Despite being old fashioned, rollicking fun in the early stages, the Transformers franchise hit a road block with Transformers: The Last Knight. The fifth chapter in the series didn't perform as expected at the box office, leaving Paramount to ponder the future of the property.
Spinoffs and prequels seem to be taking higher priority than a sequel, a very telling decision given the last installment ended on a cliffhanger introducing Unicron in the mix. Many have since wondered what's the next step as something inevitably needs to happen with the main line of films. Using the reception to Bumblebee as a gauge, the solution may well be moving away from the man who brought the robots to life, Michael Bay.
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The question then, is, can Transformers truly be redeemed without the director who helmed all its movies so far? Well, if Bumblebee turns out to be as fun as the first trailer indicates, the answer is likely, "Yes."
Director Travis Knight captured in one Bumblebee trailer what Bay failed to do since he first introduced the robots-in-disguise to the big screen in 2007. Knight brought us a sense of awe, innocence and wonder, all synonymous with various iterations of Transformers cartoons and comics.
Of course, proponents of Bay's take will argue the debut film captured a large portion of this excitement, mixing it with nostalgia and then peppering the necessary ingredients in to create a Hollywood blockbuster. Since then, however, the movies have been products instead of art, pieces steeped in style over substance, resulting in gimmicky flicks designed solely to sell toys. This novelty eventually wore off, with The Last Knight as the red flag signaling the need for a recalibration, perhaps even full reset.
Bay's over-the-top, excessively violent action sequences, immature jokes, racist characterizations and female objectification quickly grew old. Seeing as we're in an age of greater awareness than ever before, it's no surprise his vibe has lost its appeal. Basically, Bay has beaten the franchise into a soulless pulp which not even nostalgia could carry any longer. Audiences became cognizant there was no heart in these films, evidenced from the random swapping in and out of stars, overall narratives which had no character development or emotional connection, and, of course, the universal panning by critics.
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Knight's trailer, though, brought an air of hope, the essence of childhood joy which Bay killed off as soon as his first movie ended. Instead of meticulously crafted stories, Bay kept throwing multitudes of Decepticons at the Autobots, while repeatedly using Earth as some sort of storage unit for cosmic artifacts. In short, Bay was lazy. Bring in a big bad, find a way to take Optimus Prime out the equation, use humans to find the MacGuffin, bring Optimus back to save the day, and tease a villain for the next film.
Simply put, Michael Bay killed his own franchise.
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Now, credit's due to Bay for bringing the property to life and injecting it with some Hollywood flair, a move we've seen Marvel Studios, the Fast and Furious flicks, and the DC film-verse all take note of, and at times, try to imitate. Transformers can even be seen as the pioneer franchise out of all these, but without the magic of the source material, you end up getting something that flogs the dark, gritty and edgy stories (seen with Optimus Prime becoming a relentless killing machine) Bay did to death; which Warner Bros. found out the hard way via Zack Snyder's movies like Justice League.
A one-trick pony can only amuse people for so long, and Paramount producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has been acknowledging this stagnation. “The fifth one was definitely down,” di Bonaventura admits. “The audience looks for something new at some point in time, but it’s so hard to judge when. I think the lesson was, after the fourth movie, that was the when. But we didn’t see the fatigue. We didn’t see the signs that they wanted us to change up how we were presenting it.”
In other words, he's accepted Bay's failures and knows the studio has to change its approach in order to fully harness the franchise's potential. di Bonaventura confesses Transformers needs saving, and the studio is willing to gamble on Bumblebee by using a new formula, one which involves streamlining the number of robots with an eye on better, more fleshed-out human/robot interactions, and using a young, female protagonist in an effort to give the story an inspirational feel. In short, Paramount is doing the opposite of what Bay did.
Ultimately, it's impossible to tell from just one tease whether Bumblebee will be a success, but the fact that Paramount is willing to step away from Bay's formula so blatantly says a lot. Given that the studio is also banking on Bumblebee to help chart a course for other spinoffs, such as an Optimus Prime story, it's clear the road ahead does indeed lie away from Bay.
Many wondered if the Avengers banner could ever survive without Joss Whedon, only for the Russo brothers to break records with Avengers: Infinity War and garner high praise with its unofficial prequel Civil War. In other words, no director is bigger than the franchise, not even Michael Bay.
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