Polygon sat down with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to talk a bit about the past and the future of the Transformers Live Action Movie Franchise.
Q: Was Bumblebee a bit of a gamble? Did it pay off? It seemed successful, but maybe modestly so.
A: I rarely criticize the marketing campaigns because it is what it is, but it truly had an abysmal marketing campaign. They were trying to sell it too soft and so it became like we were selling an animated movie or something. But the result of it was that the movie is really loved. It re-engaged the audience in a very different way and was very successful in that. I think from a financial point of view, you’re right, it was a modest success. But for the franchise, it was a big success. It reminded the audience of their sort of elemental connection to these metal beings and why we love them and why we care about their personality. So I think on that level, it was a smashing success. The best measure is we got to go on ahead and make another Transformers movie.
Q: You recently announced Transformers: Rise of the Beasts — how will that continue the thinking from Bumblebee or perhaps rethink the franchise?
A: I’ll say this: The first Transformers movie and the Bumblebee movie both got into that sense of wonder and that first connection between man and machine. So we’re hoping to replicate, in many ways, what we did in Transformers 1, which was tell a very emotion-driven story with big, wild experience. Bumblebee reminded us of our roots, in a sense.
You can check out the full interview at Polygon.
Shin-Gouki
Yeah, it's sadly a different era
Shin Densetsu
Doubtful, we’re not in with Hasbro the way the you guys were. Some of you guys left but likewise for some of the old Hasbro team you were in contact with.
Bumblethumper
Agree.
Well, I'm good where toys are concerned. I have no objection if they decide to move on. There's maybe a few oddball characters they could still do, and maybe a few that could still be improved upon, but I have all I really need and I'm fine with it. I don't care if they spend the next 5 years updating Beast Machines, Car Robots, and Armada. I can sit that one out, but if the figures were really good, I'd probably buy some.
The Bumblebee movie showed how the 1980s TF aesthetic can translate for a movie, and it would be a shame if all that promise and potential was just abandoned. It worked brilliantly, it looked appealing and refreshing. What is so wrong with a whole movie with a full lineup of TF characters like that? Just do it and then we can move on and put all of this antagonism behind us.
Some say: what about other segments of the franchise? Well, who's been waiting the longest? What's the logical place to start? Get G1 right and then you can branch out.
TheSoundwave
There's a happy middle ground of honoring the roots of the brand and modernizing things, and then there's just including stuff from the '80s cartoon for fan appeasement, even if it makes no sense. As much as I've been defending new approaches, I'm honestly not against G1 faithfulness where it works. I'm all for getting Optimus' personality right and making Bumblebee a small hatchback and whatnot. But I am against blatant fanservice just for the sake of it.
Honestly, a green and purple Devastator in live-action would just look stupid. Personally, I think it looked stupid in the cartoon. It always felt like a big Incredible Hulk ripoff, right down to his way of speaking. It was fine within the corny tone of the show, but we don't ever need to see that in live-action. The more realistically colored construction vehicles in ROTF was a great modernization, and I personally liked the more animalistic design…it actually fit the character's personality. I do think there's a better middle ground to be found (I wouldn't be opposed to a slightly more humanoid stance or one of those green cement mixers being used as a component…and I'd definitely like to see him less cluttery), but Devastator is a character that desperately needs to be modernized in any live-action incarnation.
And as I've said several times, the particular type of altmode these characters turn into doesn't matter. It's silly to get hung up on brands and badges and makes and models. It's silly to put these characters in such limited boxes, based on decisions toy designers made before Transformers was even Transformers. What matters is picking something that suits the character's personalities. Does this Porsche 911 fit Mirage? It's fine if you don't think so, but I personally feel it suits him fine. Who cares if it looks like Jazz?
Nova Maximus
Well we should do what the Energon and the Armada Optimus designs did, except apply the right names to the characters cough cough Downshit cough cough.
octobotimus
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Autobot Burnout
Ironic, given Energon actually has largely G1 based designs as it was also simultaneously the franchise's 20th anniversary.
Nova Maximus
The obvious answer is to use live action Energon designs.
That way nobody's happy aside from me that is
octobotimus
Ironically I’m tired of seeing G1 in toys but want to see a form of it on screen.
Granted, I’m tired of both sides at this point. People who think G1 is the end all be all, and those that claim 10 years of bayverse is somehow not enough and that everything else is “Geewun”.
AOEGalvatronRox
Yes, laughing at someone claiming that they are underserved when they have an entire brand catering to them is the same as insulting someone's intelligence. I don't care, though. I hope you have a good day, and stop being so angry about a movie not being a 1:1 recreation of a cartoon at some point.
Autobot Burnout
That just falls back to how this film just doesn't seem to have an idea of where it wants to go in terms of theme. We have a slavish G1 Prime, updated to a degree but it's still a big red cab-over. A lot of the hype for ROTB is that it will play closer to the source material than the bay films, but the Porsche being Mirage is just kind of weird.
Jazz is the popular one people want because, y'know, he's one of the original Ark crew and people want him done right. Even if it was Nightbeat since people keep trying to use that character as an argument, that would still be closer to the source material than Mirage. I mean, hell, make him a 1970s Plymouth Superbird/Dodge Charger Daytona (basically variants of the same car), which was literally a street legal racecar that existed solely to get the design into NASCAR for Richard Petty, and was only even sold as a retail car due to a rule in NASCAR where all cars had to be available as retail production models. That would easily fulfill the idea of keeping in spirit with the original alt. mode of Mirage while also not cribbing on another character's potential alt. mode out of sheer ignorance.
How's that inconsistency been for the past, oh, six years with Hasbro riding the G1 train into nigh oblivion? The only really consistent thing about Transformers had been the need to reboot every so often to refresh the brand and that went out the window with Age of Excrement in 2014 when they decided not to reboot. Which is around the same time Hasbro decided to try the aligned continuity that was designed to END all this inconsistency within the brand to a certain degree. It failed, obviously, but then Hasbro just went back right to G1 where they've stayed ever since.
Honestly? I think the period of inconsistency within the brand is over and sooner or later it's just going to be one shared style across all forms of the brand, and given it's still selling nearly 40 years later, it's going to be G1 based. I personally don't like that this is happening but Hasbro's just too chickenshit to take a chance on anything that isn't already proven these days – ROTB isn't even going to get a toyline until the year after the movie comes out, maybe not even then if the movie fails.
WolverineDragon
Aww he looks like a puppy! I want to pet him!
MisterKenneth
Yeah, the original concept designs for the movies were weird.
Bumblebee was, and still is, a really weird one for me.
Why does that make me think of a dog?
WishfulThinking
Yes, and laughing at others people's wants and being dismissive and patronizing is better? If you can't take it, don't deal it.
Nova Maximus
I'm not dealing with anything.
I'm really excited to see what Porsche Mirage looks like.
WishfulThinking
Deal with it, like I have for six movies.
Plus, the director would do a yellow sports car for Hot Shot because of Bee. So blue would be the next choice, as he was in Cybertron.
Nova Maximus
That just sounds boring as fuck to just keep it all the same.
Plus if we are, than Hot Shot would be yellow, and Prime would have yellow eyes (which that one I'm all for).
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AOEGalvatronRox
Oh yes. My intelligence deserves to be insulted because I don’t believe a robot that transforms into a Porsche needs to be named Jazz or a robot that transforms into a Nissan Z needs to be called Smokescreen. Great logic there.
I’d be more inclined to agree that “This car should be this character like it was in the beginning” if this brand had been consistent with itself for the last 35 years. If anything, this brand has been completely inconsistent with just about every iteration. There’s no written rule that indicates that a Porsche must be Jazz. Transformers fans working themselves into a tizzy because the live action films aren’t consistent with G1 is, while par for the course, hilarious. It just gets pathetic when you feel the need to insult people because they don’t agree with you. Says more about you, if anything.
WishfulThinking
Only because you can't comprehend that all we're asking is that, if you have a Porsche, call him Jazz. If you have a Nissan Z, call him Bluestreak or Smokescreen. If you have Devastator in your script, consider a group of green construction vehicles that form a humanoid looking giant robot. And avoid making everyone look like twirling wads of scrap metal – make them look like their canonical selves.
And sure, if you have Hot Shot, make him a blue sports car. If you can't do Tracks, Hot Shot is fine (Cybertron). Ultra Magnus as a giant missile truck is fine too, if they want to homage Animated. There's PLENTY to pull from beyond G1, although I'd love for the focus to be on G1 if possible. But what's been done for the Bay movies was pretty tragic – all in the name of "we can't make that because people won't watch that", which is bullshit.
AOEGalvatronRox
Insulting someone’s intelligence because they don’t agree with you? Gee, how original lmao. Funny thing is nobody will say anything. But lord knows if I decided to call you a “40-something-year-old geewunner” the members on this website would get so mad, they’d give themselves aneurysms.
Also, cool to come back and see who’s liked WishfulThinking’s comment. One member that liked it literally got all up in their feels a few months ago when I called older fans “40-something-year-old nerds”. Guess they only spew their “Stop being divisive and entitled” bullshit when a Bay fan gets out of line.