Summary
- The Transformers franchise has seen stellar box office returns but lackluster reviews.
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a franchise low, with even director Michael Bay calling it “crap.”
- The movie suffered from rushed writing due to the 2008 writers’ strike, with Bay disliking the mystical story elements.
The Transformers live-action film franchise has seen its ups and downs over the years, starting in 2007 with director Michael Bay behind the camera. He helped bring fan-favorite characters like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to life with bombastic action sequences that only he seems capable of delivering. Bay directed five Transformers movies, laying the blueprint for the following films under different directors.
Many of these films became fan favorites despite redefining some aspects of the titular robots in disguise, with the 2007 Transformers and the 2018 movie Bumblebee being standouts. Fans laud the best movies for the action between the beloved characters, and the excitement they offer viewers. Unfortunately, the franchise has also seen some terrible lows. Critics ravaged the later films, Age of Extinction and The Last Knight, which saw the series shift protagonists from Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky to Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager. But despite these being seen as the worst the franchise has to offer, the first sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is often regarded as a franchise low. In fact, even Michael Bay can’t stand it.
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Revenge Of The Fallen Was So Bad Even Michael Bay Called It ‘Crap’
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hit theaters in 2009, as the first follow-up to the smash-hit 2007 debut that adapted the toy line and cartoon into a live-action film franchise. The sequel even topped the first film’s box office returns, ensuring that a third Transformers movie was coming. Still, even with the movie dominating the box office, critics and audiences alike were underwhelmed by what they saw. The movie suffered in its overall ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, with each category falling around 30%, well into Rotten territory for both. Compared to the first Transformers, which has critic and audience ratings of 57% and 85% respectively, it’s a big drop.
Following the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, director Michael Bay spoke about the film’s quality while promoting the third entry in the franchise, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. As he told THR in 2011, the mystical story in Revenge of the Fallen “was crap.” He also delved into the effects the writers’ strike had on the production process, ultimately causing the finished film to suffer. Bay said:
The real fault with [Transformers 2] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers’ strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you’ve got to have a story in three weeks. I was prepping a movie for months where I only had 14 pages of some idea of what the movie was.
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Was Hit Hard By The 2008 Writers’ Strike
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen suffered for several reasons. Any sequel is looking to top the first movie, with new and exciting elements, and Transformers did the same. The movie added new characters, like Skids and Mudflap, who would quickly be criticized for their racist overtones. However, it allowed the villain, The Fallen, to thrive thanks to Tony Todd’s voice. Bay also believes that venturing into mystical story elements hurt the story, but the writers’ strike is the real reason why things couldn’t be better fleshed out.
The script for the sequel was fast-tracked to beat the impending writers’ strike, giving the team only a few weeks to put it all together. Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote Transformers, returned to co-write the script with Ehren Kruger, who would become a franchise mainstay, penning several sequels. Despite the three proving capable of stellar work, the rushed writing process led to a lackluster script. It promoted the “Bayhem” that audiences had come to expect, but missed with satisfying story beats, like killing Optimus Prime for much of the film’s runtime when audiences knew he would return by the end.
Michael Bay Is Reportedly Returning To Transformers
The Transformers franchise wouldn’t be what it is today without Michael Bay’s influence. He took a cartoon and toy line and transformed it into a global film IP that has spawned numerous sequels, video games, and merchandising. The director also helped define the live-action Transformers world, transforming what could have been a hokey cartoon adaptation into a must-see theater-going experience that has persisted for the last 18 years. While critics have never loved the bulk of the frantic action films, their box-office success cannot be denied.
Bay turned the Transformers into a multi-billion-dollar franchise, with their action and nostalgia proving to be a hit with audiences worldwide. Later films suffered from diminishing returns, which could be franchise fatigue or fans turning up their noses at a perceived lack of quality. Later franchise entries that Bay didn’t direct, like Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts, feature some of the best audience reviews, proving that other directors may have a better eye for what the franchise needs.
Still, Bay’s influence can’t be ignored, and if rumors prove true, he is developing another live-action Transformers film, which he also intends to direct. What’s next for the Transformers franchise remains to be seen, but with Bay even producing the animated Transformers One, his influence over the IP will likely be felt for some years.
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