Brian Goldner, the CEO of Hasbro, has revealed that a push for higher toy sales will dictate the narrative direction for TRANSFORMERS 4. He also revealed the sky is blue and that fire is hot. Oh and this banner.
Goldner was giving a talk to The UBS Best of Americas 2012 conference, which, by the sound of it, would put you to sleep quicker than Horlicks laced with Propofol. While banging on about maximising sales to the pre-teen demographic or summink, he got to TRANSFORMERS 4. He declared that although DARK OF THE MOON performed very well at the box office, toy sales were down, most likely due to kids already owning figures of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee et al from the previous two outings. No new robots, no new toys. So to really squeeze every penny out those fleshy goldmines which liberals refer to as children, TRANSFORMERS 4 will feature a whole new line up of robots in disguise, possibly as dollar signs, we don’t know at this point.
But this is not a reboot, as director Michael Bay was keen to stress. Here’s what the anti-auteur had to say;
‘It’s not a reboot, that’s maybe the wrong word. I don’t want to say reboot because then people will think we’re doing a Spider-Man and starting from the beginning. We’re not. We’re taking the story that you’ve seen—the story we’ve told in three movies already—and we’re taking it in a new direction. But we’re leaving those three as the history. It all still counts. I met with the writer before I went off to do Pain and Gain and we talked about a bunch of ideas. We let that simmer for a bit. He’s been thinking about stuff and now we’re getting back together next week to see what we’ve got and to see if it gels’
So very much like THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films, the story continues with new characters, leaving the story arcs of the first trilogy behind. This is pretty good news, really, as Bay could look at this as a fresh start.
So Michael, if you’re reading this, first off, sorry at the lack of ladies bending over cars Secondly, here’s how to make your next film better. And boy would it be easy to do that.
- Have a story.
- Have characters that the audience care about.
- Stop sticking your camera up ladies’ skirts. We get that you don’t like women, Michael, and that you look at them as toys. But if we want horrible chauvinism, we’ll watch a Lars Von Trier film.
- Make it so we can tell the difference between the robots. When there’s a big ol’ metal scrap, we wanna know who’s fighting who, instead of the CG clusterfuck we’ve had in every previous installment.
- If you’re lucky enough to have John Turtorro, for the love of God give him something good to do.
- If you have to do 3D (and that choice may well be out of your hands) give fans the option to see it in 2D, as it’s hard enough to see what’s happening at all, let alone ducking imaginary shrapnel from a screen that’s way darker than it should be.
- Oh and use the original theme, it’s a cracker.
None of these would impede financial success, if anything they would help the franchise make even more moolah. You’d get the regular viewers coming to see it, plus you’d get those of us who lost all faith coming back.
Let’s hope Bay seizes this opportunity for a fresh start and doesn’t just cast ladies he’s seen on a calendar and had a wank to.
TRANSFORMERS 4 is scheduled for release on the 27th on June 2014. And may God have mercy on us all.
