Michael Bay of­fers some can­did in­sights in­to the pro­duc­tion of 'Trans­form­ers 3' – ad­dress­ing the po­ten­tial fu­ture of the fran­chise as well as the rea­son he fi­nal­ly took the 3D plunge. Af­ter Michael Bay tore up the streets of Chica­go film­ing Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon, set-pho­to re­veals and oth­er new in­for­ma­tion on the up­com­ing block­buster be­came sig­nif­i­cant­ly hard­er to come by. How­ev­er, as Bay puts the fin­ish­ing touch­es on the fi­nal chap­ter of his ro­bots in dis­guise film se­ries, the di­rec­tor has be­come sur­pris­ing­ly can­did about the up­com­ing ac­tion flick – not just talk­ing up ex­plo­sions and 3D but dis­cussing the fu­ture of the fran­chise af­ter Dark of the Moon.

It's a new strat­e­gy for the no­to­ri­ous­ly out­spo­ken film­mak­er to own-up to pri­or mis­takes but Bay hasn't held back, ad­mit­ting that Trans­form­ers: Re­venge of the Fall­en was rushed and, as a re­sult, turned out to be "quite a mess." It's safe to say that the re­cent all-ac­cess at­ti­tude the di­rec­tor has been sport­ing re­cent­ly is a counter-mea­sure to help re­as­sure me­dia out­lets, many of which de­rid­ed the sec­ond film in the se­ries with heat­ed vigour, that Bay isn't above tak­ing crit­i­cism and is set to de­liv­er a much im­proved Trans­form­ers ad­ven­ture. Re­cent­ly, pri­or to a me­dia screen­ing of new Trans­form­ers footage, Bay took part in round ta­ble in­ter­views, and an­swered a range of ques­tions in­clud­ing his mo­ti­va­tion be­hind shoot­ing in 3D, ro­bot char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, and whether the Trans­form­ers se­ries will con­tin­ue af­ter this film.

Bay had, on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, de­rid­ed 3D film­mak­ing – ar­gu­ing that the bulky cam­eras would hin­der his fre­net­ic shoot­ing style. How­ev­er, in the round­table he was can­did about the mo­ti­va­tion be­hind shoot­ing Dark of the Moon in 3D – peg­ging the en­tire thing on 3D-en­thu­si­ast James Cameron: Jim, at the last minute, he goes, "Mike, come on!" This is like my idol, but he goes, "Mike, come on! We've done every­thing." And I'm think­ing, "I haven't done every­thing." He says, "It's a new toy, it's a new toy!" The di­rec­tor al­so hint­ed that while his Trans­form­ers tril­o­gy is com­ing to an end, that cer­tain­ly doesn't mean the stu­dio will sim­ply walk away. How­ev­er, even if more Trans­form­ers films get made, they'll be sans Shia LaBeouf: I think [Dark of the Moon will of­fer clo­sure]. But it still can be re­boot­ed. Not with Shia. He's turn­ing grumpy in his old age.

LaBeouf may have had rea­son to be cranky, since he'd al­so ad­mit­ted pre­vi­ous­ly that the film­mak­ers learned from the pri­or in­stal­ment and promised they'd pro­vide a much more in­ti­mate sto­ry and a greater fo­cus on the ro­bots. Bay seems to agree: They do [have more char­ac­ter]. And it's much more of a back sto­ry. This is a very in­volved ro­bot sto­ry. You just learn a lot more about the hi­er­ar­chy, and there's more about the his­to­ry of what they had in Cy­bertron. Leonard Ni­moy plays a great role. Like I said, he mar­ried Su­san Bay. I was al­ways scared to ask him.

Bay al­so dis­put­ed claims that the con­tro­ver­sial Twins would reap­pear (and pos­si­bly be killed off) in Dark of the Moon – claim­ing that the team had re­placed them with oth­er com­e­dy-re­lief ro­bots: Yeah, we got rid of that. There's two small char­ac­ters in the en­tire movie. They start out a bit goofy but they have a huge come­back. And they're fun.One is new, named Brains. [The Twins are] not even in it. Re­gard­ing an­oth­er in­fa­mous char­ac­ter/ac­tress that won't be re­turn­ing, Bay avoid­ed fo­cus­ing on the past and, in­stead, built up his new Trans­form­ers star­lette,Rosie Hunt­ing­ton-White­ley: With Rosie? Lis­ten, we au­di­tioned 500 women around the world, and it was just a whim. I re­mem­ber work­ing with her, and talk­ing to her just as a per­son, she's a re­al­ly bright per­son. She has this charm­ing Eng­lish ac­cent. She's just got a great head on her shoul­der. Denise [the cast­ing di­rec­tor] nar­rowed it down to 30 women. She goes, "I've got­ta tell ya, there's some­thing about this girl that is spe­cial." And it's al­ways cool to find some­thing spe­cial. It's al­ways cool for the au­di­ence to dis­cov­er some­thing.

Judg­ing by what we've seen of the film so far, there's def­i­nite­ly a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that Bay will suc­ceed in clos­ing up the saga with the most in­tense and vi­su­al­ly strik­ing in­stal­ment in the se­ries. Not on­ly has the film­mak­er put to­geth­er a strong cast of new ro­bot ac­tors, he's al­so culled some fan-favourite hu­man ac­tors to voice key char­ac­ters, in­clud­ing the afore­men­tioned cast­ing of­S­tar Trek/Fringe star Leonard Ni­moy as Sen­tinel Prime.

Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon hits the­aters on Ju­ly 1st.

Source: Film and Lyri­cis In­ter­ac­tive Lati­no Re­view