10 Directors Who Could Take Over Transformers From Michael Bay

Of all of Gareth Edwards' talents as a filmmaker, what he is best at is juxtaposing scale. Whether showing us the enormousness of Godzilla trampling through the streets of San Francisco from the point-of-view of a soldier, or seeing rebel troopers fleeing in terror from some approaching AT-ATs, he makes you feel like someone on the ground level looking up at a behemoth you cannot comprehend. That sense of awe is what Transformers needs back.

Not to peg Edwards in a hole as "the prequel guy", but one of the spin-off projects in development for the franchise is Transformers One, a prequel set on Cybertron about the origins of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict. Edwards showed with Rogue One that he can handle a large-scale war movie, and an environment like Cybertron would allow for many new possibilities for both him as a director and the series as a whole whilst playing to his strengths.

Edwards has also shown a strong ability for establishing a world and its atmosphere, as well as adapting familiar ideas in a new context, with both Godzilla and Rogue One.

Letting him have the freedom to establish a new status quo on Cybertron would certainly free him from having to stick too closely to Bay's established aesthetic. And who knows? Maybe then that would be a great excuse to drop the Bayformer designs entirely and go with something closer to the Generation 1 robots.