Michael Bay considering Transformers 4 after all

I haven’t got anything against Michael Bay. When he gets his formula right, like in The Rock or the first Transformers, the results encapsulate everything that’s fun about the brainless blockbuster. Unfortunately, he all too often struggles to rein in his more self-indulgent impulses, ending up with arduous debacles like the last two Transformers movies. Did Dark Of The Moon need to be two and a half hours long, or have a Coen Brothers cast reunion thrown in? Nope. What should have been ninety minutes of awe-inspiring explosive spectacle turned out flabby and boring.

For those reasons, it was a relief when Bay announced he was stepping down from the inevitable fourth instalment of the major money franchise. A new director might have brought a more focused vision to a series that needs to go back to the simplicity of its ‘robots beating the crap out of each other’ roots. Unfortunately, ‘might have’ are the important words in that sentence, because Bay is in negotiations to return to the series after finishing his passion project Pain And Gain, with producer Steven Spielberg publicly endorsing him. In a statement on his official forums, Bay says he has ‘not decided’, but is ‘leaving his options on the table’ and has ‘several studio meetings in two weeks’. Sigh.