New TRANSFORMERS Films Won't "Squander" the Human Element
The Transformers film franchise is one of those things that's never going to go away. Regardless of how bad the movies are, they still manage to make a ridiculous amount of money. Paramount Pictures is gearing up to take the franchise to the next level with more movies that include spinoffs and animated films.
The studio has put together a team of writers to write these films. That team is led by Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend), who is currently writing Transformers 5. The other writers involved with the projects include Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man), Zak Penn (Pacific Rim 2), Jeff Pinkner (Fringe), Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man), Christina Hodson (The Fugitive remake), Lindsay Beer (Dig), Blacklist scribes Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Ken Nolan, and Steven DeKnight (Daredevil).
While talking with IGN, Goldsman discussed the upcoming films, and about the writing team that is working on the franchise, he said:
"The room was honestly as delightful an experience as I've had. I think that we were just lucky enough to have a lot of good folks, all of whom were very generous. You know, I lurked around Fringe, and I learned a lot there. When you have a bunch of people who you respect, who are smart and talented, all trying to help each other figure stuff out, it's good whether you're all in a car heading across country for a road trip or a marriage and a family or a writers' room."
He went on to talk about their approach with the films and how they are looking to make standalone films that are also interconnected:
"Our hope is that they are all interconnected and of course standalone, right? I think architecturally, the best -- I think I believe this -- the best serialized storytelling has integrity from start to finish of the episode, whether it be TV or a movie or comic book or novel series or short story series. You want to be able to satisfy both appetites -- which I think is very different from procedural or episodic. You want to feed the instinct for the short-term gratification and the longterm gratification. So we're trying to do both."
Goldsman was asked about the human character element of the franchise and if it's a crucial part of these films. In answer to that he said:
"Do I think Transformers can live without humans? Sure. Do I think humans can live without Transformers? Sure. In Transformers movies? Sure! But, fundamentally, there seems to be something really great about the interaction between the two species. I think that, in the main, I would suggest that that would be something you wouldn't want to squander. Although that doesn't mean that you couldn't do all sorts of things for a little while."
I've always felt that the human characters in Transformers have been weak. Maybe that will change with all these new writers working on developing the future of the franchise. It'd be great if these upcming films turned out to actually be good, but I'm not holding my breath.