Michael Bay Reveals How Transformers 4 Will Fit Into The Series’ Timeline
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Transformers 4 is quickly coming together. Director Michael Bay recently addressed fans’ concerns about the fourth entry in the extremely profitable film series based on a Hasbro toy line. A few rumored plot details have leaked, and just a few days ago Bay confirmed that Mark Wahlberg has signed on for the lead role. Now Bay has sounded off again, this time revealing that the fourth Transformers movie will, appropriately enough, skip ahead four years from the timeline of the third film.
Bay told gossip outfit TMZ how exactly Transformers 4 fits into the narrative established in the first three Transformers films:
The movie is going to continue four years from the attack on Chicago, which was in the last movie. It’s going to have the same lineage, but it’s going in a full new direction. It actually feels very natural how it’s going in that direction … We’re doing a lot of things that are really going to make it fresh and feel new.
With Bay locking up his Pain & Gain lead Wahlberg for Transformers 4, the director also addressed comments Shia LaBeouf made about leaving the Transformers series. In 2011, LeBeouf was optimistic about leaving Transformers and focusing on smaller, indie, and art-house movies. He said that he learned “a great deal” from working with Michael Bay and considers his time with Transformers as enjoyable. Bay praises LeBeouf by stating:
Fame is very hard on young people. I kinda helped raise Shia for three movies, and it’s really tough. Fame is a very rough thing and Shia’s a great, great guy and a great actor, and I have nothing but respect for Shia. What he’s saying is, he wants to be taken seriously. And sometimes when you’re in a blockbuster, people don’t take you seriously, I think that’s what he’s saying. He’s going through his more smaller movie stage.
It’s good to see an actor and director part ways on good terms after a contentious but bankable summer blockbuster film series. Maybe we’ll get to see a cameo from Sam Witwicky in Transformers 4. On the other hand, Megan Fox and Michael Bay’s post-Transformers relationship is frosty at best.
It’s still unclear exactly how connected Transformers 4 will be to the earlier film, since earlier rumors suggested it could effectively be a reboot, even if they don’t call it that. Also Hasbro said we’d get to experience new Transformers and characters in the upcoming film.
Transformers 4 will explode in theaters everywhere on June 27, 2014.
