I wanted the first [three] Transformers to be very suburban and less cool," the director told Yahoo! Movies while talking about next year's fourth Transformers installment. "This is a much more cinematic one. I focused on keeping this one slick. There won't be any goofiness in this one. We went a bit too goofy [on the last one].
A bit of an odd statement since most fans consider Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to be the least serious of the previous three films, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon [the last one] being far more ominous.