I completely agree that Bay does best with smaller-scale passion projects and I've love for him to tackle another
P&G/
13 Hours-esque project after
TF5. But look at it from Paramount's POV. If you worked for Paramount, would you really unlock the shackles if Bay was bringing in dumptrucks of money?
and bring in G1 fan designers and go all nostalgia for the next film.
Do something different now.
So which is it? Do want them to go to G1 for full nostalgia purposes or do you want them to do something different?
Give the TF franchise off to a bud or *gasp* an actual FAN of the Transformers universe.
That's not a guaranteed recipe for success, though. We could just as easily end up with a 3 hour long, virtually shot-for-shot and line-for-line remake like Jackson did with
King Kong. Or even
Jurassic World, which is probably one of the most angering movies I've ever experienced. Why do something new when you can just rehash what's been done before? Being a hardcore fan can just as easily cloud your judgement of the product you're making as
not being a avid fan. A filmmaker should be objective to the source material, not bowing down in reverence to it by sheer virtue of it being the source material. Respect it, but not be married to it.
Heck, 2016 is the perfect example of why nostalgia doesn't always pay off. For every
Force Awakens or
Jurassic World that relied entirely on catering to nostalgia, we also got the
Ben-Hur remake, the
Ghostbusters reboot, etc..
http://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/phot ... 722_v2.jpg
Plus, I'm a firm proponent that you don't spend a decade of your life working insane hours on five movies if you're not even remotely interested in the material that you're basing your story on. No amount of money would force that stubborn-headed Bay to do a movie if he truly didn't want to. Bay wasn't a "Transformers fan" when he was asked to direct, but that doesn't equate to despising the franchise. He's fully admitted on several occassions that he's
become a fan of the franchise from learning what it's all about.