After Bumblebee was released in theaters late last year, the Transformers franchise as a whole has seemed to head into an emotionally-driven new direction. But if a recent comment is any indication, a whole new kind of Autobot emotion might soon be explored.
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In a recent interview with Collider, Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura spoke about where the franchise could be headed next. One of the elements that di Bonaventura teased was for the titular robots to be depicted with a bit more autonomy and agency — and maybe even having a romantic relationship.
“One of the things I want to see, and I don’t know if we’ll do this particular thing, but I think we will eventually do a love story between Transformers,” di Bonaventura teased. “What does a love story mean? Definitely not sex, maybe not even kissing, but the idea that they would have that emotional crush has never really been brought in. That’s kind of the direction we’re going to try to head into, which is to give them human desires that, up until now, we haven’t seen much of. I think that will change the relationship with the Transformers.”
So while it sounds like Transformers might not necessarily be getting freaky in their upcoming big-screen adaptations, the notion that the robots have a range of emotion and personality will play a role. Previous incarnations of the franchise have leaned into that sort of emotional core in interesting ways over the years, ranging from the initial Transformers TV show to the recent comic reboot. A version of this was largely seen in Bumblebee, with audiences celebrating the surprisingly-emotional platonic relationship between the titular character and Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld).
“We may do some wild action, we’ll do action for sure in the main line, but it’s a different kind of attempt.” di Bonaventura explained. “I know we will hold on to a lot of the lessons from Bumblebee.”
“It’s not like we look at the elements of what we did before and go, ‘Well, let’s not do this’ or ‘Let’s not do that,’” di Bonaventura explained in a previous interview. “It’s more about how do you evolve the experience for the fans. Let the fan have a new experience. When we did the first movie, at first there was a lot of pushback that we weren’t doing it the way it was done before,” he added. “My feeling was always that if we’d done it, you would’ve gone, ‘Well, I’ve already seen it.’ So how do you evolve things forward is I think the hardest thing because you’ve got to retain why people love it, but at the same time if you give them the same experience, they’re going to be bored with it.”
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