The Creators were mysterious biomechanical extraterrestrials introduced in Transformers: Age of Extinction as unseen antagonists. Plans to expand on their backstory in subsequent installments were thrown out alongside the writer who came up with them.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
In the opening scene of the film a large group of creators are seen arriving on Earth in the time of the dinosaurs by way of industrial starships, ultimately descending upon prehistoric Antarctica. There the group expel seeds from their ships whilst flying low to the ground, with these seeds incinerating the surfaces of a number of valleys before quickly cooling to reveal the resulting elemental metal produced.
Later on in the film, the main antagonist to the Autobots, Lockdown, is pressed by his human ally, Harold Attinger, to reveal who hired him to capture Optimus Prime. Lockdown is vague in his answer, with him seemingly implying that his employers are evolved to an extent that humans cannot comprehend. Once he captures Optimus, Lockdown reveals to him that the Creators are the ones who want him collected and brought to them, confirming them to be his employers.
After Optimus Prime is locked up in the Knight’s Temenos, Lockdown explains the Creators’ motivations in a way that can only be understood with unavailable context. He says that they want to sweep their chessboard clean because interspecies mixing has upset the cosmic balance. In an earlier scene, Lockdown mentioned that the Autobots and Decepticons were making a mess out of the universe with their war, though how exactly this connects to the aforementioned cosmic balance is unknown.
When asked about by his new human companions about the Seed that Cemetery Wind acquired after he escaped Lockdown’s ship, Optimus explains that what was shown happening on Earth in the opening scene of the film happened to thousands of other planets sixty million years ago when his creators began collecting elemental metal to make him and all other transformers. While he speaks, footage that expands on the opening scene is shown that reveals the industrial starships collecting all the elemental metal they produced.
As he addresses the Dinobots to rally their support in putting a stop to Galvatron, Optimus makes mention of the Creators. He explains that they created the transformers as slaves and that they now want their creations extinguished, meaning wiped out. Optimus claims that if the Dinobots don’t join forces with him they will not survive as the Creators pose that much of a threat. Despite this, Optimus blasts off into space alone at the end of the film to openly challenge them.
Inspiration
Fans may point to the Quintessons from Transformers mythology as the direct inspiration for the Creators, but that may not entirely be the case. Transformers: Dark of the Moon arrived to cinemas in 2011 and as such the earliest talks for the next installment must have occurred during the same year. Another high-budget sci-fi film that came out that year was Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. That film was about the search for the alien creators of humanity dubbed “The Enginners” by the scientists spearheading the expedition. Many parallels can be made between the Engineers and the Creators, such as their methods of creation and their desire to destroy what they’ve created. No official statement proves this however.
Interview Quotes
Unlike Prometheus where everything that was supposed to be explored in sequels was explained by the film’s writers their press tour, the writer of Transformers: Age of Extinction, Ehren Kruger, remained very tight lipped regarding what he was planning for future installments during his press tour. Despite this he did say a few notable things in reference to the Creators.
When commenting on wanting to explore the origins of the transformers, Ehren Kruger implied that their creators had not intended for them to be sentient. He said:
“Early on we started talking about themes of creation and origin stories, and that led us to thematically kind of wanting to explore the origins of the transformers themselves and Optimus and whether sentient alien robots were the thing that was intended or whether that was someone else’s plan gone awry.”
Next, when asked about the initial concept of the film, Ehren Kruger seemingly implied that the Creators were responsible for the construction of Cybertron. He said:
“It was a story about human scientists trying to break the genome of transformers and wanting to play God, and then through that theme exploring who did play God in terms of where these transformers and Cybertron and their beginnings came from.”
Lastly, when asked if the Creators created humanity, Ehren Kruger jokingly pretended to allude to that being a possibility, though maybe not. He said:
“Well, it’s an interesting question. An interesting question. We’re one of many-many planets in the universe, right? Why do we keep crossing paths?”