The third installment of the Transformers franchise, tentatively titled Transformers 3 and scheduled for release on July 1, 2011, will be the last and it will be in 3D.
In an early set visit with USA Today, director Michael Bay and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura makes excuses for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and promises about the next in a surprisingly candid interview.
This open, honest cooperation is a change of pace from Bay’s poorly-executed “misinformation” campaign before the last sequel and seems to fit the team’s new direction for the threequel. Michael Bay has objected to 3D in the past — just as he complained about Blu-ray — but no word on whether he’ll be shooting the movie for the third dimension or if it will be converted in post-production. The pair made some guarded apologies for Fallen’s mess. Well, sort of. Bay accepts the criticism in one sentence and then blames the writer’s strike in the same breath.
“It was very hard to put [the sequel] together that quickly after the writers’ strike [of 2007-08].” di Bonaventura reiterated this and added, “We tried to do too many things in the second movie, which didn’t give enough time in any one of them. We were constantly jumping to the next piece of information, the next place.”
Bay admitted the Fallen is “kind of a shit character,” but says the new villain will be fun for fans of the ’80s cartoon series. Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and his new love interest (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) will run from the destructive forces of Shockwave, a logical, calculating Decepticon capable of shifting in a 35-foot ray gun. His character’s continuity is inconsistent, but in the original cartoon Shockwave becomes the leader of Cybertron, the robot homeworld of the Transformers, and builds a “space bridge” to transport the planet near Earth.
The director also said they’re throwing out all the “dorky comedy” like the controversial Twins and presumably (hopefully) other gags like giant robots urinating on humans or posessing swinging wrecking ball testicles. The screenplay is described as more of a mystery and a coming-of age-story for LaBeouf’s character, who says the line “I’ve saved the world twice, but I can’t get a job,” according to di Bonaventura.
It will also tie into the space race between the U.S.S.R. and the United States from 1957 to 1975, suggesting maybe the Autobots had something to do with scientific advancements. Finally, a lunar landing conspiracy theory people can really get behind. “As a trilogy, it really ends,” Bay said. “It could be rebooted again, but I think it has a really killer ending.”
-NewsInFilm
