By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
A new trailer to bring dino-mania to new heights has been unleashed today that shows Optimus Prime slugging it out with Grimlock. Their alliance is not sealed yet in this teaser for Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. And for fans following what each trailer unit has been unveiling, the Autobots and Dinobots will eventually have to tag team to deal with an old threat. Megatron will no doubt be back, but as for how (he was gruesomely killed in the last movie), that needs to be explained.
And the US Government looks like they are not happy after what happened in Chicago many years ago, when Sam Witwicky put the whole world into danger’s way again. He no doubt found retirement from this series when both he and Carly decided to settle down.
Just how much this former lead character will get referenced is still unknown. This new trailer shows the emphasis will be on new characters, Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a fix-it man buying a broken down truck, that his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) is not sure about the wreck and how it will pay for her college education. The father-daughter dynamic will no doubt be interesting to watch and that should make for a familial conflict to establish a better tale to get into.
However, the emphasis will no doubt be with what new struggles the Autobots will have to overcome once when the action picks up. Apparently, they are not welcomed at all when Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) states, “A new era has begun … the age of the Transformers is over.”
As for what that means, could he be like Silas from the Transformers: Prime animation? Will there be a similar organization like MECH who wants to cyberform the human race?
When the Allspark is gone and not every plot detail is revealed, the purpose the Cybertronians have for life on any planet will simply be on survival. The previous movie was about ensuring continued existence for the bots even though that meant dooming many of Earth’s inhabitants.
The Age of Extinction subtitle is going to be about more than just the humans dying off again. It will mark the Dinobots big screen debut. Just how long they will live for will depend on what writer Ehren Kruger and director Michael Bay has planned. As for how they came to being, that can be of either two theories — they were made by Shockwave in the Transformers: Prime continuity or they will follow after the Generation 1 universe where they were made by the Autobots. Bay most likely has a new origin in store since part of the story looks like it will take place in the Gobi Desert located outside China. The previous trailer showed Optimus riding Grimlock where they explode out of what appears to be part of the Great Wall of China.
When this film is a joint collaboration with Paramount Pictures, di Bonaventura Pictures, Hasbro, China Movie Channel and Jiaflix Enterprises to expand the world-wide audience, this film will no doubt be more than just about robots in disguise. It will be about robots looking for a new sanctuary if what the diplomat says is true. Apparently humanity does not need the Transformers anymore.
And that can lead to a decent type of story conflict to drive this new trilogy forward.
