Transformers Live-Action Movies

Made sense to me.

[spoiler] Unicron is Earth. Ok. Anyone familiar with Transformers Prime has a pretty clear idea about why. Who is Unicron? Not much is explained about that besides that Unicron is “Cybertron’s ancient enemy”. Not much of an explanation, but it at least gives non TF fans an idea that Unicron = bad guy. Unicron is the reason Cybertronians keep arriving on Earth, because he acts like a magnet and they probably subconsciously feel like they’re going to the right place. Explains why the Original Primes were there in the B.C., explains why the All Spark landed there, and explained why the Ark landed on the Moon, it was already headed in that direction.

The Knights of Cybertron left Quintessa because she deceived them. For what reasons, we don’t know precisely, but they don’t take to being lied to. They arrived on Earth sometime before the middle ages but probably after the Fallen and the Original Primes were there. Quintessa/Quintus Prime has been forgotten by Cybertronian history and and the Fallen and his brothers were referred to as the “original” Primes probably because Cybertronians didn’t realize that Quintessa, Vector Prime, Solus Prime, or any of the others existed. It was always in doubt who they were created by, and Cybertronians thought of their origin though the All Spark, which was created Quintus Prime (however, not stated in the film).

It would stand to reason that the Quintissons (still assuming that’s who was seeding Earth in AoE) were created by Quintessa. They’re literally Quintis-sons. They might have been created to collect metals to bring back to Cybertron for Quintessa to use to create the Cybertronians. Quintessa might have hired Lockdown under the guise of the Quintessons as a race to bring here the Knights of Cybertron back to Cybertron, but Lockdown, being a ‘modern’ Cybertronian thought she meant the Knights Teminous, which Prime and Grimlock were a part of. Also unrelated to the Knights of Cybertron that were Quintessa’s body guards, but how would he know that?

After AoE, Prime shoots into space looking for his ‘Creators’, but ends up finding Quintessa. Lockdown didn’t exactly do what she wanted him to do, but she can brainwash Prime to retrieve the staff of Merlin, kill the Knights of Cybertron, and destroy Unicron. [/spoiler]

Not exactly all explained in the film, but seems perfectly logical to me.

I can’t agree with this. There were lots of stunning shots in TLK.

I’ll somewhat agree with this. As I’ve said above, it felt like two different movies smushed into one, and the pacing showed this.

This is very subjective. While I’ve never cared for the foul language used in the films (it’s a live-action Saturday morning cartoon, why are there cuss words in a film that’s supposed to be targeted to kids?), the writing seemed to be an upgrade from 2, 3, and 4. Anthony Hopkins’ character especially seemed to be very nuanced, and the performance reflected this.

Cogman was also a really fun character.

I realize some people just can’t stomach these films for whatever reason, maybe because of the fast pace that they seem to have. They throw a lot at people in a short amount of time, and it’s hard to catch everything sometimes. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing it again to see what I missed.

There are certainly more highlights for me than negatives. I enjoyed 95% of the film, with only a few things not sitting well with me. That said, I’m also excited to see what a non-Bay directed film would look like. It has been 10 years. Hopefully Bay keeps his promises this time around and only stays on as a produces while someone else directs. He can check off the designs of the robots to make sure everything fits in the franchise, but hopefully he does stay out of it for the most part. It’s time for a change up.

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[spoiler]And Unicron is a complete non-presence in the film that serves no purpose other than driving the MacGuffin. And even then, Unicron is treated like he was always needed to revitalize Cybertron. But Cybertron wasn’t destroyed when the Knights stole the staff and went to Earth, so what is the point of it? Why are there predictions of Cybertron draining Unicron when it has no need for his energy at that time? Magical foresight? It’s not explained at all.

And what’s the point of bringing Unicron into this? They barely explain, so you’d assume he’s thrown in for fanservice, but then he’s never used in any way, so he’s pointless to the fans as well. Who is this meant to please?![/spoiler]

[spoiler]The first movie’s 'Bots and 'Cons came to Earth for the Allspark. Unicron had nothing to do with it, and there’s no reason for the Allspark, a massive source of power and creation, to be drawn to Unicron, “Cybertron’s sworn enemy”. Especially if it’s Quintessa’s creation as you claim (which is a BS assumption in of itself but we’ll get to that later).

The Primes came to Earth because they were jumping around from solar system solar system blowing up suns. They didn’t go to Earth with any sort of purpose and desire beyond that so again, Unicron had nothing to do with it. Now, one might think this is setting up a retcon for The Fallen being influenced by Unicron, but that wouldn’t make any sense because he tries to destroy Earth, a.k.a. Unicron.

And the Ark? It went to Earth because of Megatron and Sentinel’s alliance and nothing else, and that in of itself didn’t make any sense because the Ark was lifelessly floating through space, and yet somehow managed to make its way to Earth and crash on the Moon. It couldn’t have been on purpose either, because Megatron would go on to describe that as an accident in DotM.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go, as you seem to be confused (I wonder why?): they never distinguished the Knights in AoE from the Knights in TLK. The movies treat them as the same group. They refer to Optimus as member of them in TLK. There is no “Knights Teminous”. Lockdown said “Knights’ Temenos”, which was the name of the room they were in. He wasn’t saying their name.

So now that we’ve established that, let’s get into the nitty gritty. The Knights supposedly served Quintessa, meaning they would have to predate the Primes. But Optimus and the Dinobots are referred to as members of their group, which makes no sense. And more than that, Lockdown was supposed to be hunting the Knights down, and he says he already captured them all, yet the Knights are alive and well at the bottom of the ocean in TLK. They’re not different groups, so don’t go trying that excuse again. The movie never so much as implied that. So this is all one big gaping plot inconsistency.

And why does the staff even exist. Its purpose is apparently to transfer power from Unicron to Cybertron, but again, Cybertron isn’t dead yet, nor does Quintessa have any reason to believe it will be dead at that time. Why does her means to kill Unicron involve such a convoluted series of events? And why would the Knights, who apparently oppose Quintessa’s plan (yet say Optimus betrayed their race when he serves her), take it to Unicron? And if Unicron’s their enemy, why would they not want to kill him, and instead befriend the natives?

And that’s another thing. Why and how do they arrive of Earth after the Primes when they predate them and went to Earth purposefully. Again, (say it with now) it does not make sense.

And no, there is no implication that the Quintessons exist or that they serve Quintessa. None of that is ever established in the movie. That “Quintis-sons” play on words exists because Quintessa is the name of the Quintessons’ homeworld in other stories. It has no bearing on the usage here. And yet, Quintessa is referred to as the creator of the Cybertronians and the one who seeded Earth. But why would she do that if she new it was Unicron? And why were the hands featured in AoE organic? Again, never explained, and none of it adds up.

And the Allspark? They never actually address that, at all, so you saying Quintessa created it is completely in your head. The film never explained that, and even if the Allspark were her creation, why would she leave it unattended on Cybertron during the Autobot-Decepticon war, and why would her own creation, one of life and creation, be drawn to Unicron? Even when you make crap up to cover up the film’s plot holes it makes no sense.

And let’s not forget how the Autobots in AoE already knew what seeding was and how it happened, and they know Lockdown, yet they don’t know they have Creators? They didn’t know who the Primes were either, yet Optimus was a member of the Knights that predate them. They never explain that either. It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.

Lockdown’s never mentioned in TLK so that’s mercifully free of contradictory BS.[/spoiler]

Quintessa is his Creator. The film never suggests otherwise. Not even the Knights, the group that called her “The Deceiver” denounce that.

None of it is logical!

It is all a self-contradictory retcon-filled mess. That is an objective fact. There is no getting around that.

You had to blatantly make crap up just to justify half the nonsense in this film, and you still failed to fix a lot of it. That really ought to say enough.

Having cuts every few seconds to keep the audience from getting to invested in what they’re watching isn’t exactly what I call good cinematography.

Bay even screwed up having a proper reveal shot of Dragonstorm in the prologue, one of the easiest things to pull off. He squandered the reveal shot and then, for the big cavalry scene, zooms out and completely downplays the scale of the supposedly epic battle. Screwing up on basic stuff like this is unacceptable. There is no excuse for being this sloppy, especially for a director who’s been in the business for almost 20 years.

He was an obvious stereotype of a Brit as an old Shakespeare-talking pipe-toting gentlemen (That’s not a Brit, that’s what my fellow dumb 'Muricans think a Brit is), with bits of swearing and “Duuude” thrown in for cheap humor.

That’s hardly what I’d call nuanced.

Gee, maybe because they’re overlong, sluggish, and try to cram in a million pointless characters that have no bearing on the action, but whenever someone objects to it it’s waved aside with “It’s a popcorn movie” even though these are attributes that are detrimental to a popcorn movie, all while the action is ruined by sloppy editing and a camera more concerned with the humans over the bots?

Might have something to do with that.

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On the topic of Unicron [spoiler] Cybertron was destroyed during the war, as per almost every Transformers anything, and further damaged by going through the space bridge in Dark of the Moon. It can be assumed that Quintessa figured that she could use what was left of Unicron’s energy to siphon Cybertron back to life and finish him off once and for all. Unicron wasn’t meant for that purpose, but how else are you going to fix a former planet-former (assuming Primus is Cybertron, which, given Unicron’s involvement, he most likely is)?

As for why Unicron is there, it’s obviously setting seeds for TF6. He’ll most likely be explained more in that film, but, yeah, they could have explained who Unicron was and why he could fix Cybertron a lot better. [/spoiler]

As for the Unicron magnet thing, other Transformers media has used that before as an excuse, and I’m not quite sure how to explain it. It’s just one of those silly sci-fi comic book things that doesn’t make much sense, but it is the canon explanation, as stated in the film.

As for the Knights [spoiler] I’m aware the film makes it look like the Knights of Cybertron from TLK are the same group from AoE, but as you stated, it doesn’t make sense. For it to make sense it would have to be two different groups. Of course, it could be possible that Prime, Grimlock, and co are decended from the originals, or possible replacements to the originals, and that’s why Lockdown was hired to capture them, since then they would be a part of the same group.

Everywhere I’ve looked I and others have believed that Temenos was the name of the Knight Group and not the room. When Lockdown said “Welcome to the Knight’s Temenos, Prime”, it sounded like to me that he was referring to the group and not the room. However, it does appear he was talking about the room. I’ll concede to that.

Same with the Quintissons. Merely an assumed headcanon to make sense of the inconsistencies, and how they could possibly not be inconsistencies. Because, yes, why was the hand organic, and why were there a bunch of ships? It can be assumed that Quintessa created these beings to harvest metals to create the Transformers. She could have just said “go harvest metals” and left them to their task. There’s nothing to show that she always knew about Unicron’s location or that he was Earth. That could have been discovered during Dark of the Moon when Cybertron appeared in Earth’s sky. Also, as we saw at the very end of the film, it appears Quintessa has the ability to take on a fleshy form, unless that was a hologram. Still wouldn’t explain the large number of ships.

As for the All Spark, it was actually Solus Prime, not Quintessa. That’s my bad. All the Primes could have banded together to create the Cybertronian race, and if Quintessa is the last one, then she would technically be their ‘creator’ as in singular, since the Quintessons would have only been the collectors of the metals.


Source: official “The Last Knight” App Lore section.

Might also help explain the ‘CreatorS’ thing with Lockdown, that she hired him on behalf of the other original original Primes or, or there were more when he was hired. It did take him centuries, as he said.

The staff seemed like it harnessed energy. It could have been one of the original tools instrumental in creating Transformers (giving them a regular soul and such instead of creating mindless killers like the Mountain Dew and Xbox robots in the 2007 movie) and so could easily channel what was left of Unicron’s energy to restore Cybertron.[/spoiler]

As for the Quintessa being Prime’s creator, I apologize I wasn’t clear. He shot into space looking for what he assumed to be a group, but only found one individual.

It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t like in Captain America: Civil War where the early scene with Black Widdow made me dizzy because every punch was a cut. In TLK, there are lots of shots that linger. I’ll admit the history of the Transformers scene cut too much. Would have liked to see more of the stuff in there without the breakneck pace of the editing. .

With Hopkins’ character, you and I saw him very differently it seems. To me, [spoiler] he seemed like he was sad to be the last of the Witwickan clan and sad that his only job was to usher in The Last Knight (Roll Credits!) and Merlin’s heir. That’s what his “I had my moment” thing was about. He didn’t have to go to Stonehenge. He was the only non combatant there, and even then it turned out he wasn’t. His cane had Cybertronian tech in it was turned out to be a gun. He wanted a shot at Megatron and a chance to help save the day and actually participate more than just figure out the mystery and send the real heroes on their way.

Also, while humor is completely subjective, watching esteemed actor Anthony Hopkins say “duuuuude” like that was the funniest thing ever. Him insulting the bobbies at 10 Downing Street not so much, but that “duuuude” kills me. [/spoiler]

AoE was too long, that I’ll agree on. Someone needed to trim the chase in Texas, Knight Ship escape, and Hong Kong chase with Tucci and the Chinese woman WAY down. And the Romeo/Juliet scene is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. That’s five minutes of my life (plus several re-watches) I’ll never get back.

But here’s the thing, her plan to drain Unicron was built up as something centuries in the making (or at least long enough that the Knights knew about it), and as the staff’s big purpose. Why would she have such a plan _before Cybertron was ever damaged? Why not have a plan to kill Unicron literally any other way. It’s ridiculously specific and convenient to her current needs.

Then why name him in this film if he’s going to have such a non-presence? No dialogue, no explanation, no appearance, no anything. This brings me back to my earlier question: who is this supposed to please? Not the casual moviegoers, because they’re not going to know who Unicron is, and the movie sure as hell doesn’t help them with that. And not the fans either, because the movie doesn’t do anything with him. It’s not fan-service if you’re not really servicing the fans. The film could’ve kept him unnamed and saved the reveal for the (more-than-likely-delayed/cancelled) sixth film and nothing would’ve been lost. Name-dropping Unicron does nothing for anyone. That’s my problem.

[spoiler]What other Transformers media? Prime’s the only other continuity that had Unicron be Earth, and even then, they never used him as an excuse for why all the Iacon Relics and such happened to all land on Earth, as they had no bearing on him.

Same goes for things like the Allspark, or the Primes and their Star Harvester. They have no bearing on Unicron, so having all that revolve around him makes no sense, and the fact that the original 'Bots and 'Con teams only came to Earth for the Allspark, and the Ark only came for Megatorn, neither by chance nor ambiguous reasons, confounds things even further.
[/spoiler]

And there, that right there, is your problem.

Head-canon is fun little theories. It’s not to be taken seriously, and fine for little bits in a film that don’t really matter, like, say, having a head-canon that Bumblebee’s voice box only started working again because Optimus punched it so much.

If you have to use head-canon, stuff you make up, just to make sense of a film’s lore and backstory, that is a problem. A serious problem. My argument up ‘til now has been that these movies’ lore, especially TLK, is an absolute trainwreck. If you have to make up things that the films don’t really support (or outright contradict) just to make sense of it all, you’re just proving my point. A film’s story has to stand on its own. These fail at that tremendously.

Having a director that doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing, and a massive ■■■■■ in the writers involved, probably didn’t help things going from 4 to 5, which is the likely explanation for all the discrepancies between those two films alone, from the Quintessons and Quintessa, to the two groups of Knights treated as one.

[spoiler]I’d probably like him a lot more if his desire for purpose were actually the focus and not constantly thrown aside for cheap jokes and exposition-dumping.

Funny. I actually chuckled at his telling the Prime Minister to shut up and calm down. Felt more dignified IMO.[/spoiler]

He and Cogman were incredibly hit-and-miss for me, though that’s more than what I can say for the rest of the cast.

But his whole stereotypical Brit thing rubbed me the wrong way. The plaid ivy cap, the coat and tie, the cane, the obnoxiously Shakespearean demeanor, the pipe, did he even smoke that thing?

Felt like a bunch of twats sat down and thought of the most British-y British things a Brit could have, and had that be the character’s whole shtick.

Oh yeah, on that we can agree.

But this movie was easily too long as well, or it could’ve at least had screentime rearranged.

Like say, not dedicating several minutes to a drone chase with boring humans, and having the big 'Bot-and-'Con brawl last more than a few seconds. Or cutting out Izabella, Squeeks, Simmons, Lennox, and the basically all the Chicago shenanigans.

To think that the original cut was over three hours long. It’s maddening. I don’t know what Bay was thinking.

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Staying out of the discussion, just wanted to comment on this.
This may be my '07 Movie bias talking, but I think Lennox could have stayed. His thing didn’t quite go anywhere (or rather it did near the very end, but the moment was as rushed-through as everything else) but the conflict of loyalties and trying to be the middleman was still some of the movie’s better writing and was part of what made the first half pretty decent.

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If the movie had just been about all the new Transformers arriving en masse while human and Autobot relations are strained, I’d be more inclined to agree.

But once they brought in all the end-of-the-world brouhaha and promises of explaining everything, Lennox just became really irrelevant. To have such a big story, you gotta trim the fat. Quality over quantity and such.

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Quite true. I frankly would have preferred to see the ‘cybertronian refugee crisis’ movie than the ‘oh boy another looming apocalypse’ movie, but I suppose had he been forced to choose, Bay would go with the latter.

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Yee. The idea of the Autobot and Decepticon factions being leaderless and in complete disarray, with the war a chaotic mess, is an awesome premise.

Probably because it’s ripped straight out of War Within: The Dark Ages but still, if you’re going to get inspiration from anyone, get it from Simon Furman.

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Indeed. :+1:

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So what’s the difference between the Knights of Cybertron and the Knights Teminous?

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I watched this movie last week. It was boring, wasn’t very fun, had a bunch of useless plot points, and the climax had so much going on and I didn’t even understand it. Optimus Prime felt useless and his “becoming evil” thing was the most pointless thing I’ve ever seen.

Lame movie, just like the rest of the films.

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Hey, the first film was pretty good. Then they went downhill to being the lame films they are now

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I don’t even like the first film. Too many immature and inappropriate jokes, not enough giant robots fighting.

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does Murder Prime not fight to your expectations?

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That’s actually a problem I have with the films too. Optimus Prime acts more like a decepticon.

No, I just kinda wish they’d focus on the transformers more than the humans. You know, like every other piece of Transformers media ever?

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Unfortunately, that’s just not possible with a live-action movie, and why I think Age of Extinction and The Last Knight are as good as we’re going to get for robot personalities. These films cost bonkers to make, and the CG is one of those reasons. It costs enough to have the robots doing flips and tricks during battle, but just think if they also had to carry a film where they were on screen the majority on the time being complex characters and such? Paramount would never go for funding a movie like that, especially with how “poorly” The Last Knight did at the box office.

At least Prime had a character arc in Age of Extinction, and that’s the reason I love that film. Optimus Prime, Optimus Prime of all people, lost his faith in humanity because of how crummy we treated his race. By the end of the film, his faith is somewhat restored as he sees the “treasure in the junk”. If the films were to focus on giving one bot a good fleshed out character per film going forward, I think that would be great, but because money, what we’ve got is probably as good as it’s going to get.

The only way to have the focus be mainly on the robots would be an animated film, which I doubt general audiences would go for. But, who knows? There actually IS a theatrical animated prequel set on Cybertron in the works, so maybe it might happen after all. Also, the Bumblebee spin-off film is going to obviously focus heavily on Bee and not really feature many other robots, so we might get some good stuff out of that, but of course it is going to be a smaller movie filmed on less of a budget.

Hopefully things improve going forward in the character department.

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I agree with most of what you said, but I really wouldn’t trust them to follow up on this last bit, or improve their films in anyway at this point. We are FIVE movies into this franchise. Unless Bay is finally kicked off his high horse nothing is going to change. You could make the comparison with Wonder Woman and argue that that movie showed that a bad franchise can still have a good movie, and potentially change the course for future films, but that franchise hasn’t been going as long as Transformers. The first one came out in 2007, Bionicle died and came back during this franchise’s run, we know pretty much exactly what to expect from these movie as long as Bay is in charge. Don’t go watch his movies, it unfortunately encourages him to make the same thing over and over again.

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And it seems like even China didn’t really go see this new one. I think after all is said and done with The Last Knight, Paramount is certainly going to make sure Bay keeps his “this is my last one” promise and look for other talent. The guy that directed Kubo and the Two Strings is directing Bee’s film, and Kubo was critically acclaimed. Any director can be handed a good script and mess it up. Hopefully Bee’s solo outing has a good script and the director can make a good, character-driven film out of it.

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Maybe if they didn’t make the models so needlessly complex perhaps they’d have more budget. I get that they’re trying to go for realism but it just makes things more expensive. Plus you can make less detailed models and still be impressive.

It would also help if they made the main characters less annoying and actually made them likeable. Mark Wahlberg’s character is somewhat like that but he’s still annoying.

Which was entirely out of character, and only led him to go back to where he started. It’s not much improvement.

And any director can take a bad script and make it worse.

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If they want to do Transformers movies they gotta reboot everything as far as I’m concerned. Everything is a mess with Optimus killing people and Merlin goofing around. I don’t think a proper story can be continued from this.

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