Setting a new level of artistic restraint for the fourth edition of his big-robot-go-smash franchise, director Michael Bay paused for a rare moment of loud reflection with the L.A. Times to outline how Transformers 4 will be a different, more modest model from all previous Transformers movies. For one thing, as previously reported, it will feature an all-new cast of men and lingerie models gazing skyward while CGI buildings crumble and giant robots give speeches—though despite both an all-new cast of disposable humans and Bay's recent, ominous declaration that the fourth film would set the franchise up "for the next guy," he took pains to say that it was not a reboot. "We’re taking the story that you’ve seen—the story we’ve told in three movies already—and we’re taking it in a new direction. But we’re leaving those three as the history. It all still counts," Bay said, thus assuaging viewers concerned that the film will not respect the established mythology of the metal guys and the bad metal guys they fight sometimes, like the gray one.