A few days ago, the latest trailer of Transformers 5: The Last Knight dropped for all the world to see. Except that not very many people cared about it. I know I didn’t. It’s a dramatic reverse of fortune for a movie franchise that got off on the highest possible note with the first Transformers movie. Since that wildly successful first run, succeeding movies have gotten steadily worse, culminating in the abomination that was Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. So as we gear up for The Last Knight’s release next month, I’ll cut to the chase and just say it outright: it’s time to put an end to the movie franchise.
It hurts me to say because the Transformers cartoons from the 1980’s were a staple in my household every weekend. I grew up playing with Optimus Prime and Megatron action figures. When the first movie came out in 2007, my friends and I literally gave it a standing ovation when Linkin’ Park’s “What I’ve Done” blasted in the theater. The second movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was also pretty good, but not better than the first one. But after that, things started going off the rails. Transformers: Dark of the Moon turned into a snoozefest and Age of Extinction was downright unwatchable, even with the addition of Mark Wahlberg as the new human lead. If a certified Hollywood A-lister like Marky Mark can’t save your franchise, maybe it’s time to just call it a day and send the Autobots to retirement.
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The ship has sailed on the Transformers movie franchise
I can point to a number of different reasons why the Transformers franchise should just end its current run on five movies. The first and most obvious is the deteriorating quality of the movies. The first one was incredible. The second was pretty good. The third was boring. The fourth was unbearable. That’s not the kind of trajectory in quality you’d like to see in a franchise. I don’t know how the fifth movie is going to be, but it’s safe to say that my expectations are at an all-time low.
It’s pretty damning that in a time of sustained success for blockbuster movie franchises, the Transformers franchise has not elevated itself the way other franchises have. What’s more perplexing is that the franchise itself has a very strong fan base that cuts across numerous generations of fans. Why it can’t have the same kind of passionate following as the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the Fast and Furious franchise is beyond me. I mean, if you thought Warner Bros.’ handling of the DC Universe is bad, Paramount has done a worse job on the Transformers franchise.
I’m upset about this because if for nothing else, the franchise is the only one in Hollywood today that can combine two of my biggest passions: cars and robots. Marvel can do that, but it has no reason to. Fast and Furious can’t do that unless Dom Toretto reveals himself to be an alien life form in Fast 9. It’s only Transformers that can bring some of the finest and most powerful cars together in a movie and have these same exotics turn into giant robots and start fighting one another. The whole thing is awesome if done properly.
Sadly, the opposite has happened. Blame it on predictable and self-repeating storylines or the over-reliance on explosives and what-not. There are so many things wrong with the franchise that it’s hard to imagine The Last Knight being any different than the previous two movies. I’m still going to watch it though because I’m still a sucker for high-priced cars turning into robots. But if this movie doesn’t live up to my already subpar expectations, I don’t know where the franchise goes from here.
Oh wait, I do.