Pretty much the only things i wish for all four movies is that every main character has lines, e.g, all Turaga and Rahaga have lines. Also i wish for The Legend Reborn to be slightly longer.
I think they would have just used Von Ness as a pedestrian like character for that scene most likely because he was a left over model. I will agree that move was kind of lazy. They did a similar thing with the Brain Attack episode by using Breez 2.0's and Bulk 2.0's models rather than creating their models for Breakout.
I'm looking forward to Stormer and Surge the most. To me, they look very awesome with lots of new pieces and great color schemes. I just love how Frost Beast looks like a villainous version of Straak.