Ehern Kruger Talks Writing Transformers: Age of Extinction

Posted on July 5, 2014

Ehern Kruger has written three Transformer movies which have all been monster hits. The newest film, Transformers: Age of Extinction, has been setting box office records, especially in China. The film has already grossed nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. Clearly, Kruger knows what it takes to translate a story about giant robots from space into a blockbuster movie.

Kruger talked to The Huffington Post about working with Michael Bay and how they came up with the story which features an entirely new cast of humans. Kruger was asked about pitching his ideas to Michael Bay. What he found out was that no matter how out there or huge his idea was, Bay would find a way to make it bigger and more over the top. That's what the movies are all about. He wants moviegoers to feel they got their $10 - $15 worth and he and Bay work hard to make the film a true spectacle. This time there are dino robots, which certainly ups the bar.

One big difference in this film is that there is no Shia LaBeouf in it. This time the human protagonist is no teenager. It's a single dad named Cade Yeager played by Mark Wahlberg, who has a daughter played by newcomer Nicola Peltz. Krueger said the father daughter relationship was the hook into the story. Krueger said that Bay definitely didn't want to have another teenage protagonist. He wanted someone more mature who had a family to protect, which would give the story more depth. Once Bay and Kruger decided the focus should be the father-daughter relationship it all fell into place. He explains, "...it became clear the film was going to have two protagonists, with Cade and Optimus [Prime] both in sort of parental roles, defending their families. It gave it a spine."

The franchise shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Kruger already has ideas about a character that fans want to see: the Unicron character. Unicron is a planet-size Transformer. But that doesn't phase Kruger in the least. He explained, "It's not that it's too big, just that it'll be onscreen whenever we figure out how to make it visually interesting and amazing."