The last Transformers movie, Bumblebee, was unlike anything we'd seen in the franchise before. The story let most of the explosions and destruction go in order to focus on a smaller character story. While the new direction worked for a lot of people, others were left wanting as they'd come to enjoy the massive destruction of the giant robot franchise. It seems that the next movie in the Transformers franchise will look to combine the best of both worlds, giving the story the heart of Bumblebee without sacrificing the epic action sequences of the main franchise. According to director Lorenzo di Bonaventura...
I know the next Transformer, our attempt anyway, is to sort of do a fusion of Bumblebee and the Bay movies…a little more Bayhem. And a little bit more of the character falling in love within the emotional dynamic of the movie. One of the things I want to do—and I hope we pull it off—is, we did it with Bumblebee because he’s so cute and he’s so accessible, but he can’t talk. I think the more human we can make these characters, the more people are going to like them.
The Transformers movies made by Michael Bay tended to be lambasted by critics, all while making billions at the box office.It's easy to be critical, but there was clearly a large crowd that loved the over-the-top explosive action that Michael Bay created in his Transformers movies.
However, for those that were looking for something a bit more grounded and relatable, Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight brought us Bumblebee, a prequel/soft reboot of the Transformers franchise that gave us a bit less action but a lot more character. It did fine at the box office, but didn't quite hit Michael Bay levels of business.
Exactly what the future holds for this franchise is far from clear, but based on Lorenzo di Bonaventura's comments to Collider, regardless of what the plot is or which characters will be highlighted, the plan is to take the character story of Bumblebee and the action of a Michael Bay movie and fuse them together. Give everybody something that they want in a Transformers movie.
There's certainly the possibility for a really successful film if this idea works. If you make the giant robots a bit more relatable so that those looking for a stronger story are engaged, while still putting the massive action set pieces out there, then everybody buys a ticket and the new movie becomes huge. As one of those people who preferred Bumblebee to the standard Transformers films, I have no problem with massive, city destroying, action scenes, as long as they involve characters I'm actually engaged with.
Of course, exactly what's next from the Transformers franchise is anybody's guess. Plans for creating an entire Transformers cinematic universe appear to be on hold and the there is no next movie officially on the release schedule.Although, we can be sure that, one way or another, there absolutely will be another Transformers movie, and it might just be the one everybody has been waiting for.
