When browsing my local toy store recently, I came across some STAR WARS Transformers toys. The entire concept struck me as ridiculous and completely something that would enter the mind of a bunch of guys smoking weed and thinking of crazy mash-ups of their favorite franchises. But, I never would expect the connection between the two series to go beyond that. While producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has been known to make outlandish claims about the TRANSFORMER movies, even he didn't go quite that far.
In an interview with The Hollywood News, di Bonaventura did invoke the name of George Lucas' iconic series but not in quite the way you would expect. The producer was asked about whether TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION is a reboot of Michael Bay's trilogy that starred Shia LaBeouf to which di Bonaventura gave this explanatation.
“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, based on these comments, I guess di Bonaventura just wanted to generate a connection between STAR WARS and TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION without thinking about it at all. I am not quite sure which STAR WARS he is referring to as the prequels had characters from the first film in a story directly related to the original trilogy. And, the upcoming sequels are a continuation of the Skywalker saga and will, once again, feature actors from the original. From what I gather, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION shares no connection to the previous trilogy aside from the robots themselves. My brain hurts.
This continues to sound like Michael Bay and company are doing everything they can to separate themselves from the prior films without copping to making a reboot. In any case, unless the first trailer for TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION blows us out of the water, it will continue to be TRANSFORMERS 4.
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION starring Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer. Nicola Peltz, and Jack Reynor opens June 27, 2014.