Just about everyone involved in Transformers 2, from Shia LaBeouf to Michael Bay, has by now come out and admitted that the sequel wasn’t as good as they’d hoped. For instance in a new interview with USA Today Michael Bay calls the movie’s villain The Fallen “kind of a (expletive) character.” So maybe there’s hope for the third movie, since they all seem to have recognized where the last one went wrong, and plan to correct it. They’ll start by coming up with a better villain. A much better villain.

Michael Bay says the bad guy of Transformers 3 will be Shockwave. The character should be familiar to fans as he’s played several different roles in the Transformers universe, though he has yet to show up in the movies. He’s a Decepticon, of course, and at some times a follower of Megatron. He’s coldly calculating and he spends a lot of his time on the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron, where he eventually ends up ruling when the Decepticons and Autobots abandoned it for Earth. Since he’s not on Earth he’s never really gets an earthly vehicle form. He’s more of a giant laser cannon, with legs. I’m sure in Michael Bay’s hands he’ll be turned into a giant jumble of incomprehensible metal like all the other robots in his films.

Bay is also promising to get rid of the “dorky comedy” for the third film, and he specifically says John Turturro’s weird character and the debatably racist robot twins are “basically gone”, though there’s already been evidence to the contrary where the twins are concerned. You never really know if Bay’s telling the truth.

As for the film’s plot, USA Today offers this tidbit: “It delves into the space race between the U.S.S.R. and the USA, suggesting there was a hidden Transformers role in it all that remains one of the planet's most dangerous secrets.” Are Decepticons to blame for the Cold War? It figures.