The recent news thatParamount will be takingtheirTransformersfranchise in a new direction (or two) got our gears turning. The Hasbro brand enjoyed worldwide success back in the 80s and 90s thanks to the cult classic animated movie, a ton of animated series, and even more toys. But the Robots in Disguise who are More Than Meets the Eye got to enjoy an even bigger stage once Paramount brought the bots to the big screen, courtesy ofMichael Bay’s insane, over-the-top, and shiny-and-chrome series of sequels.
And yet, while the 2007 live-action epic kicked off a box office blitz for Paramount, Bay, and the iconicTransformerscharacters, that success peaked in 2011 withTransformers: Dark of the Moon, and started to wane at the end of the series' decade in theaters with 2017’sTransformers: The Last Knight. A soft reboot of sorts was in the works with 2018’sBumblebee, but despite that film earning critical and box office success, it wasn’t quite the (all)spark that the studio was looking for in embarking on a new path for the popular franchise.
So now we know thatTransformerswill continue with a bit of freshening up, but we don’t know quite how that’s going to look.James Vanderbilt(Zodiac, The Amazing Spider-Man) andJoby Harold(King Arthur: Legend of the Sword) will be writing two separate scripts for the new productions, one of whichmayexist in the same world asBumblebee… and that’s about all the intel we have right now. AfterBumblebeedebuted, Paramount/Hasbro brass suggested that follow-up films would have both the heart that’s found at the center of that movie (andmaybe even some actual romancein the future) along with alittle more Bayhem. There’s a fine balance there between the two, to be sure, and they haven’t quite found it yet. Here’s how we think the future ofTransformerscould benefit from a few changes:
A Significant Reduction in Bayhem
Admittedly, a little bit of Bayhem made theTransformersfranchise stand out from the pack. But that’s also what held them back. Inevitably, audiences grew tired of all the sound and fury (signifying nothing, narratively speaking) over a decade with Michael Bay at the helm. The acclaimed action-focused director simply had too much creative control over the franchise’s entirety, and that led to a series of one-note films that eventually tired audiences out with a run of incomprehensible plots, uproariously inane dialogue, and vague shiny metal things smashing into other vague shiny metal things.Transformerscan do better.
That’s not to say these movies don’t need high-octane action, but itisto say that not only are there other stylish action-slanted directors out there today but that many of them know how to weave story in and out of the beat-em-ups beats. It should also go without saying that a Bay-lessTransformerswill also necessitate a redesign, since the filmmaker was more focused on the look of the cars than a faithful design of the characters themselves. (Though that will happen when Bugatti drives a Veyron into your office.) A little less Bayhem, a little more conversation, please.
Transformers as the Main Characters: Humans Need Not Apply
While the Witwicky Family and other humans have been a part of theTransformersstory from the beginning, we don’t really need them. I repeat: We don’t need them.
When audiences were originally exposed to this crazy story about warring factions of sentient alien robots,of coursethey were going to need an Everyman to ground it. I’d like to think we’re past that. And even if we’re not, if theTransformerscharacters–Autobots and Decepticons alike–are handled properly, they’ve got more than enough humanity in their servos and circuits to carry both emotional weight and dramatic stakes.
Well before any of the Transformers came to Earth, a mighty war (or series of wars, really) was waged between Autobots and Decepticons. More on that in a moment. It suffices to say that these sentient beings didn’tlearnhumanity from humans, it was simply a case of like recognizing like. In Bay’s movies, the only bots that had a lasting personality were Bumblebee (who got his own feature, and eventually a voice!) and Optimus Prime, thanks mainly to the iconic performances ofPeter Cullen. That can change going forward. Rather than creating characters as two-dimensional punchlines, making them part of the plot and the emotional stakes involved will get audiences invested in them, humans or no humans.
More Mythology: BotBots, Beast Wars, and Rescue Bots
Other than Unicron appearing inTransformers: The Last Knight, a brief side trip to Cybertron in that film, and the Dino Bots popping up inTransformers: Age of Extinction, the best glimpse of other mythologies within the franchise came at the beginning ofBumblebee. The first few minutes of that movie were exactly what I wanted to see an entire film built around: The last desperate fight of Optimus Prime and the Autobots resisting the more powerful Decepticon rule on their home planet of Cybertron. That was awesome. And then it all literally crashed back down to Earth.
I don’t know why Paramount/Hasbro seem to want to tether theTransformersuniverse to Earth when there is so much more to explore, but that’s holding the franchise back. And even if they wanted to stick to Earth, they could more fully explore different times in the planet’s history rather than dipping a toe in here or there. Want to go prehistoric for real? Give us theTransformers: Beast Warsthat some fans have been clamoring for (okay, maybe it’s just me); I’ll even forgive the historical contradictions of throwing a few primitive humans into the mix if you really want to.
Or,Transformerscan go modern and kid-friendly, like the more recent series ofTransformers BotBotstoys or the hit kids shows,Transformers: Rescue BotsandTransformers: Rescue Bots Academy.BotBots, thecollectible toy line–now celebrating the release of three series so far and looking ahead toSeries 4 this year, which includes gold bots in the Goldrush Games' Winner Circle–is one of the most clever new additions to the canon. It imagines a time when an Energon mist spread throughout a local shopping mall, turning ordinary, everyday objects into little Transformers;it’s absolutely delightful and deserves some sort of adaptation, even if it’s not a big-screen live-action adventure.
Rescue Bots, the excellent animated series that passed the originalTransformersto become the longest-running show in the franchise, centered on a team of Autobots who weren’t dead-set on battling Decepticons to exhaustion but rather partnering with a human family to assist in rescue missions and disaster response. That’s anawesomestory to follow with aTransformerstilt to it and something that would keep the feel of the franchise while also taking it in a new, positive, and unique direction.
More franchises out there could do with focusing on actual heroes rather than resorting to all-out war over and over again. And with a brand as big asTransformers, there’s room for all sorts of adaptations, which leads us to…
A Cybernetic Cinematic Universe
TheTransformersuniverse is huge. I mean that both in the sense of the narrative’s scope and scale, and for the sheer number and variety of titles within the franchise. And yet the live-action movies felt oddly restrained and almost small. I know, that’s a strange choice of words for Bay’sbig ol' ball-swingin' beat-em-upseries that battled across space and time, but the plots were always a slightly tweaked rehashes of the same old story. There is so,somuch more to the story than that. And it’s been told, and continues to be told, through toys, animated series, comics, video games, and a myriad of other products. So why has the big-screen franchise restrained itself?
If Paramount could have seen the MCU coming back in 2007–a year beforeIron Manchanged the game–they might have had a different approach for theirTransformersstorytelling. Instead of a cohesive cinematic universe that told parts of theTransformersstory from different perspectives, following different characters in different places, ultimately to be united in some sort of epic event, the franchise went in more of a traditional “series of increasingly ridiculous sequels” direction. The studio can change that now. And they’re off to a good start withTravis Knight’sBumblebee. Opening up the brand to more voices, and more variety of stories and characters and settings, can only benefit them; they’ll reach a wider audience, pull in attention from new and longtime fans alike, and ::puts on marketing hat:: can drive attention to the many products that can be found throughout the brand rather than just the standalone movie figures.
So what could a Cybetronic Universe look like? Well, an absolutedreamforTransformersfans, to be sure. The original Generation 1 characters could get a satisfying origin story and retelling; they’ve been rebooted a few times throughout their run, most recently in 2019, so this would be in keeping with the current storytelling (though as fans known, “aligning” these many stories is easier said than done). Generation 2 could get a big-screen debut as audiences are introduced to new Cybertronians as they battle The Swarm…perhaps with the assist of crossover heroes inG.I. Joe. (Could Paramount actually salvage two movie franchises by uniting them in a shared universe? They certainly loved the military angle in the Bay films, so that wouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.) Paramount could pull from recent storylines like thePrime Wars Trilogy,Cyberverse, and theWar for Cybertron. And dare to dream, could we actually see theGoBotson the big screen?! There’s a big wide universe out there and the powers that be would do well to explore more options.
Something New
That all being said, you can only mine the nostalgic past for so long. Sure, you can reboot it and reimagine it all you want, but the lifeblood of any franchise is creativity, originality,newness. TheTransformerstoys, animated series, and comics have been doing a bang-up job of both paying homage to the past while reshaping the future of the franchise; the live-action movie-verse has an opportunity to do the same.
So what does a “new"Transformerslook like? That’s beyond me and squarely in the realm of speculation (or the secretive Hasbro think-tanks), but your imagination is your only limit right now. Perhaps a new wave ofTransformerswill help humanity free themselves from the shackles of the Earth as they embrace space exploration and colonization … with obvious interference from Decepticons. Maybe they’ll take exploration down into the depths of the world’s oceans where extreme conditions make survival difficult, even perilous. Or maybe we’ll see more DIY Transformers as Energon brings homemade creations by amateur tinkerers to life, giving us a whole new breed of bots we’ve never seen before. The possibilities are endless. Pararmount/Hasbro just have to embrace that ideology and make bold strides moving forward … or they can just rehash what they’ve done before. Stay tuned to see how that plays out, but in the meantime, feel free to share your own hopes for the future ofTransformers.
