Michael Bay’s five Transformers movies may have raked in billions of dollars at the box office, but reviews kept getting progressively worse. The director continued piling mythology on top of mythology to the point that the plots became almost incomprehensible, while the action sequences were largely just wave upon wave of pixels bashing into each other as it became increasingly difficult to try and decipher exactly what the hell was going on.
It was far from a coincidence, then, that the first entry in the franchise without Bay behind the camera was the best by far, with Travis Knight’s Bumblebee narrowing the focus to the relationship between Hailee Steinfeld’s Charlie and her new Autobot companion. Of course, it was still a big budget fantasy blockbuster, but it was at least powered by a relatable and relatively human story.
Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. is signed on to direct the next installment in the series, which is penciled in for a June 2022 release date, and all we know so far is that the script hails from King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Obi-Wan Kenobi writer Joby Harold. But insider Daniel Richtman now claims that the focus for the future of the franchise will be more on the Autobots and Decepticons rather than the humans, with the plan being to actually give them fleshed-out personalities for the first time ever, rather than utilizing them as quip-happy props to drive the action.
Of course, Bay’s five-pronged assault on the senses didn’t focus on any sort of character development whether they were from Earth or Cybertron, and offering audiences someone to root for is an obvious element for crafting an engaging story that Transformers has so far failed to grasp. The giant alien robots are clearly the main selling point, too, so giving them distinct traits is definitely one way to convince audiences that the franchise is back in completely different and much better form.
