There’s no denying that the Transformers franchise is in desperate need of reinvention, and Travis Knight’s Bumblebee was a hugely encouraging glimpse into a future without Michael Bay. The director of the first five installments is unquestionably one of the very best in the business when it comes to crafting action sequences, but it’s everything else that tends to let his movies down.
Plot and character are never at the forefront of Bay’s priorities, and even when he’s helming smaller scale projects like black comedy crime caper Pain & Gain or true-life war film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, he still drenches the proceedings in his signature pyrotechnic style, often to the detriment of the narrative.
Netflix’s 6 Underground turned out exactly how you’d expect a $150 million blockbuster to when the orchestrator of cinematic Bayhem was given the complete freedom to do whatever he wanted, while his next effort is a remake of low budget Danish thriller Ambulance, but a recent set video promised that he’s still going to be blowing things up on an industrial scale.
Insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that Bay really wants to get back into the world of Transformers as well, but the tipster doesn’t share much more on the matter than that. It would be fair to say that he’s already had his shot, though, and while the box office takings numbered into the billions, critics and audiences got pretty tired of his tenure by the end if the plummeting reviews and declining financial returns are any indication. The time is now for the series to look forward and not back, and that means keeping Bay as far away from the Autobots and Decepticons as possible.
