transformers: Bumblebee – Transformers News – TFW2005
The Mandalorian culture in the novels is very different from what George Lucas did with them in the cgi Clone Wars show. I guess you could say the RC mandos were subcultures or on other planets, something like that. It’s been a long time but I don’t think they match up too well. Which is fine! It’s hard to make these things mesh perfectly.
Autobot Burnout
And we have seen bayverse bee with kibble.
It was an abomination.
Starscream Gaga
That’s fine and all to say, but it only takes a glance at the two Bumblebee designs to see the drastic change in aesthetic, far beyond “Bayverse Bee with VW kibble”.
View attachment 28170418 View attachment 28170419
Shin Densetsu
@Music is right
Rated X
I guess were gonna have to agree to disagree. My definition of aesthetic is definitely not yours. I see a bug face, a hood chest instead of a roof chest, and plenty of car pannels on his arms and legs that were not present on any incarnation of G1 bee. The car door wings were the icing on the cake which technically did make the movie when he scanned a military jeep. This is total Bayverse. Whats ironic is they copied his Cybertronian G1 cartoon "saucer" mode pretty damn good so its not like they didnt see what G1 Bee looked like in the cartoon. Maybe they wanted to give him an overhaul similar to Prime. But that idea was shot down most likely because it is a prequel.
Music
You are confusing aesthetic with the general look. The general look-wise, yes, the parts are in similar places aside from the wings. But aesthetically, they are completely different. Knightverse Bee uses larger pieces throughout the body whereas Bayverse Bee usings smaller intricate parts. Knightverse Bee uses a plate of armor for everything. Bayverse Bee goes for the exposed skeleton-look where you can see some of the internal skeleton and the car parts simply act as an armor. Here, you can't really see the skeleton as it's completely shielded by a mix of Cybertronic parts and car parts.
Rated X
Are you serious ? There is no "Knightverse" Bumblebee. Just a Bayverse Bumblebee with VW kibble. Folding his wings back does not hide his Bay aesthetic.
Prime got a complete makeover in "Knightverse" to resemble the likeness of his G1 counterpart:
View attachment 28170250
Bumblebee on the other hand, didnt:
View attachment 28170227
About the only similarity in aesthetic here is he is yellow. But you cant blame Travis Knight for not completely overhauling the aesthetic of the star character. Especially since this film is a prequel offically.
peteynorth
OK, first of all I’m going to call bullshit on the “99% prequel, 1% reboot” conversation – di Bonaventura never had any conversation with anyone where these percentages were used in regards to this topic, this was all just some made up pretext for him to spin this. And yes, he ignored the landfill of other non-fitting pieces that were flat out contradictions and pulled one tiny piece of rubble from the pile that’s a gray area and stated that this tiny piece of rubble was ALL that was causing confusion. And yes, this is a man that has been, at best a road block to good things, and at worst the biggest albatross in the attempt to get quality product out of the franchise. Buuuuuuttttt, frankly, it wouldn’t be a TF sequel/prequel without contradictions to prior movies; that’s as big a component of the TV movieverse as transforming robots.
And frankly, it is a prequel…in much the same way as 2006’s ‘Superman Returns’ is a sequel in the ‘Donnerverse’. You stand back far enough and not give a shit, it fits well enough. The characters are kinda the same, relationships are kinda similar, it’s enough where you can go with it, you just have to suspend memory as well as disbelief for a sizable chunk of it, and completely pretend the prior two movies didn’t happen.
VortexPrime
To be honest, I understand his frustration
TFXProtector
I'm not trying to insult him. I'm pointing out facts. He's even stated his opinion is more important than ours and he chooses this over that, etc. He admittedly loves garbage stuff and has put us down because we don't. In various threads. I'm not joking. He's done it to people over at Seibertron as well.
He's more than entitled to his opinion, much like you and I are entitled to ours, but he's willingly missing the point and being closeminded on purpose. You can't have a discussion with someone like that, but you can counter their comments every chance you get so you can try and stem the flow of ignorance.
EDIT: I'd like to add one more thing… I don't think he's stupid at all. I think his actions and choices are because he actively seeks out the worst of the worst. He, himself, is far from stupid. He's clearly intelligent but chooses dumb stuff because it entertains him. That's great to a point, but he acts like his way is the best way in a lot of posts and it isn't. It bothers me that a clearly intelligent man chooses to annoy because he can.
He could make great strides.