While promoting the new movie Jack Ryan, Transformers: Age of Extinction producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura commented again on how the series isn't rebooting but simply going in a new direction. Really, what Transformers is doing is the same as what comic books do with new #1 issues that re-launch the same series with new costumes, new team and direction. The X-Men books practically do it once a year. Soap operas do it too. Continuity and canon remain but the writers may not really touch on it beyond a vague reference as needed for the current story. It is a decades long writing tool that really has never been done for movies before. If Transformers can pull it off, it might allow for other franchises to gain the confidence to stop thinking a reboot is always a solution.

It’s definitely not a reboot. It’s an interesting question about what you should call it. On a certain level it’s a continuation of the previous stories, in the fact that it acknowledges what has transpired before it. It acknowledges in the last movie, the destruction of Chicago, it’s actually something that carries through the sort of emotional repercussions of that, not unlike 9/11 has emotional repercussions in the real world. In a fantasy world there are repercussions to what occurred.

That plays into the movie, moving forwards with a totally different human cast, who doesn’t know anything about the other humans, it’s not a reboot, but a continuation, yet you’re continuing with a new cast and group of characters. It was a big decision to do that.

We miss our friends that we did the first three with, and they were great, and they probably could’ve done more. But the advantage of doing it this way is that it feels almost like a first movie. It’s a very different dynamic than I’ve seen in a movie, I’m very curious. I guess Star Wars did that a little bit, but not so close together, the way we’re doing it.’