Love them or hate them, Michael Bay's Transformers films have been huge at the box-office. The last two films, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction, broke a billion dollars each - which is why Paramount decided to put a writing room together (headed by Akiva Goldsman) and create a Transformers Cinematic Universe, not unlike what Marvel Studios has been doing since 2008.
The next movie, Transformers: The Last Knight will kick off this newly-minted film universe and see the departure of Michael Bay as the sole director of the franchise. Even though The Last Knight is the fifth Transformers film helmed by Bay to date, the filmmaker told audiences at the movie's CinemaCon 2017 presentation that he feels it's a completely new take on the property.
It wasn't just Bay's comments on display at the convention, as Paramount screened fresh footage from The Last Knight, too. According to THR, The Last Knight's CinemaCon preview begins in Medieval England during a battle of some kind, with flaming arrows flying overhead along with trebuchets launching their munitions. A lone knight, while drinking a bottle of alcohol, peers over the side of a cliff near him and notices a large robotic dragon fly by.
Another clip was set in modern day shows a few kids are looking at robot wreckage; presumably, this is the same scene featured in the second trailer for The Last Knight. They're accosted by a robot drone but Izabella (Isabela Moner) saves them from it, along with her cute Vespa robot buddy Squeeks, who is too damaged to transform. Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yaeger distracts the drone long enough for the others — along with another Transformer named Canopy who is on the verge of death — to get away. Cade himself is captured by military personnel, who try to get him to reveal where his Transformer friends are hiding out.
The final bit of The Last Knight footage shown at CinemaCon involved the character played by Anthony Hopkins, who lives in England. He also has a Transformer companion (known as Cogman), but this one is British and Hopkins' character implies was in World War I and jokes that it suffers from robot dementia. He also reveals that he met Bumblebee when he was a boy.
Interestingly enough, that implies that Bumblebee was on Earth for a very long time before the events of the first Transformers (when he was looking for the AllSpark). When we first encountered the character, he was a 1977 Camaro, placing him on Earth since at least the late '70s. This new revelation indicates Bumblebee has been on Earth since at least the '40s — if not earlier. It is also possible this is setting up that untitled Bumblebee movie spinoff, which could conceivably be set in the past. That might see him return to his 1977 Camaro version (or an even earlier model of Camaro) and would explain why the character is alone in his spinoff film.
NEXT: Transformers: The Last Knight Directly Connects to Spinoffs
Source: THR
