Michael Bay somehow still has veto power over what happens in Transformers movies

Last year, in a moment of profound self-awareness, Michael Bay admitted that he probably made too many Transformers movies—not in the sense that Transformers movies are a plague on this Earth and that he, like Oppenheimer talking to Truman, felt guilty about the blood on his hands, but rather that he simply made too many of them himself. Bay explained that Steven Spielberg, who, don’t forget, has been an executive producer on all of these movies, told him to only make three and then stop, but Bay made five because they all made a ton of money even though the last two were awful.

And even though Bay has since stopped making Transformers movies, with Steven Caple Jr.’s pretty good Rise Of The Beasts (sort of) rebooting the series earlier this year, he still apparently retains a high level of control over what happens with the franchise. This came up in a Variety profile of Paramount CEO Brian Robbins (conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike began, and noticed by Transformers fan-site Seibertron), where he says that the “big idea” at the end of Rise Of The Beasts had to go through multiple layers of approval, including Hasbro, Spielberg, and Bay.

That idea, for those who missed Rise Of The Beasts, is that Anthony Ramos’ character Noah Diaz, after learning about teamwork and sacrifice from the Autobots, goes to what he thinks is a job interview only to realize that he’s actually being recruited into a top-secret government organization called… G.I. Joe. It lands as a funny reveal in the movie, rather than a “holy shit, that’s so-and-so!” thing that recent Marvel movies have tried (and largely failed) to pull off, but it’s fun either way and it makes the movie better. Naturally, then, Michael Bay is the one who thought it was a bad idea and refused to sign off on it.

Robbins told Variety that Bay was worried it would “cheapen” the other Transformers movies to tie them in with G.I. Joe, and Robbins had to call him “50 times” before Bay would talk to him about it. “I would not let him off the hook,” the Paramount CEO explained, “and when he finally stopped dodging my calls, we got him to sign off.” Now, it’s not weird in Hollywood for a producer to have some weird hill they’re willing to die on with a project, but it is weird that Bay is so invested in not cheapening this brand when he didn’t seem to give a damn about it when he was actually making Transformers movies.

Maybe it’s an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing? If it is, Bay should know that both he and the Transformers brand are better off without each other. Everybody seemed to like Ambulance, buddy! Make more movies like that and leave Transformers to people who like Transformers.