Transformers’ G.I. Joe crossover movie is firmly a Transformers sequel

Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is aware of the right way to roll the cube. During a tenure as an govt at Warner Bros. Pictures, he snatched up the movie rights to Harry Potter and threw an exorbitant finances at two indie filmmakers to make one thing known as — checks notes — “The Matrix.” When he went impartial within the 2000s, di Bonaventura lured none aside from Michael Bay to take the long-gestating Transformers over the end line. Cut to 16 years and 7 sequels later, and the producer is nonetheless playing on the robots in disguise.

“And it is a gamble,” di Bonaventura tells Polygon, as his new movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, continues to roll out throughout theaters and digital platforms. “Every movie is a gamble and what you add or take away are gambles.”

Rise of the Beasts had its personal gamble: While di Bonaventura says his staff wished so as to add the Maximals, the animal-like Autobots who took off within the ’90s Beast Wars cartoon, into the core franchise for years, they couldn’t crack a story that will truly work. “Naturally, animals and cars don’t mix,” he says. “They can’t go into an urban environment, they’d be a little obvious. There’s no robot in disguise for them in an urban environment.” The repair was a prequel-sequel, squeezed between the core Bay films and the ’80s-set Bumblebee, that transplanted the motion to Peru with an Indiana Jones relic-chasing twist.

The modest success of Bumblebee prompted di Bonaventura and Paramount Pictures to fastidiously weigh their follow-up play; it’s been 5 years for the reason that Optimus-less one-off, and the yellow Autobot takes a little bit of a backseat this time round. But the Transformers staff isn’t ready to take its subsequent gamble on the franchise. This time it’s constructed proper into the tip of Rise of the Beasts, when the movie’s human hero Noah (Anthony Ramos) is recruited by none aside from the G.I. Joes, who need the Autobots’ assist for… one thing.

Photo: Jonathan Wenk/Paramount Pictures

“[The G.I. Joe tease] is definitely a promise,” di Bonaventura says, when requested if the Easter egg is something greater than chum within the water. “I’ve had a lot of questions about this, and here’s my direct answer: We have not developed the script. So we don’t know exactly [how they fit in], but the answer is like in every other movie, a group of humans and robots fight the bad guy to save the day. G.I. Joes will be part of that.”

The G.I. Joes had been very a lot not round throughout the preliminary Transformers films (though one may simply mistake Josh Duhamel’s Autobot-affiliated strike staff NEST as an offshoot), which raises the query of how they’ll all of a sudden staff up with the Transformers in a future movie. Di Bonaventura says don’t fear, the staff behind the sequence truly does care about continuity. The producer notes Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994 and the primary Bay movie is set in 2007, which supplies them 13 years for the Joes and the Autobots to run collectively in secret.

“Continuity definitely matters,” di Bonaventura stresses, whereas likening his strategy to how Peter Jackson tailored the Lord of the Rings books. As a Tolkien fan, there have been definitely issues he missed and characters he wished to see — however the dramatic impact of the tweaks was all the pieces. “For me personally, I think [continuity’s] overblown, because sometimes you miss a great idea. […] I think one of the things that I find particularly exciting about this movie is, you get to meet Optimus before he’s the character you met in Bay’s films. There’s definitely an evolution between the two things. For me, that’s not in contradiction. You’re letting in Optimus’ emotionality, his vulnerability.”

The gamble of breaking continuity doesn’t at all times work out. In an early encounter with Rise of the Beasts’ villains, the Terrorcons, Optimus Prime… will get his ass handed to him by their chief, Scourge. Not each Autobot makes it out alive, however when Optimus stands again up, he’s furious. Maybe too furious for Optimus Prime purists.

“We had to dial it back a little bit,” di Bonaventura says. “When we first showed it to an audience, there was a scene that’s been removed from the movie because we just didn’t need it. Optimus’ anger over being caught was so violent, they were like, Whoa, that’s not Optimus Prime! But it was. And it was right. I think Optimus in some respects has the same problem as Superman, which is you’ve got to be careful if he just seems invulnerable because then how interesting can he be? So I really like that he gets his ass handed to him in the first fight, and that builds into the further fights.”

Mounting an epically scaled Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover occasion shouldn’t threaten the fragile cloth of the TF Cinematic Universe — there is a lengthy historical past of comics pairing the 2 groups which have paved a means for this second. But di Bonaventura is aware of he’s nonetheless playing. When I ask him to make clear how he imagines the crossover working, he attracts particular traces that individuals not answerable for billion-dollar franchises may balk at.

“They’ll be part of a Transformer group — we’re not going into the G.I. Joe world, they’re coming into ours,” the producer says. And as for the basic Joe characters established by films like 2021’s Snake Eyes? “Characters should come in, I think.”

Just don’t anticipate Cobra Commander to hit Optimus Prime too exhausting.