Michael Bay knows that you didn’t like Transformers 2. He feels bad about it, too. Bad enough to really give the fans something they’ve wanted for a while – Shockwave as the main bad guy in Transformers 3.

Shockwave is the big purple robot with laser cannons for hands and a one-eyed face. Wikipedia describes him as ‘coldly and patiently looking for ways to overthrow Megatron, not for personal power (as Starscream would) but simply because it was logical for him to do so. Shockwave concluded that he should rule so that no emotion should prevent the Decepticons from conquering the universe.’

Bay hopes you like Shockwave better than The Fallen, who he admits to USA Today is ‘kind of a [shitty] character.’ He also knows that you didn’t think there was much funny in the second film, so he’s not going there again. ‘One thing we’re getting rid of is what I call the dorky comedy,’ he said, explaining that this includes the Twins.

Apparently this film ties in to the space race between the US and Russia, so I guess a hidden Transformer was part of that bit of history.  “The movie is more of a mystery,” Bay says. “It ties in what we know as history growing up as kids with what really happened.”

He also claims this movie ends his trilogy, and that it’s pretty final. “It could be rebooted again, but I think it has a really killer ending.”

Man, I remember a time when filmmakers working on sequels didn’t have to apologize for the entry that came before, when the softball question was ‘How will you top the last movie?’ It’s so weird that we live in an era when a movie can come out, be almost universally reviled and then get a sequel.