When it was announced in February 2012 that a fourth Transformers film was in development, a lot of people asked the question, “really?” While the first three certainly made enough cash at the box office, they came across as “goofy”, were thin on plot and some of the robots seemed to have more personality than the actors. Maybe that was all intentional. Teens have a pretty short attention span these days. Technically, Michael Bay is brilliant. He has a fantastic eye for detail, pretty women and knows how to make stuff explode in spectacular fashion.

Given that there is an entirely new cast we have been left to speculate, is this a reboot? A prequel? A sequel? Just when, where and how are the films connected, if at all? While talking about his new film ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’ in an interview with The Hollywood News, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura briefly addressed some these burning questions.

‘It’s definitely not a reboot. It’s an interesting question about what you should call it. On a certain level it’s a continuation of the previous stories, in the fact that it acknowledges what has transpired before it. It acknowledges in the last movie, the destruction of Chicago, it’s actually something that carries through the sort of emotional repercussions of that, not unlike 9/11 has emotional repercussions in the real world. In a fantasy world there are repercussions to what occurred.

That plays into the movie, moving forwards with a totally different human cast, who doesn’t know anything about the other humans, it’s not a reboot, but a continuation, yet you’re continuing with a new cast and group of characters. It was a big decision to do that.

We miss our friends that we did the first three with, and they were great, and they probably could’ve done more. But the advantage of doing it this way is that it feels almost like a first movie. It’s a very different dynamic than I’ve seen in a movie, I’m very curious. I guess Star Wars did that a little bit, but not so close together, the way we’re doing it.’

So it’s definitely going to be after the devastating events of ‘Dark of the Moon’ but with a fresh new story arc and cast. Bay has promised that ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ will also be an altogether “more cinematic” movie than the ones that have come before and “there won’t be any “goofiness” in this one..” We can only hope….. Perhaps we’ll see a more mature film with a bit more emphasis on story and character development this time around. We still want big shiny robots too, of course, and it looks like we’ll be getting plenty of those with Dinobots rumored to be on the cards. Mark Wahlberg certainly has the chops to be a strong lead, and with Nicola Peltz, Sophia Myles and Abigail Klein in the new cast there will be plenty of eye candy and explosions for everyone.

Sources: Cinema Blend