The new animated Transformers movie is ostensibly about the early lives of the characters from Hasbro’s 1980s toy line, but it also may be about a class uprising and civil rights. I think Transformers One even takes a jab at former president Donald Trump. Actually, it takes two: Main villain Sentinel Prime (voiced convincingly by Jon Hamm) says, twice, that the truth is what he says it is.

All of which is to say, Transformers One isn’t exactly as hokey as it looks. Sure, it’s basically a kids’ movie, but much like the Transformers cartoons of the ’80s, it does have a message.

Or, at least director Josh Cooley thinks so. Cooley, who won an Oscar for his work on Toy Story 4, left Pixar on March 13, 2020, to make Transformers One. He liked the script, which traces how Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from friends to enemies. But as the world went into lockdown as Covid-19 spread, Cooley found his story changing, if only slightly.

Trump was still in office when Cooley started working on the film, and he was having meetings with the producers and they’d “start these meetings off on Zoom just going, like, ‘Holy crap what is going on in this world?’” he says. Ultimately, the infighting they were seeing between Democrats and Republicans in the same family became an undercurrent in the film’s friends-to-enemies storyline, “because that’s what Transformers is.”

Is that a lot to put on a bunch of robots that turn into cars, even if their tagline is “more than meets the eye”? Yes. Still, I sat down with Cooley to ask what, exactly, led him to the Transformers movie he made and how he ended up having Scarlett Johansson as the voice of a robot right after she went toe-to-toe with OpenAI.

ANGELA WATERCUTTER: So, you won an Oscar with Pixar, built your career there. What was it about a Transformers movie that persuaded you to make this shift?

JOSH COOLEY: Well, first of all, Pixar was my first job.

You were a storyboard artist, right?

Yeah. First I was an intern in the story department, and then I became a storyboard artist and then just kind of worked my way up. I just kept wanting to keep going. So after Toy Story 4, I was like, “Well, I just worked on a Toy Story movie,” you know what I mean?

Yeah, “What now?”

Like, how do you top that? So I read the script for Transformers One, and I was like, oh, being that it’s an origin story, it was unlike anything that Transformers had done before. I love the idea of the relationship between these characters. I was like, “I have to do this.”

The most recent Transformers movies have been a combination of live-action and CG characters. The Transformers: The Movie, in 1986, was animated by hand. Transformers One feels like a return to animated Transformers, but it was all done with CG animation.

It’s hard not to feel the ripple effect when big shifts happen. One such shift came Wednesday when Lionsgate—the studio responsible for the John Wick, Hunger Games, and Twilight franchises—announced it had teamed up with artificial intelligence firm Runway for a “first-of-its-kind partnership” that would give the AI firm access to the studio’s archives in order to create a custom AI tool for preproduction and postproduction on its film and TV shows.

Runway’s forthcoming tool will “help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors, and other creative talent augment their work” and “generate cinematic video that can be further iterated using Runway’s suite of controllable tools,” according to a press release announcing the deal.

If that sounds like it might pique the interest of those who have been watching AI’s influence on creatives’ work, it did. Hours after The Wall Street Journal broke the story, writer-director Justine Bateman, who was vocally critical of AI during the Hollywood strikes last year, made a post on X that almost felt like a warning: “Over a year ago, I told you that I assumed the studios were NOT sending lawyers to the #AI companies over their models injesting [sic] their copyrighted films, because they wanted their own custom versions. Well, here you go.”

If anything, the new deal could serve as a test of the AI protections that unions like the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) got in their contract negotiations with studios last year. Under those protections, studios must get consent from actors before making a digital replica of them. Because, according to Lionsgate and Runway, the tool will be used only for preproduction and postproduction work, it’s within the realm of that agreement, says Matthew Sag, a professor of law and AI at Emory University.

“It seems like a significant development, but the movie industry has been using all sorts of technology and automation for years,” Sag says. “So you could also see this as a natural evolution. The difference is that now we are seeing more things we had thought of as creative and artistic being automated.”

The announcement came the day after California governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation aimed at protecting actors from having their work cloned without consent. Set to take effect next year, Newsom’s move comes at a time when video game workers, specifically voice and motion-caption actors, are on strike, partially over AI protections.

“We continue to wade through uncharted territory when it comes to how AI and digital media is transforming the entertainment industry,” the California governor said in a statement. “This legislation ensures the industry can continue thriving while strengthening protections for workers and how their likeness can or cannot be used.”

Even if actors’ and other performers’ work won’t be impacted by the new tools, it’s hard not to wonder about what effect new generative AI tools could have on those who work in preproduction and postproduction. Per the WSJ report, Lionsgate initially plans to use Runway’s custom tool for things like storyboarding. Eventually, the studio plans to use it to create visual effects for the big screen. According to Sag, “it’s impossible to know for sure which productivity tools will be job creators or destroyers,” but it does seem possible these tools could impact jobs.

According to Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, though, they will not. “Our core belief is that AI, like any powerful tool, can significantly accelerate your progress through creative challenges,” Valenzuela says. “It achieves this by helping to solve specific tasks, not by replacing entire jobs. Artists are always in control of their tools.”

Like Valenzuela, Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns sees AI as a boon to moviemaking, one that will help the studio “develop cutting edge, capital efficient content creation opportunities,” he said in a statement, noting that several of Lionsgate’s filmmakers were excited about the new tools without naming which filmmakers. “We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing, and supplementing our current operations.” What it will do to their future operations remains unknown.

We love a rom-com as much as the next person, but sometimes, all we want to do is watch some pure, unadulterated sex scenes. So long as a rogue sexy movie scene doesn’t ambush you whilst watching what you thought was an innocent movie with your family, we’re all for being transported to the land of lust in the form of a movie sex scene.

And while sex is sex, that’s not to say that all sexy movie scenes are created equal. We all know that there are some which go the distance in terms of getting pulses racing, and getting us hot under the collar, but others take a slightly different approach with such heart-pumping tension and subtle body movements that they leave you feeling like you might need a lie down.

Whether you’re watching solo, getting in the mood with a date (hello, Netflix and chill!), or looking for options for a girl’s night with your pals, there is something about a perfect sexy movie scene that makes us weak at the knees. Sure, you can check out the sexiest movies on Netflix to stream or even some erotic thrillers for a darker twist, but we have pulled together a list of the more specific moments in some of our favourite films that you can enjoy.

These scenes are just as steamy, passionate, and undoubtedly sexy, as when they first landed on the silver screen. So, snuggle down with some popcorn (or maybe your favourite silent sex toy – hey, we’re not judging), and enjoy the sexiest movie scenes straight out the gate. Who needs porn when Netflix and chill exists, right? Without further ado, here are the 25 sexiest movie scenes of all time.

Gabriella Ferlita, former Contributing Associate Editor at POPSUGAR UK, has over three years of Gen-Z lifestyle publication experience. She’s penned articles on entertainment, women’s health, relationships, beauty, and news. Previously, she advocated for women’s and LGBTQ+ issues at a social-first outlet’s Communities Desk. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan UK, Glamour UK, and more. A First Class Honours graduate from The University of Roehampton, London, she’s also a proud owner of a Toyger cat named Clarence.