Movie continuity family

The movie continuity family is built around the live-action Transformers films released by Paramount Pictures since 2007. Each film supports a number of toys, novels, comics, video games, and other merchandise, many of which build off the events of the films themselves. Because of the primacy of these films relative to ancillary movie-related media, our wiki breaks with its traditional, by-chronological-release organizational schema by displaying all seven movies under their own header at the top of character pages, regardless of individual release dates.

This is not an exhaustive list of all media released under the "movie" umbrella. Many of the books, comics, and novels that accompany the movies are adaptations and retellings, and generally do not occupy their own universes. On individual character pages, we note the presence of these adaptations underneath the movie itself and identify any differences in the adaptation—for instance, many children's books alter the final battle of Revenge of the Fallen, with Optimus Prime merely throwing The Fallen into space instead of graphically dismembering him. On the flip side, there are many, many micro-continuities—primarily video games, and also a number of thinly-veiled advertisements disguised as video games or web campaigns—without much in the way of fiction or even context to justify their inclusion in this article. There is also one highly distinct splinter timeline that branches off from the events of the first movie.

Within the fictional Transformers multiverse, the TransTech classify every movie-related continuity as a part of the "Tyran" universal cluster.

Continuities, prequels, and reboots

The Transformers film franchise has become somewhat notorious for its cavalier approach to continuity, and the topic has become a subject of heated debate among the fandom.

Barring some minor inconsistencies, the first three instalments of the Transformers film series more-or-less work together to form a single, somewhat cohesive narrative—when details didn't line up, ancillary media such as IDW Publishing's comics would attempt to explain these discrepancies, tying films, comics, novelizations, and more together into a larger "expanded universe" of sorts. However, following the release of Dark of the Moon, the relationship between Michael Bay and IDW collapsed, and Bay reportedly forbade IDW from publishing any more adaptations of his Transformers films. Age of Extinction introduced new backstory elements for the Transformers in the form of the Creators and the Seeds; while this avoided any significant contradictions to the elaborate timeline that IDW authors like John Barber had pieced together, it did raise a few questions about how the Creators and Seeds related to the AllSpark previously established in the first Transformers film (questions that have, thus far, yet to be answered).

In 2017, The Last Knight introduced several massive retcons that largely upended both IDW's ancillary media and Michael Bay's own previous filmography: not only did the movie reveal that Earth was, in fact, the body of a dormant Unicron, but it also explained that familiar characters like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee had been on Earth for decades, if not centuries--while in a way it works for Bumblebee as he was already on Earth by the start of the first Transformers film it doesn't work for Optimus Prime and his troops as they were shown first landing on Earth in 2007!

Paramount's next Transformers film, Bumblebee, was originally conceived as a more direct interquel between The Last Knight's flashback sequences and Transformers. Although the original cut made it to test screenings, a wave of late-run reshoots would alter or excise most of the dialogue and scenes that would've connected the film to the rest of the live-action film franchise, leaving only a few broad-strokes details; in this film, Bumblebee first arrives on Earth in 1987, with the implication that no other Autobots have ever set foot on the planet before the war forced them from Cybertron. In an age of tightly plotted cinematic universes and increasingly internet savvy audiences, Transformers fans wondered if Bumblebee was a true reboot, unconnected to the five previous Bay films, or if it was still meant to be a prequel that retconned details from The Last Knight out of existence. 2023's Rise of the Beasts, a direct sequel to Bumblebee set in the mid-90s, only further muddied the waters: notably, the film depicted Unicron as a galaxy-roaming planet-eater, more akin to his appearance in the original animated film, rather than the Unicron who'd previously appeared in The Last Knight.

Unfortunately, Paramount has become somewhat infamous for its mixed messages regarding continuity and apparent inability to deliver a definitive answer regarding the subject. A tie-in comic book released alongside the Bumblebee DVD features younger versions of characters like Tom Banachek and Seymour Simmons, who appeared in the first Transformers film. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has repeatedly insisted that the films are prequels, not reboots,^[1] and stated that Optimus Prime's story in Rise of the Beasts shows how he grew to become the character seen in the first Bay film.^[2] Directors Travis Knight and Steven Caple Jr. have taken a more laissez-faire approach: Knight noted that Bumblebee was "essentially […] restarting the franchise and […] rebooting these characters,"^[3]. Caple Jr. stated only that Rise of the Beasts "felt like" a reboot in a December 2022 interview,^[4] then later, in a May 2023 interview, called it a "reboot for sure," only to moments later backpedal and instead call it a "refresher" and a "new direction," adding that you "could call it a reboot" but that there were still aspects of it that could be tied to the existing films.^[5] Hasbro has referred to the post-Last Knight films as "the start of a new storytelling universe"^[6], but Di Bonventura explained that this only meant that the creators had "freedom" to tell new stories that didn't necessarily follow the rules of the other films.

Following the release of Rise of the Beasts, di Bonaventura conceded that they were "kicking the can down the road" with regard to continuity; ^[7] while Caple admitted that he chose to prioritize the movie's individual story over any specific continuity beats. In the same interview, Caple professed a fondness for Transformers and Dark of the Moon, which he regarded as "his classics", but felt less compelled to adhere to the plot points introduced in Age of Extinction and The Last Knight, as he doubts that "anyone knew exactly where they were going with [them]."^[8] And that's... probably about as good an answer as we're going to get right now.

With no clear answers forthcoming, the wiki has opted to take a cautious approach when dealing with new films moving forward by grouping character appearances in with the five preceding Bay movies. As a result, whether or not these two installments constitute prequels, reboots, or something else entirely is a matter of personal canon.

Major continuities

As of 2024, we identify four major continuities in this family, many of which possess a number of notable sub-branches and micro-continuities. The lists below are not meant to be complete guides to every work in that continuity, but provide a quick overview of that continuity's most notable media.

Live-action film series

Main articles: Live-action film series and Movie timeline

When Optimus Prime had you standing up in the theater like you were gonna fight Decepticons.

• Transformers (2007)
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
• Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
• Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
• Bumblebee (2018)
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)

This continuity family is built entirely around Paramount's seven live-action films, "tentpole franchises" that each support a swathe of licensed toys, merchandise, books, video games, comics, and more. Michael Bay directed the first five films in the series and brought his signature pyrotechnic enthusiasm to the job: Transformers sees the Autobots and Decepticons travel to Earth to recover the lost AllSpark, only to discover a shadowy anti-Transformer conspiracy harboring Megatron. The first sequel took the characters around the world to foil a revived Megatron and The Fallen, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon introduced Sentinel Prime and a plot to return Cybertron to life by destroying the Earth.

Though Bay claimed he would not return for a fourth film, he eventually returned to helm Transformers: Age of Extinction, which pitted the Autobots against Cemetery Wind and their new ally Lockdown. Though the films raked in record-breaking profits despite a stream of overwhelmingly negative reviews, Transformers: The Last Knight proved a box office disappointment that finally broke the streak. 2018's Bumblebee featured a new director, a 1980s-inspired setting, and a simpler plot, all of which met with significantly better critical and financial reception. This generally continued into the subsequent film, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which jumped forward to the 1990s and began to expand the world of the films in some broad and unexpected ways.

As a result of several mid-production reshoots and retools, Bumblebee presents a number of major and minor contradictions to the pre-existing mythology established in The Last Knight: notably, that movie depicts Bumblebee fighting in World War II sometime around 1945, while Bumblebee shows him and Optimus Prime arriving on Earth in the year 1987. It is not exactly clear what this all means for the franchise going forward; indeed, the following film, Rise of the Beasts has continued to act as if the film is a prequel despite some obvious incompatibilities with the events of The Last Knight. As of writing, Hasbro and Paramount have continued to be vague if they will continue the story of the Bay films or reboot the universe entirely.^[9] For our purposes, we currently consider Bumblebee and all subsequent movies a part of the main live-action film series, despite these contradictions, but it is possible that this might change in the coming years.

Movie expanded universe

Main article: Movie expanded universe timeline

In 2007, IDW Publishing launched a prequel mini-series to the 2007 film; that same year they published an adaptation of the first movie and later released a sequel miniseries, The Reign of Starscream, in 2008. The rest of IDW's creative output followed much in the same way, with each new movie production cycle featuring interstitial prequels, follow-ups set in the immediate aftermath of the movie, and various spinoff stories. Beyond that, Del Rey Books published several independent novels of their own; though most of them were simply expanded adaptations of the films, Ghosts of Yesterday and The Veiled Threat are notable for being wholly original stories.

These side stories continued to grow, each individual story doing its own thing while ignoring other events... until 2011, when writer John Barber took over IDW's movie-related output. Through a number of stories—most prominently Sector 7 and Convergence—Barber wove basically everything that had come before—comics, books, random side stories—into a single, densely-woven tapestry that patches the most egregious continuity discrepancies to come out of this amalgamation while still smoothing over many other minor details. On this wiki, we consider this entire thing to be part of the "movie expanded universe", though each individual body of work receives its own header on their respective wiki pages.

Unfortunately, this happy arrangement did not last long: after an unlucky leak revealed a portion of IDW's Dark of the Moon adaptation months in advance—which in turn spoiled the film's central twist—Michael Bay reportedly forbade IDW from producing any more movie-related comics. It would take another seven years before IDW produced another tie-in (but see below for more on that), and in the interim The Last Knight pretty much took a sledgehammer to Barber's carefully constructed timeline. Thus, our chronology of this "expanded universe" is only written to take the first three films into account.

Sector Seven ARG

Main articles: Sector Seven (game), The Real Effing Deal, GiantEffingRobots.com, and Sector Seven ARG timeline

• Sector Seven (2007)
• The Real Effing Deal (2009)
• GiantEffingRobots.com (2009)

To promote the first Transformers movie in 2007, Paramount Pictures launched a viral marketing campaign that took the form of a surprisingly complex alternate reality game that chronicled the exploits of the "real" Sector Seven organization in our world. In this storyline, everything to do with the Transformers franchise—from the original cartoons and comics right up to the modern day—is all part of the "Hungry Dragon" disinformation campaign, an attempt to delegitimize real sightings of Cybertronians on Earth by passing them off as fictional cartoon characters. In 2003, a Transformer sighting on Mars sparks a second wave of Cybertronian activity and prompts the activation of "Hungry Dragon 2", a codename for the first live-action film franchise. In the meantime, Optimus Prime attempts to contact Earth to warn them of an impending Decepticon attack, but can only pass along his message to a radicalized cell of child guerrillas. In the days leading up to the release of the film, the Sector Seven Mobile Command Unit tours the country and probes citizens under the pretense of a mysterious "ear fungus" outbreak, and a subsequent incident eerily similar to the events of "Hungry Dragon 2" in Mission City is covered up.

In 2009, the ARG returned to advertise Revenge of the Fallen, this time in the form of two duelling websites—TheRealEffingDeal.com and GiantEffingRobots.com. Both arise at the same time and compete with the other to blow the whistle on Sector Seven's conspiracies. In 2014, the Age of Extinction promotional campaign introduced a much smaller ARG in the form of the "Transformers Are Dangerous" website, but it is not clear if this is meant to be a part of the larger ARG universe.

Titan Magazines

Main articles: Transformers (Titan Magazine) and Titan Magazines movie timeline

• Transformers (Titan Magazine) (2007-2014)

Beginning in 2007, Titan Books published an ongoing comic magazine that told stories set in a version of the live-action film continuity. Initially, these stories were written with the intent that they could slot in somewhere between IDW's movie-related comics, and we in fact consider issues #1-#6 canon to the aforementioned "movie expanded universe".

Eventually, however, Titan changed things up with the "Twilight's Last Gleaming" story arc, which was explicitly set in an alternate universe--a Decepticon-ruled dystopia where the Autobots had lost the battle of Mission City--which gave Titan the freedom to introduce or kill off characters as needed without contradicting any upcoming sequels.

In 2009, Titan returned to the main timeline to advertise the upcoming Revenge of the Fallen, but largely abandoned any attempts to make their stories work with regards to IDW's own creative output, and sometimes even the films themselves: their Revenge of the Fallen prequel, for instance, focussed on Skids and Mudflap travelling to Earth and picking up Chevrolet vehicle modes, completely ignoring their combined ice cream truck form from the opening of Revenge of the Fallen. This approach would become the norm for Titan up until 2014, when the comic unceremoniously petered out toward the end of the Age of Extinction merchandising blitz.

Minor continuities

The movie continuity family also encompasses various video games, online games, television commercials, board games, and card games that are difficult to place firmly in any of these main continuities. There are a number of semi-significant continuities, and many smaller micro-continuities not covered on this list.

Toy bios

As with pretty much all continuity families, the various movie toys present various embellishments that are either irreconcilable with the movie itself, ancillary fiction, or even other toy biographies. Hardtop's initial bio, for example, notes that he was the one responsible for wrecking Bumblebee's voice box, while IDW's Movie Prequel depicts Megatron as the culprit, and that's without getting into the 2018 Bumblebee film. On a similar note, many ancillary characters are modelled after non-Transformer props from the films—characters like Longarm, Incinerator, or Stockade. Occasionally, their bios even suggest that they are the vehicles in question from the film given life by the AllSpark, but none of their tie-in fiction has ever established this as a concrete origin—IDW's fiction, for instance, introduces Landmine as a human-built drone instead of an AllSpark Mutation.

In other cases, toyline bios present snippets of various alternate universes involving the characters from the films. Thus, Jazz's Target-exclusive toy presents an alternate universe in which Jazz did not die and gave himself a new paint job; Bonecrusher's explains that he survived his encounter with Optimus and fled to South America, and Optimus Prime's Fire Blast bio has him travel to Mars in search of a hidden Decepticon base.

Commercials

Each movie is accompanied by a blitz of commercials and other television spots. Some, like the 2007 Mountain Dew commercial, tell a short story that can't fit into any of the "main" universes.

Rise of the Chevy Autobots

Main article: Transformers: Rise of the Chevy Autobots

• Rise of the Chevy Autobots (2007)

A continuity set in a universe where Bumblebee leads an army of Chevy Autobots to battle the Decepticon Mainframe.

Transformers Autobots/Decepticons

Main article: Transformers Autobots/Decepticons

• Transformers Autobots/Decepticons (2007)

In these two divergent universes, the Autobots and Decepticons are each joined by a pair of rookie warriors with enhanced transformational abilities. In one, the Autobot kills their Decepticon counterpart; in another, the opposite occurs, though both campaigns ends with both of them dead.

Game adaptations

Main articles: Transformers The Game, Revenge of the Fallen (video games), Dark of the Moon (video games), and Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (console)

• Transformers The Game (2007)
• Transformers The Game (PSP) (2007)
• Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
• Dark of the Moon (2011)
• Rise of the Dark Spark (2014)

As with most 2000s movies, Transformers received several game adaptations that more-or-less faithfully followed the story of the movie--however, the first and second games featured two separate campaigns for both the Autobots and the Decepticons and irreconcilable endings. The Playstation Portable game featured a different plot from the movie, which included a number of characters who did not appear in the film.

The third game was unique in that it presented itself as a prequel to the Dark of the Moon film, though it did not line up with IDW Publishing's own prequel comics; the fourth, on the other hand, was unique in that it presented itself as a crossover between the movie and the Aligned continuities, featuring the Autobots and Decepticons of two worlds battling over the mysterious trans-dimensional Dark Spark.

I Can Read! books

• "I Am Optimus Prime" (2009)
• "Rise of the Decepticons (2009)
• "Ratchet to the Rescue" (2010)
• "Buddy Brawl" (2010)
• "Training Day" (2011)

A continuity that encompasses several books for beginning readers. "I Am Optimus Prime" is a condensed retelling of the Revenge of the Fallen film, though the ending takes the less violent option of having Optimus simply throw the Fallen into space. The later three books, released under the cross-media "Hunt for the Decepticons" banner, feature entirely new plots.

Hunt for the Decepticons

Main article: Hunt for the Decepticons

• "Hunt for the Decepticons" (2010)

The "Hunt for the Decepticons" multi-media promotion was set at some indeterminate point after the end of Revenge of the Fallen. What little fiction it received featured Optimus Prime and Bumblebee mopping up the remaining Earth-bound Decepticons, culminating in a final fight against Megatron. A number of I Can Read! books were published under this branding, and may or may not take place within this "continuity".

Transformers: The Ride

Main article: Transformers: The Ride – 3D

• Prepare for Battle (2011)
• Transformers: The Ride – 3D (2011)
• Transformers Metrobase (2021)

A continuity in which the young Autobot Evac is a member of NEST, which may be operating from the Titan Metrobase.

Keroro Gunsō × Transformers

Main article: Keroro Gunsō × Transformers

• Keroro Gunsō × Transformers (2011)

A comedic one-shot crossover with the Sgt. Frog manga.

How to Ride Your Dinobot

Main articles: How to Ride Your Dinobot and How to Ride a Dinobot!

• How to Ride Your Dinobot (2014)
• How to Ride a Dinobot! (2014)

To coincide with the release of the Dinobot-heavy Age of Extinction film, Hasbro released a series of slapstick shorts on their YouTube channel documenting how to (and how not to) tame and ride a Dinobot. IDW Publishing then adapted the premise, and many of its comedic beats, into a one-shot digital comic the same year.

Q-Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns

Main article: Q-Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns (cartoon)

• Q-Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns (2015)

Probably the single weirdest entry on this list, Q-Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns was a short-lived web series produced by the animation company DLE. Ostensibly released to advertise the Q-Transformers toyline and the accompanying mobile phone game, it mostly revolved around Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Lockdown trashing the infamously terrible Mystery of Convoy video game in between Seinfeldian conversations about random topics.

Schick Hydrobot and the Transformers

Main article: A New Friend

• "A New Friend" (2017)

A continuity in which the Autobots team up with Hydrobot to defeat the Decepticons and advertise razors.

Mission to Cybertron

Main article: Mission to Cybertron

• "Mission to Cybertron" (2017)

A short prequel to The Last Knight, which chronicles one of Optimus Prime's adventures while travelling through space.

Bumblebee Movie Prequel

Main article: Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel

• Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel (2018)

The Bumblebee spin-off film was originally written and directed with the intent to follow up on scenes from The Last Knight, which showed Bumblebee fighting in World War II. However, over the course of its production, changing directorial visions chopped out any and all Last Knight-related material from the production, and a series of reshoots changed the film's opening to show Bumblebee first arriving on Earth in the year 1987.

However, IDW Publishing was either not informed of these changes or deliberately ignored them to forge ahead with a prequel to the original cut of the film, a madcap spy spoof that depicts Bumblebee as an agent of P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E. during the Cold War in the 1960s. Although the four-issue miniseries makes a number of references to author John Barber's original movie timeline, it can't really be reconciled with that either, essentially stranding it in its own little continuity.

Bumblebee's First Life on Earth

Main article: Bumblebee's First Life on Earth

• Bumblebee's First Life on Earth (2018)

A semi-faithful adaptation of the Bumblebee film chopped up into three comedic shorts.

Sector 7 Adventures: The Battle at Half Dome

Main article: Sector 7 Adventures: The Battle at Half Dome

• Sector 7 Adventures: The Battle at Half Dome (2019)

This one-off motion comic advertises itself as an immediate sequel to Bumblebee and foreshadows several plot developments from the original Transformers film. With the movie franchise as a whole in a state of constant fluctuation, it is not entirely clear if this will hold true going forward.

References