Five Key Factors Contributing to the Decline of the Live-Action Transformers Franchise

As of 2023, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” revealed shortcomings compared to Michael Bay’s earlier installments, suggesting that the artistic challenges of the franchise persist. The live-action saga appears to be irreparably damaged, unable to escape its negative cultural perception or the persistent issues tied to the “Transformers” brand, despite the refreshing take offered by 2018’s “Bumblebee.”

Several factors contribute to the decline of this franchise in live-action format. Primarily, a lack of consistent quality has undermined its success. The films are burdened with an overly complex lore that fails to provide emotional substance to the robotic characters. Long-time fans can readily list the ways the franchise has faltered, with its unique, eccentric style unable to salvage its tarnished reputation.

The original 2007 “Transformers” film introduced an engaging concept to appeal to contemporary audiences. It intertwined the robots with human history, suggesting a Decepticon was behind the destruction of the Beagle 2 Mars Rover, and that the Hoover Dam was constructed to hide Megatron. These creative elements resonated with viewers, encouraging sequels to explore similar alternate-history narratives, attributing key historical events to the Transformers.

The original “Transformers” film from 2007 introduced a cute idea to make the feature more accessible and relevant to modern moviegoers. Some of these robots in disguise would’ve directly and secretly intersected with human history. Thus, a Decepticon was revealed to have destroyed the Beagle 2 Mars Rover, while the Hoover Dam was built just to conceal the nefarious Megatron. These elements proved popular enough to inspire future sequels to conjure up their own weirdo alternate-history concepts, positing that the Transformers were responsible for key facts of mankind’s past.

For example, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” establishes that the mid-20th-century Space Race was all about uncovering crashed-landed Transformers on the Moon. What was once a cutesy way of making Optimus Prime and company relevant to newcomers eventually spiraled out of control to impenetrable results. 2017’s “Transformers: The Last Knight” even introduced a secret society that revealed how all of human history, from Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad to the death of Adolf Hitler, involved Transformers.

All of this madness resulted in an increasingly complicated and convoluted lore that general audiences couldn’t just hop into if they missed a movie. Plus, all this mythos didn’t end up affecting the big climactic moments of titles like “The Last Knight,” which just made it extra confusing why so much screen time was spent on this material. Despite remaining ridiculous action films with severe screenwriting issues, the live-action “Transformers” movies were eventually tripped up by massive lore-based problems. 

The first Michael Bay “Transformers” feature established an M.O. for these titles: Human characters were always front and center in the narrative. Teenager Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) was the first of countless flesh-and-blood Earthlings who were the central focus of the “Transformers” adventures, rather than the titular robots. Extensive screen time was dedicated to characters like Witwicky’s kooky parents or T.J. Miller’s cameo as a mechanic, while robots like Arcee and Jolt languished in the background as bit players. It was an odd decision that seemed to be another way of making the Transformers world palatable to a broader audience.

Bizarrely, though, this emphasis on human characters above all others didn’t mean these figures necessarily got optimal treatment in the various “Transformers” movies. Seemingly pivotal characters like Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz) would just suddenly vanish from the saga despite previously being established as major players. The “Transformers” films loved human characters, but also didn’t love keeping them on-screen for multiple installments. Any crumbs of character arcs for franchise mainstays, meanwhile, would go nowhere.

In this respect, moviegoers got the worst of both worlds. They got too many humans in their robot action films, while the humans that did show up were one-dimensional and could vanish at a moment’s notice. Compare this to sagas like “The Lord of the Rings,” where audiences fell in love and bonded with key characters over multiple films. In contrast, it was impossible to get people invested in the central “Transformers” players for the long haul.

Every “Transformers” movie, from the worst to the best, is full of gigantic action sequences. This is baked into the DNA of these projects that will forever live in the shadow of explosion maestro Michael Bay. Initially, these installments culminated in big action sequences where a single major city, like Los Angeles or Chicago, became a battleground for Autobot and Decepticon brawls. As the desire to constantly up the stakes refused to simmer, these “Transformers” installments eventually delivered storylines and adversaries that were just impossible to get invested in.

Post-“Dark of the Moon,” especially, every “Transformers” movie has the exact same problem of going so big in their respective finales that it’s hard to latch onto anything that’s happening. “The Last Knight” especially succumbed to this problem, with its ending hinging on Earth actually being a hibernating Unicron. Contending with a planet-sized threat was just too enormous to either take seriously or believe that Mark Wahlberg and some robots could actually defeat. Without recognizable landmarks or a more contained backdrop for all the action to transpire in, everything becomes a CG mush.

Even “Rise of the Beasts” suffered from this issue when it brought back Unicron to inspire unengaging tension, while its finale took place in a drably colored crater in Peru. With the “Transformers” films incessantly amping up the scope, eventually, they became impossible to grasp or get invested in. Once that happened, audiences easily tuned out these noisy adventures.

A byproduct of the “Transformers” films constantly emphasizing the human characters above everyone else was that the Transformers themselves were often just background props. If figures like Ironhide or The Fallen were lucky, they could deliver exposition to human protagonists or get one slow-mo action beat. Otherwise, only Optimus Prime or Bumblebee ever got significant screen time among the “Transformers” robots. Fan-favorite characters like Arcee or the Dinobots were barely around, let alone exuding discernible personalities.

This wasn’t just frustrating for long-time “Transformers” fans. It also gave audiences nobody to latch onto in the middle of summer blockbuster chaos. There was never any personality or nuance to the towering CG creatures that the “Transformers” movies supposedly revolved around. Even after so many movies, these robots remained either barely defined or easily replaceable. Regarding the latter problem, just look at how easily characters like Ratchet were ditched after “Dark of the Moon.”

The apathy the “Transformers” movies felt towards their central mechanical characters proved inevitably infectious. If the people behind these features didn’t care about these aliens, why should viewers? Over time, this flaw proved fatal to the film franchise, especially given the many other modern movies (like “The Wild Robot”) with superior, more emotionally rich robotic characters. With the “Transformers” movies treating the robots as an afterthought, moviegoers quickly also developed indifference to these characters and their cosmic struggles. 

The “Transformers” movies have never been acclaimed. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” especially is a classic example of a movie that was a box office hit despite terrible reviews. Right from the start, these features were lambasted for disorienting editing, poor characters, and jarring tonal shifts. Still, that didn’t stop the initial three “Transformers” movies from becoming massively lucrative endeavors. Plus, the original “Transformers” title from 2007 did get extremely positive buzz from audiences. Today, it’s even held up as significantly more competent than its follow-up’s.

Residual goodwill from the original “Transformers” and the novelty of seeing increasingly massive Michael Bay spectacles could only take this franchise so far. Eventually, the poor word-of-mouth caught up with the franchise with “Transformers: The Last Knight.” A decade after the initial “Transformers,” the artistic shortcomings of these movies had finally become unavoidable. Plus, “Last Knight” opened in a summer with vastly superior blockbuster options like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” “War for the Planet of the Apes,” and “Wonder Woman.”

The “Transformers” franchise took a box office dip with “Rise of the Beasts,” indicating that a six-year absence from the big screen hadn’t rekindled the passion audiences once felt for these movies. These films once had enough novelty (plus the then-fresh positivity associated with the original “Transformers”) to overcome bad reviews. Now, though, the live-action side of this saga is tainted by perceptions of artistic inadequacy impossible to shake off.