Maybe Michael Bay’s Return to ‘Transformers’ Is a Good Thing

I was born in 1989. Things were starting to change (I assume. I was a baby). Culturally, and by culturally, I mean what I was watching on TV, I would find myself pulled back and forth between new shows and movies, and those that came out in the 80s. I was certainly exposed to your standard Saturday morning TV selections (Real Ghostbusters, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), but there are some things that completely passed me over. Cultural touchstones that I missed by just a couple of years. Transformers was a big one.

While I was familiar with the robots in disguise, they were hardly part of my life. The closest they ever came was with the Beast Wars cartoon I’d watch before school in the late 90s. Even still, that was a variation on the classic cartoon where the robots morphed into animals instead of cars and trucks. It also had cutting-edge, computer graphic animation that, uhhhh, doesn’t hold up the way my young eyes may have assumed. My next interaction with the franchise wouldn’t come until 2007.

Seeing the Transformers movie is stuck firmly in my brain because it lined up with a big life event. I was graduating high school when it came out, and specifically remember asking my then-girlfriend if we could leave a pretty rad party early to go see Transformers in theaters, not because I was particularly excited, but because I saw everything then, and it was the new hit on the block. And I liked it! I had a fun time that felt like empty calories, and my girlfriend was, rightfully, wondering how to break up with me before I left for school in two months.

The 2007 smash didn’t turn me into a massive Transformers fan, but it launched a global franchise that spawned seven films over 16 years and holy sh**. Look, I’ll be honest and say I went into this thinking, “Michael Bay directed the first three films, and while they went off the rails, maybe he should come back.” But, y’all, in my hurried research for this, I have learned that he directed five of them! There are five Michael Bay Transformers movies! How is that possible?! And why are people saying he’s making a return?!

Deadline is reporting that Bay is in talks with Paramount to direct a new live-action Transformers reboot. Granted, the man has not directed a film about the Autobots since 2017, but he has been a Producer on every single one. He produced Transformers One, an animated origin story about the famed bots that released last year! Returning to the director’s chair is different, sure, but the man has hardly left the world of robots morphing into trucks. He has, at least, been watching them change from a chair in the corner, only visible by the light of his cigarette (allegedly).

Bay stayed directing the franchise long enough to turn it into scrap metal. It wasn’t, like, winning awards before that, but there was lots of movie magic on display. Hell, Stephen Spielberg was involved for a bit! Robots were peeing on John Turturro’s head (I think)! It was a good time. Maybe Bay can return the films to those early days? Or, perhaps, he’s making a grab at whatever franchise he can get his hands on while movie studios are still hiring humans over computers?