Transformers Movie Universe - Timeline

[Pro Bot]

i would also add the G. I. Joe movies, at this point, i think we can....

According to Selishmisery:
G.I. JOE: Rise of Cobra (film) - August 9-11th, 2015
Operation H.I.S.S. (comic) - August 11-13th, 2015
G.I. JOE: Rise of Cobra (video game) - August 13 - 14th, 2015
G.I. JOE: Retaliation Prequel (comic) - August 14-16th, 2015(?; I don't own the trade paperback)
Operation H.I.S.S. (animated shorts) - August 16-17th, 2015
G.I. JOE: Retaliation (film) - August 17-21st, 2015

The problem with this is this:

1. The Pyramid of Giza was damaged in Revenge of the Fallen. It appears in G.I. Joe and is completely fine. It later appears in The Last Knight with the damage from Revenge of the Fallen.

2. Whatever the **** this is.

London is rebuilt in... 8 years? Wha... huh? Who did they hire for that job? Japan from the Godzilla franchise?

 

[Pro Bot]

My only solution would be to increase the timeline by 10 years to 2025, but... that requires them to actually connect it. Right now, not canon.

 

[Pro Bot]

The Bumblebee Movie Prequel considers Age of Extinction, The Last Knight, AND all the IDW material canon.

According to the Transformers wiki:
#2
The idea that Sector Seven's ranks may potentially have been infiltrated by Soviet spies hearkens back to IDW's Transformers: Sector 7 mini-series, which featured an adventure set ten years before the events of the Bumblebee prequel in which defector Joe Danco stole S7 secrets for the Reds.

#3
Now we're getting into that rich, creamy, IDW movieverse history!

Astrotrain goes unnamed in the issue, but it's hard to imagine the character is meant to be anyone else. This IDW-original character first appeared in the Foundation and Rising Storm mini-series in 2011. His being on Earth in the 1960s doesn't particularly contradict anything from those series, as he just sort of popped up out of nowhere on Earth even then.
Heath Donavan is the son of Sergeant Donavan from IDW's Sector 7 #4.
Donavan's jet is strongly hinted to be Jetfire, who we know from both the Sector 7 mini-series and Tales of the Fallen #3 was active and roaming the Earth at this point in history, having not yet entered the state of stasis he would be found in during the Revenge of the Fallen movie. See "real-life references" below for notes on his alternate mode.

#4
Malignus refers to "Earth's not-inconsiderable cache of Cybertronian treasures," alluding to the many, many Cybertronian artifacts that have turned on the planet over the course of the film series, including the AllSpark, the Matrix of Leadership, the Star Harvester, the Ark and its space bridge pillars, transformium, and the Staff of Merlin.
Bumblebee remembers fighting alongside Diabla in the smelting pools of Altihex. The famous pools were established to be located near Altihex in live-action movie continuity by—of all things—the friggin' Transformers version of the Risk board game.
Astrotrain flees mid-battle, leaving him alive to eventually reappear in IDW's Rising Storm series, set between Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon. As he goes, he comments that "even Shockwave never treated [him as] badly" as Malignus, referring to his time under Shockwave's command back on Cybertron, as seen in Rising Storm #2.
Bumblebee's pursuit of Blitzwing was evidently intended to lead into the beginning of the Bumblebee movie, which features a fight between the two early on. However—whether as the product of last-minute changes to the film, the comic being given an outdated script to work from, or some kind of active disinformation—the film does not flow out of what we see here; rather than Bumblebee tracking Blitzwing down, it's Blitzwing who hunts Bumblebee down, not after twenty years, but immediately after his arrival on Earth in 1987.

 

[Pro Bot]

If the Bumblebee Movie Prequel is set in the 1960s and Bumblebee is still on Earth from the 1940s, and he came to Earth again in 2003 in the same universe, then that just makes his appearance on Earth in 1987 less of a problem if you take all of these films as canon to one another.

 

[Megatron]

You're doing a great job! Can't, wait to see how u Will handle the titan comics.

 

[Pro Bot]

So far, there hasn't been any contradictions to AoE and TLK. In fact, Bumblebee Prequel is directly connected to both the IDW comics and TLK, so really there's zero contradictions so far. Well, Transformers One is contradicted... but there's nothing I can do about that. At least it references Bumblebee's "B-127" name.

 

[Megatron]

OMG I saw u added only Chapter 1 of Ghost of Yesterday. Did u found the whole book?

 

[Pro Bot]

Yeah, I'm gonna read the whole thing haha. From my understanding, they started moving Megatron to Hoover Dam and launched a separate space mission the same day as the Apollo 11 launch.

 

[Pro Bot]

These comics are ridiculously intertwined anyway. I have no doubt that John Barber would have wrote a comic where Bumblebee leaves Earth sometime before 2003, eventually leading into the Movie Prequel comic, and it would have made sense. Just reading the Convergence special, the Defiance and Foundation stories are necessary reading along with the Sector 7 series too, which is directly connected to the Transformers Movie Prequel comic. The Sector 7 notes from John Barber refer to real life events, the ARG alternate universe, and the events of the Ghosts of Yesterday novel. Dude knows what he's doing.

Sentinel Prime and the Ark were transported through space and time and crashed on the moon due to being attracted to the AllSpark's location. The AllSpark was attracted to Earth by the presence of the Star Harvester. From TLK, we know that Unicron resides inside Earth, so maybe that's connected.

 

[Megatron]

These comics are ridiculously intertwined anyway. I have no doubt that John Barber would have wrote a comic where Bumblebee leaves Earth sometime before 2003, eventually leading into the Movie Prequel comic, and it would have made sense. Just reading the Convergence special, the Defiance and Foundation stories are necessary reading along with the Sector 7 series too, which is directly connected to the Transformers Movie Prequel comic. The Sector 7 notes from John Barber refer to real life events, the ARG alternate universe, and the events of the Ghosts of Yesterday novel. Dude knows what he's doing.

Sentinel Prime and the Ark were transported through space and time and crashed on the moon due to being attracted to the AllSpark's location. The AllSpark was attracted to Earth by the presence of the Star Harvester. From TLK, we know that Unicron resides inside Earth, so maybe that's connected.

You should read his main works from transformers in the IDW Hasbroverse, isn't same level as MTMTE, but damn it's good.

 

[Jozaca]

 

[Pro Bot]

I'll say that Transformers One is an inclusion that I'm definitely iffy on since it just about contradicts everything (a personal explanation: maybe Optimus revived all the Primes with the Matrix? Uh... yeah, I don't know), but I'm including it because they can't make up their minds about it, plus it does reference Bumblebee. We'll just have to wait and see.

Note that the Bumblebee Movie Prequel was based on an earlier version of Bumblebee where he was on Earth since the 1940s, but it doesn't really contradict anything since we already have to make the assumption that the Autobots come and go from Earth (the whole thing with Rise of the Beasts was them trying to get back to Cybertron, so I don't see why this is an issue).

 

[Megatron]

I'll say that Transformers One is an inclusion that I'm definitely iffy on since it just about contradicts everything (a personal explanation: maybe Optimus revived all the Primes with the Matrix? Uh... yeah, I don't know), but I'm including it because they can't make up their minds about it, plus it does reference Bumblebee. We'll just have to wait and see.

Note that the Bumblebee Movie Prequel was based on an earlier version of Bumblebee where he was on Earth since the 1940s, but it doesn't really contradict anything since we already have to make the assumption that the Autobots come and go from Earth (the whole thing with Rise of the Beasts was them trying to get back to Cybertron, so I don't see why this is an issue).

so, Optimus revives the Primes, Megatronus steals the Matrix and does his thing, and then the Primes dies again.

 

[Pro Bot]

Yeah, pretty much. And Sentinel Prime is a dick again.

 

[Dallas Kinard]

Does Transformers One have any "present" day voiceovers?

 

[Pro Bot]

Nope.

 

[Dallas Kinard]

Did ya'll read this on the wiki?

"As the film's release date drew closer, multiple comments from the film's creatives indicated that the filmmakers viewed the movie as something entirely separate from the ongoing live-action films. In July, Josh Cooley stated that the film was set in a "new Transformers continuity" [6]​; in another interview from a week before release, di Bonaventura ultimately admitted that One didn't fit into the chronology of the live-action films, and described One and the live-action films as "two universes" that would be "[kept] separate". [7]​ These statements were ultimately borne out by the movie itself, which featured multiple plot points that are pretty much irreconcilable with the live-action films—early on, the film establishes that Megatronus is long dead, negating his appearance in Revenge of the Fallen; additionally, the movie ends with the newly christened Megatron killing Sentinel Prime, leaving no wiggle room for the events of Dark of the Moon to occur. As a result, the wiki has opted to treat the One franchise and any potential sequels as a new continuity family, entirely separate from the ongoing live-action films."

 

[Pro Bot]

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/is-transformers-one-a-prequel-optimus-prime-origin-story-exclusive/Basically, this is the answer (not a real quote, it's my summary of it):
"Yes, it's a prequel to basically the same events, but they might happen differently in the future. It would be hard to connect them. They might be connected in a filmmaking/storytelling sense but we're not planning on crossing them over directly."

 

[selfishmisery]

Rather than cramming so much incompatible content (I've read ALL the comics) into one timeline just to leave one property out - this is why I chose to separate all this into their own timelines in my thread. (Transformers One I'm keeping solely because of the flip flopping of these producers.)

Said producers' claims are to sell their franchise and not own up to the fact the Bayverse was a failed vision and they're, objectively, moving past that.

 

[Dallas Kinard]

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/is-transformers-one-a-prequel-optimus-prime-origin-story-exclusive/Basically, this is the answer (not a real quote, it's my summary of it):
"Yes, it's a prequel to basically the same events, but they might happen differently in the future. It would be hard to connect them. They might be connected in a filmmaking/storytelling sense but we're not planning on crossing them over directly."

I take this to mean "it's a prequel if you want it to be one". Which I do because I like watching movie franchises and having this as chapter one is great.

 

[Pro Bot]

Rather than cramming so much incompatible content (I've read ALL the comics) into one timeline just to leave one property out - this is why I chose to separate all this into their own timelines in my thread. (Transformers One I'm keeping solely because of the flip flopping of these producers.)

Said producers' claims are to sell their franchise and not own up to the fact the Bayverse was a failed vision and they're, objectively, moving past that.

There's a few mistakes I would like to correct from your timeline, quickly. You're welcome!

Sector 7 #2

1913
????
Transformers: Sector 7 #2 ("Irreplaceable"; pg. 4-21)

April 6
Transformers: Sector 7 #2 ("Irreplaceable"; pg. 1-3, 22)

Correction:

1900
????
Transformers: Sector 7 #2, "Irreplaceable" (pg. 4-5)
[flashback to "turn of the century". Barber notes it as being set during the Boxer Rebellion in 1898-1901]

1913
April 6
Transformers: Sector 7 #2, "Irreplaceable" (pg. 1-3)

April
Transformers: Sector 7 #2, "Irreplaceable" (pg. 6-22)
[Page 6-21 are what leads to Walter leaving with Clara, so it's narratively set after page 1-3]

Sector 7 #3

1934
January 8
Transformers: Sector 7 #3 ("Together"; pg. 1-4)

January 9
Transformers: Sector 7 #3 ("Together"; pg. 5-22)

Correction:

1934
January 8
Transformers: Sector 7 #3, "Together" (pg. 1-4)

January 9
Transformers: Sector 7 #3, "Together" (pg. 5-9)

January 16
Transformers: Sector 7 #3, "Together" (pg. 10-16)
[Noted by Barber to be the January 16 Clyde breakout at Eastham Jail]

May 23
Transformers: Sector 7 #3, "Together" (pg. 17-22)
[Bonnie and Clyde died on May 23. Barber notes this too.]

Bumblebee Movie Prequel

1964
September 21
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #1 ("The Man with the Golden Car"; pg. 1-21)

September 22
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #1 ("The Man with the Golden Car"; pg. 1-21)
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #2 ("The Living Headlights")
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #3 ("Energon is Forever"; pg. 1-18)

September 23
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #3 ("Energon is Forever"; pg. 19-22)
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #4 ("From Cybertron with Love"; pg. 1-20)

????
????
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #4 ("From Cybertron with Love"; pg. 21-22)

Correction:

1964
September
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #1, "The Man with the Golden Car" (pg. 10-11)

September 21
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #1, "The Man with the Golden Car" (pg. 1-9)

September 22
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #1, "The Man with the Golden Car" (pg. 12-20)
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #2, "The Living Headlights"
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #3, "Energon is Forever" (pg. 1-16)

September 23
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #3, "Energon is Forever" (pg. 17-20)
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #4, "From Cybertron with Love" (pg. 1-18)

1987 [Just a suggestion]
????
Transformers: Bumblebee Movie Prequel #4, "From Cybertron with Love" (pg. 19-20)

Ghosts of Yesterday begins on July 16th, 1969 too. I haven't finished the book, but it starts at that point.

 

[selfishmisery]

There's a few mistakes I would like to correct from your timeline, quickly. You're welcome!

If you're going to react passive-aggressively to me right now I'm not going to take it.
Try again next time with less brashness.

 

[Megatron]

There's a few mistakes I would like to correct from your timeline, quickly. You're welcome!

Sector 7 #2


Correction:


Sector 7 #3


Correction:


Bumblebee Movie Prequel


Correction:


Ghosts of Yesterday begins on July 16th, 1969 too. I haven't finished the book, but it starts at that point.

how's the book, btw?

Asked in a quality way rather than timeline way.

 

[Pro Bot]

It's interesting enough, there's a few callbacks to the comics that I enjoyed. There's a funny line from Starscream about how he hopes the decepticons give up looking for Megatron and realise he is the superior leader and Cybertronian, which made me chuckle.

 

[selfishmisery]

There's a few mistakes I would like to correct from your timeline, quickly. You're welcome!

Sector 7 #2


Correction:


Sector 7 #3


Correction:


Bumblebee Movie Prequel


Correction:


Ghosts of Yesterday begins on July 16th, 1969 too. I haven't finished the book, but it starts at that point.

I made the changes.

 

[Pro Bot]

If I notice anything else, I'll let you know.

 

[BB10]

This teaser can be included as well.

 

[Pro Bot]

I've included the teaser, thank you! The Transformers prequel comic likely takes place in December of 2003, fitting with the Beagle 2 Bumblebee footage.

 

[Pro Bot]

" 'Relatives'?" Clarkson wondered aloud. "Think about that a minute, Captain. I know that it was suggested in our briefings that we might find evidence of these beings, but what are the odds we would find them here, when we don't even know where here is? And if they are as advanced as they give every indication of being, why haven't we had contact with them before now?"

"Who says we haven't?" Walker shot back. "None of us, regardless of our individual security clearances, has access to all of Sector Seven's secrets. For all we know there's another entire government agency responsible for doing nothing but corresponding with alien intelligences. Also, need I remind you that there are one or two other governments besides ours that possess a certain degree of technological sophistication, and that we have no idea what their equivalent, covert agencies may be up to? There is one thing I do know for certain, though." He shot a look back at his crew, all of whom were intent on their respective stations.

I take this as clean-up regarding encounters Sector 7 had with Cybertronians across the timeline. Also, they only give N.B.E. designations to alien lifeforms with tangible physical evidence, so that's why encounters with Jetfire and others don't necessitate a designation. Oh, both Bumblebee blu-ray extras actually reference N.B.E.-01 interestingly. In "Agent Burns: Welcome to Sector 7", John Cena is about to introduce the Sector 7 recruit to "N.B.E.-01", an obvious reference to Megatron in the 2007 film.

 

[Pro Bot]

The timeline in Transformers: Beginnings is slightly different, but I think following the comic placements make more sense. My interpretation is that the comic gives more story and dialogue information while the motion comic gives more visual and audio information. Neither contradict the other, apart from a few "Spider-Man: Homecoming" moments.