Upcoming Live-Action Film Rumors
- Thread starter Undead Scottsman
- Start date
I think a not-insignificant part of it is that at this point, this would only be "interesting" for far too small an audience segment for this to be worth it. Especially since so much of that audience segment would also be whining about their franchise being sullied by (insert creative/production choice here) and failing to stay true to (archaic purist military-related expectation here).
If GI Joe dies it dies like so many other toy franchises that failed to maintain an audience. Don't tack it onto my robits. in the misguided attempt to keep it alive.
It really really pissed me off when IDW tried doing that. Might have gotten me to quit if Roberts' conscience beam didn't already do that.
It really really pissed me off when IDW tried doing that. Might have gotten me to quit if Roberts' conscience beam didn't already do that.
I am just saying that the Live action films spend way too much time focused on the human characters. I get why they do it, as it saves a lot of the budget. To be honest though, most of the human characters in the films are just horrible and have no place being there. So if we are going to spend a lot of time with human characters in the Transformers film, then why not use the GI JOE characters? They would be interesting, and be able to do things that make sense in this scenario. That way we don't end up with all the cringe moments we got from the vast majority of the people in the live action films. We can have Joes running around, doing what they do best, and actually be entertaining without breaking the story.
I just like that idea, and I am bummed that they didn't get a chance to do that.
I just like that idea, and I am bummed that they didn't get a chance to do that.
Exactly.
I have a friend who binged the entire live action series in preparation for RotB. To be clear, he's not a Transformers fan. He just likes to be caught up when revisiting an ongoing series in theatres.
And his big question to me, the TF fan of our friend group, was "what was the story behind that GI Joe tease? I expected it to be Sector 7."
I think that between the Bay movies and the Universal Studios ride, Sector 7 and NEST may be who the general audience thinks of when they think of Autobot-aligned human military factions. If they think of anyone at all.
GI Joe as a crossover partner only really is significant to those of us who remember the Sunbow shows and maybe Marvel comics.
Not to say that they can't theoretically build to a GI Joe x Transformers story on the big screen, but they need to put more work into it then a single teaser for a sequel that wasn't guaranteed to happen.
GI Joe seems to be more relevant then it's been in a good while, with Classified doing well, Super7 bringing back o-ring 3.75" figures, and the EU from Skybound being popular. Maybe Hasbro and Paramount should focus on building a GI Joe film series alongside a Transformers film series... and if they both work out maybe do a crossover down the line?
Maybe I am just a product of my time, but I think that GI JOE has a lot more recognition than Sector 7 or Nest.
For a certain generation that's true. It's just not the generation who's the primary audience of movie studios anymore.
That might be true, but I don't know if there is a way to test it beyond the anecdotal evidence that we have.
Here are some finidings from a recent article I read in a peer-reviewed academic journal:
GI Joe rulez, NEST/Sector 7 droolz!
McGillicutty, Charles, et al. "More Than Meets the Eye: Human Relationships Within Modern Transformers Fiction." Scientific Cybertronian Quarterly, Volume 13. Issue 84, pp. 76 - 92. Retrieved on 10/9/26.
GI Joe rulez, NEST/Sector 7 droolz!
McGillicutty, Charles, et al. "More Than Meets the Eye: Human Relationships Within Modern Transformers Fiction." Scientific Cybertronian Quarterly, Volume 13. Issue 84, pp. 76 - 92. Retrieved on 10/9/26.
Lol.
I would say the complete absence of any hype in the wider pop culture sphere at the GI Joe tease at the end of RotB speaks to that. They wanted that to be their "I want to tell you about the Avengers Initiative" moment and it just didn't land the same with the general audience.
Just last week, one of my co-workers who never saw ROTB was first told about the G.I. Joe reveal at the end of that movie and was completely baffled by it. From his perspective as one who was born in the early 2000s and never lived through the Reagan era of ARAH in the 1980s, he thought the idea of G.I. Joe being in a Transformers movie was ludicrous and laughably nonsensical. Because, to his generation, G.I. Joe was never considered a pop culture phenomenon nor an equal peer to Transformers. Rather, it was a dorky punchline mocked by parodies found in shows like Robot Chicken and Family Guy. To casuals these days, G.I. Joe is a G.I. Joke.
You sound as if it's impossible for the Joe characters to be written and directed as badly cringe as any of the humans in the Bay TF movies have been. Given the same writers and director, they certainly would be.
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To be air, RotB didn't land with the general audience either.
To be water, on the other hand, it was a massive hit.To be air, RotB didn't land with the general audience either.
Yes, they could be badly written and directed, but the idea is that we don't have characters that don't belong in the situation. Characters like a little kid/teenager/college student main character that the Autobots take with them into dangerous situations for no reason. Or that kid's parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, roommate, coworker, or professor/teacher doing hijinks and making cringe moments like me time, or the whole plate, or directly underneath the robot's scrotum.
Instead of that, we get elite military units with familiar names and looks to them. They are fighting a desperate battle alongside the Autobots. Kind of like Battle: Los Angeles, especially at the end. Throwing the GI JOE franchise into the Transformers universe works because you have so many good characters to utilize that you don't need to come up with yet another pointless group of average people to take up the vast majority of the film.
Hey, I liked the movie! Don't get me wrong, but it only made $157 million at the box office domestically. Ever since the Last Knight, the Transformers films have been doing worse and worse in the box office. Well to be fair, ever since 2009's revenge of the Fallen they have been on the decline, but in the last decade people just haven't seem to want to watch them in theaters anymore.
I'm going to weigh in here from the perspective of someone who was around (and active) in the ARAH heyday, and who also has a healthy amount of disdain for most of the live action Transformers films:
Make. Me. Care.
Regardless of whether they are from GI Joe, Transformers, or newly-made-up, I want the reason for them being an on-screen focus to matter. I can be alright with Transformers relegated to background characters in their own film, just give me a reason to invest in what is going on. If GI Joe gets me there, cool. If it's another group, that's cool, too. But don't present me with a bunch of flat, hollow people for 3 hours, who don't do anything meaningful, and expect me to care. That is my biggest problem with the film franchise: I want to believe!
Make. Me. Care.
Regardless of whether they are from GI Joe, Transformers, or newly-made-up, I want the reason for them being an on-screen focus to matter. I can be alright with Transformers relegated to background characters in their own film, just give me a reason to invest in what is going on. If GI Joe gets me there, cool. If it's another group, that's cool, too. But don't present me with a bunch of flat, hollow people for 3 hours, who don't do anything meaningful, and expect me to care. That is my biggest problem with the film franchise: I want to believe!
Like Spike Witwicky?
Sparkplug? Carly? Chip?
The Army soldiers in the 2007 movie were trained combat specialists who still made fart jokes, butt jokes, and racially-insensitve comments both on and off the battlefield. Swap them out with the Joes and we'd still have them doing the same thing.
Like Spike Witwicky?
Sparkplug? Carly? Chip?
There is a big difference in the G1 cartoon and the live action movies though. Also, I am pretty sure that Shia has more screen time in the films than all the humans do in Season 1.
That may be so, but at least they had more of a reason to be there.
Even if these movies were to have the Joes in them instead of just the Army, Sector Seven, NEST, or the TRF, the movies would still put the main focus on everyman-type civilians like Sam, Cade, Charlie, and Noah because those are the kinds of protagonists who casual mass audiences find the most relatable. The kind of characters that executives believe everyone can see themselves in and put themselves in their shoes. Because, from the narrow perspective of these filmmakers, the robots and soldiers are perceived as being too larger-than-life to be relatable for audiences who live lives far too mundane by comparison for them to be able to relate to either the highly-trained special mission force or the literal godlike titans walking among mere men.
This perception could have been changed for the better if the smaller scaled Bumblebee movie--with its titular character being both very prominent and very relatable--had been a significantly greater success, but it wasn't. Thus, we got ROTB with its diet flavor of Bayhem.
This perception could have been changed for the better if the smaller scaled Bumblebee movie--with its titular character being both very prominent and very relatable--had been a significantly greater success, but it wasn't. Thus, we got ROTB with its diet flavor of Bayhem.
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