So Fox is out, but Shia LaBeouf is still very much on board as the perma-terrified Sam Witwicky. And like Bay and di Bonaventura, he’s toeing the party line that Revenge of the Fallen left plenty of room for improvement.

During recent press at the Cannes Film Festival, LaBeouf told reporters that, “When I saw the second movie, I wasn’t impressed with what we did…There were some really wild stunts in it, but the heart was gone…we got lost.”

“We tried to get bigger,” he explained. “Mike went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie…You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn’t matter. Then it’s just a bunch of robots fighting each other.”

However, if you’re thinking that we’ll be getting low-key introspection from the third film, think again, as Shia went on to rather confusingly claim that, “it’s going to be the craziest action movie ever made.” He goes on to stress that the body count will be higher this time, with “a lot of death, human death,” apparently high on the agenda.

And what of the departure of Fox? Surely a third set of love scenes would have been welcome when he signed on? “I love Megan and I miss the girl,” said LaBeouf to USA Today, “but Sam and Mikaela became one character, and here ... you have discovery again from a new perspective.”