Which Transformer was only added as a marketing gimmick for Chevy? What
was the hardest scene Michael Bay shot for the entire series? Roll into these
awesome details from the billion-dollar franchise.
The "Transformers" movies went on to become massive hits at the box office,
but they weren't originally an area of intense focus for producer Don Murphy. Back in 2007,
Murphy explained to Latino Review that his original goal when it came to turning toys
into massive live-action movies was the "G.I. Joe" franchise. Murphy had undergone
lengthy conversations with Hasbro about acquiring the film rights to the property,
and Sony Pictures was even floating the idea of distributing this potential film adaptation.
However, real-world events soon cut Murphy's ambitions for "G.I. Joe" short. The invasion of
Iraq suddenly made the prospect of adapting that specific toy into a globally appealing franchise
much less feasible. The then-head of Hasbro Films, Carol Monroe, proceeded to point Murphy
in the direction of the "Transformers" property as another Hasbro IP he could adapt into a film.
While Murphy didn't have any childhood nostalgia for "Transformers," he did know
that other close creative partners, like producer Tom DeSanto, harbored a passion
for the franchise. Recognizing the fanbase for those robots in disguise, Murphy got to
work on getting "Transformers" off the ground. The result was a pop culture phenomenon that
would've never happened if Murphy's initial "G.I. Joe" plans had gotten off the ground.
"Now I know."
"And knowing is half the battle."
Michael Bay's stabs at "Transformers" movies vary wildly in the characters they chronicle,
and even the time periods they travel to, but they all tend to share one quality: a focus on human
characters. We begin these tales with human beings like Sam Witwicky and Cade Yeager and
view gigantic sci-fi adventures largely through their eyes. With each new "Transformers" movie,
the robotic characters get to be more and more prominent, but the humans are still at
the forefront of the narrative. Believe it or not, there was a point in time when the
original live-action "Transformers" movie would've been even more reliant on its human characters.
Screenwriter Roberto Orci explained to IGN that the very first draft of
"Transformers" was focused almost solely on the lead human characters portrayed by Shia
LaBeouf and Megan Fox. This version of the story leaned more heavily on the realistic
ramifications of a kid buying a car that turns out to be a robotic alien in disguise.
"That car is sensitive. I mean, four thousand dollars just drove off."
Orci and company quickly realized that the inaugural draft just wasn't clicking,
and subsequent rewrites took the skeleton of Sam Witwicky's storyline from the first
pass and injected more material separate from this character. It's understandable:
Of course "Transformers" fans would want more robots in "Transformers" movies.
While iconic "Transformers" robots like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee made it to the world of
live-action storytelling with "Transformers" in 2007, other fixtures of the franchise were not
so lucky. One example was Arcee. One of the most famous lady robots in the entire "Transformers"
canon, Arcee would've seemed like a slam dunk for inclusion into a big "Transformers" blockbuster.
"And you better stay close to me."
"No, you'd better stay close to me."
However, she was nowhere to be found in the franchise's first installment.
Screenwriter Roberto Orci revealed via IGN that Arcee was originally planned to be a
part of "Transformers," but female Transformers were a concept that required too much time to
sufficiently explain in that original movie. Wanting to avoid any potential complications,
Orci decided to leave Arcee on the cutting room floor and save her for another day. Arcee would
eventually get to join the live-action incarnation of "Transformers" through subsequent movies like
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts."
Today, some directors tasked with helming a blockbuster movie adaptation of a beloved
nerd property are bound to spend a lot of time talking to the press about how much they love
it. Michael Bay, though, has never been one to play by conventional filmmaking rules.
"The movie can not have tracks. See the tracks? See the tracks?"
It's no surprise, then, that Bay has always been open about how he was downright contemptuous of
the "Transformers" characters before he signed on to direct "Transformers" in the mid-2000s.
As Collider reported, Bay recalled that he missed the boat on falling in love
with "Transformers" back in the 1980s because he was too young. When he was first offered
the chance to direct "Transformers" and attend a seminar at Hasbro outlining the
franchise's lengthy history, Bay remained skeptical of the property. As he recalled:
"I really thought, ‘What the f--- am I going to Hasbro for Transformers
school?' I thought I was going to learn how to fold up robots."
However, once he dove deeper into "Transformers" lore, Bay was entranced
with the universe. From there, Bay became a massive "Transformers" devotee, though he still
sought to make the movie appealing to the kind of "Transformers" non-fans that he used to be.
"Transformers" obviously wasn't Michael Bay's first stab at big-budget filmmaking.
Thanks to productions like "Armageddon" and "Pearl
Harbor," Bay had already become synonymous with expensive spectacle movies. However,
"Transformers" was no mere retread of what he'd done in the past. Most notably, Bay's blockbuster
filmmaking efforts before "Transformers" all centered on flesh-and-blood people.
That changed with "Transformers," which hinged its plot on towering robots that were brought
into the live-action world by CGI wizardry. Bay worked with animators closely and constantly in
post-production to make sure characters were as vividly alive as possible. Having to navigate the
finer nuances of animated filmmaking was uncharted territory for Bay at this juncture in his career,
but it was that unfamiliarity that excited him when he set out to helm "Transformers."
Forget the Decepticons; one of the biggest foes the Transformers had to overcome was
the Writers Guild of America strike from the end of 2007 to the very start of 2008. This
event disrupted the entire film and television industry in North America;
few projects were safe. Not even mega-budgeted tentpoles like "Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen" could be counted on to escape the writers' strike unscathed. In hindsight,
director Michael Bay has been quite vocal about how many "Revenge of the Fallen" shortcomings
emerged because of the attempts to make this blockbuster in the middle of the writers' strike.
Bay explained to Empire that the pressure of an impending writers' strike ensured
that the screenplay for "Revenge of the Fallen" was put together too hastily,
with the primary narrative assembled in just three weeks. Not only did this provide a time crunch
for creating a story in the first place, but the lengthy nature of the strike ensured that "Revenge
of the Fallen" missed out on several months where its screenplay could've been polished.
"I am directly below the enemy's scrotum."
Bay didn't lay every flaw in "Revenge of the Fallen" at the feet of the writers' strike.
He also blamed the film's incorporation of more fantastical elements as a key reason
it came up short. However, it's clear the writers' strike did this movie no favors.
It's often hard to tell the various robots apart from one another in the Michael Bay "Transformers"
movies thanks to the character designs, as well as the rapid-fire editing style of the
features. But even die-hard fans of this franchise would be hard-pressed to name or remember Jolt,
a blue Autobot who transforms into a Chevy Volt. Jolt's screen time in "Transformers: Revenge of
the Fallen" is minimal, he has no dialogue, and his only personality trait is having electricity.
"Jolt! Electrify."
Turns out, the character's lack of noticeable traits was a byproduct of how late Jolt was
added into the script. Screenwriter Roberto Orci explained to The Hollywood Reporter that Chevy
insisted that there be a robot in "Revenge of the Fallen" that could help promote the Chevy
Volt. Considering these circumstances, it's no wonder Jolt was so forgettable.
"Transformers: Age of Extinction" didn't address or correct any long-standing
problems fans and general audiences alike had expressed with the "Transformers" franchise,
but that didn't seem to hurt the movie's box office prospects. In fact,
"Age of Extinction" became the biggest feature of 2014 at the worldwide box office,
and the only title from that year to crack $1 billion globally. Further sequels were inevitable,
but given how lucrative this franchise was, Paramount Pictures wasn't just settling for
doing a straightforward sequel. This studio was now harboring ambitions of "Transformers"
becoming the next Marvel Cinematic Universe, an expansive saga spawning countless spinoffs.
In March 2015, news broke that Akiva Goldsman and Michael Bay, among others, were spearheading
a writer's room that would figure out multiple different projects set within the "Transformers"
universe. The ambitions were high, and the dense lore attached to the "Transformers"
franchise beyond the live-action movies gave these potential new features plenty of material
to utilize. However, the potential of this writer's room has yet to fully come to fruition.
While the spinoff movie "Bumblebee" did premiere in 2018, it took another five years for "Rise of
the Beasts" to jump into the fray. The underwhelming box office performance of
"Transformers: The Last Knight" in 2017 probably forced Paramount to pump the brakes on those
big plans for an endless "Transformers" cinematic universe, at least for a while.
"What was that?" "That was a mistake."
Michael Bay is no stranger to battle sequences, especially after doing a decade of "Transformers"
movies. But the filmmaker explained to Fandango that the fifth entry in this saga,
"Transformers: The Last Knight," contained the most arduous action sequence in his
career. Bay openly admitted that he'd never done a period-era medieval battle involving
knights before he shot the opening fight sequence of "Transformers: The Last Knight."
Most of Bay's big action sequences involved car chases and elements discernibly attached to the
modern world. Suddenly being thrust into the landscape and battle tactics of a period-era
setting was an incredibly daunting task for Bay. Bay also had personal problems informing
why this sequence was so challenging, as his dog Bonecrusher, who had appeared in several
previous Transformers films, died the night before he shot this sequence. The loss of a
pet impacted Bay profoundly, and it made the concept of going to shoot a big action sequence
the very next day a surreal experience. However, with so many practical tools,
including countless horses and extras, ready to go for the shoot, Bay had to buckle down
and direct a battle sequence like no other in his filmography. The result was a set piece that took
three days to shoot but did leave Bay feeling incredibly accomplished once it was finished.
Michael Bay spent an entire decade of his life making "Transformers" movies. A decade is a long
chunk of time, and while Bay didn't exclusively direct "Transformers" movies over those 10 years,
he still dedicated most of his life in that timespan to battling robots. Naturally,
with the benefit of hindsight, Bay has a lot of complicated thoughts
about immersing himself in one fictional world for so long.
Bay reflected to Unilad that he did have some regrets about being so ingrained in
the "Transformers" world for so long. He said:
"I made too many of them. Steven Spielberg said, 'Just stop at three'. And I said I'd
stop. The studio begged me to do a fourth, and then that made a billion
too. And then I said I'm gonna stop here. And they begged me again. I should have stopped."
"Five's good. Five's good. It is sad, you're right. It is sad, okay? But five's good."
Before he directed "Bumblebee," Travis Knight was a director and artist strictly
associated with stop-motion animated features. Specifically, he was the man running Laika,
the outfit behind groundbreaking films like "Coraline" and "Kubo and the Two Strings,"
the latter of which Knight also directed. His career up to this point was built on
totally original animated properties, which made the idea of him helming a live-action
spinoff of the "Transformers" movies a puzzling proposition. However, Knight
explained to Polygon that he'd been a massive "Transformers" fan ever since he was a kid.
This especially informed the prologue set on Cybertron, which was jam-packed with shoutouts
to vintage "Transformers" media, such as a more classical depiction of Soundwave. On paper, Knight
may have seemed like a strange choice to helm a "Transformers" spinoff. But his adoration for
those robots in disguise ensured that he was just right to give "Bumblebee" a spin as its director.