The Transformers film franchise is one of the most profitable film series of all time, grossing $5.2 billion worldwide with seven live-action movies. However, with the exception of Bumblebee, the films were often critically reviled, with many reviewers taking issues with the plotting, scripts, attempts at humor, and deviation from the source material, with the pictures primarily focusing on the human characters and the United States military than the actually robotic characters.
While the franchise has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, it has also been nominated for 31 Razzies and won five. This is a film series that is the definition of a mixed bag, yet one that still has fans who see the series as a staple of the summer movie season, particularly the Fourth of July weekend, where the franchise historically performed very well at the box office.
Update August 7, 2023: This article has been updated following the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts to reflect the new Transformers timeline.
While the X-Men movie series is often criticized for its timelines and incontinence across the various films, the Transformers film series is a whole lot more confusing, with the films often making major ret-cons that lead to inconsistencies across the series. The franchises like to rely on using real-world history and conspiracy theories to build their mythology around. Various points in the series established different points in time when creatures visited Earth, ranging from 17,000 B.C. to 484 AD to even the time of the dinosaurs, and later revealed them to be linked to planet Earth itself. As such, the films are a bit of a mess to organize; nonetheless, this is the Transformers film series laid out in chronological order, as well as release order, trying to make sense of the series' complicated mythology of human and Transformer interactions.
Transformers Movies In Chronological Order
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Transformers: Age of Extinction
Bumblebee
Released in 2018, Bumblebee was seen as a reset of the franchise, as it was the first film not directed by Michael Bay. Set in the 1980s where the toyline originated from, the movie tells the story of Bumblebee, who befriends a young girl named Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld). The film was the lowest-grossing in the series, but was also the best-reviewed film in the franchise by a wide margin and set forth a new path for the series to take.
The first film in the timeline also poses some interesting timeline questions. It appears there were decisions made late into production that could make the film a reboot more than a prequel. The four major Transformers on Earth (Bumblebee, Shatter, Dropkick, and Blitzwing) all feature designs similar to the ones in the five Michael Bay-directed films that Bumblebee was intended to be a prequel to, but the faces of the Transformers on Cybertron in a fully CGI sequence (likely added later in post-production) feature designs closer to the G1 Transformers animated series.
The film features references to the original film series, like Sector 7, and a reference to a young Agent Simons (who is played by John Turturro in later films), and yet the movie's ending finds Bumblebee walking with Optimus Prime on Earth in the 1980s, about 20 years before Optimus Prime lands on Earth in Transformers. In 2019, Hasbro officially revealed that Bumblebee was a reboot. However, the connections to the previous films do raise the question if they will attempt to tie it together.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
2023's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the latest addition to the franchise and acts as both a standalone sequel to Bumblebee and a prequel to the first Transformers movie. The action takes place in 1994, meaning there is a 13-year gap between this and the main events of the 2007 film.
Based on the popular Beast Wars series, the story follows electronics expert Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) and museum intern Elena Wallace (Dominque Fishback) as they assist the Autobots in recovering a dangerous artifact known as the Transwarp Key before it falls into the hands of the villainous Terrorcons, who plan on using it to summon their planet-eating master, Unicron. The film also introduces audiences to a whole new roster of characters previously not seen in live-action form, known as the Maximals. The Maximals are a faction of Transformers that operate on the side of good and commonly take the form of robotic animals, including Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), who transforms into a gorilla. Meanwhile, old favorites, including Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Mirage, Arcee, and Wheeljack, all make a return
Rise of the Beasts was the second installment to be directed by someone other than Michael Bay, with Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. taking the helm. Despite being set before the Michael Bay films, none of the events in this film are ever spoken about or alluded to in any other installments. This is mostly due to the fact that Rise of the Beasts was made after the first five films. Yet the inclusion of Unicron does make for a major contradiction set up in Transformers: The Last Knight. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Bumblebee both occupy interesting places as they both seem to be prequels but also a reboot of the franchise.
However, there may be another reason that explains this. The fact that the plot revolves around the Transwarp Key, an artifact with the power of time travel, means Rise of the Beasts and Bumblebee could, technically, be set in a different timeline from the first five films, assuming the Key was used in some way in the thirteen years before the first film. If that is the case, it could nicely explain the G.I. Joe crossover that was teased at the end of the film.
Transformers
Released in 2007, Transformers was the first live-action film in the franchise. A combination of great teaser trailers that only hinted at the Autobots and Decepticons' designs and the promise of some large-scale Michael Bay movie action catapulted the film to become the fifth highest-grossing picture worldwide of 2007, grossing $709 million. The movie lays out the central battle between the heroic Autobots and the villainous Decepticons taking place on planet Earth.
It begins the franchise's love of tying the Transformers to historical points and events on Earth, as it focuses on a young man named Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and a girl he has a crush on, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). They are drawn into the conflict, as Sam's great-grandfather had an encounter that intertwined their fates. Megatron crash-landed on Earth looking for the All-Spark, the key to creating life for Transformers and is being held by a government organization known as Sector 7 (seen in Bumblebee), which the Hoover Dam was constructed around to hide. The Autobots and Decepticons have a massive battle in the streets, Megatron is defeated, and the Autobots make Earth their home, but the battle is far from over.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Taking place two years after the first film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen finds Sam leaving for college only to begin seeing Cybertron visions after an encounter with the All-Spark. Meanwhile, the Autobots are working with the humans to hunt down the remaining Decepticons, who are now planning to resurrect Megatron and launch a full-scale invasion.
Released in 2009, the film built on the hype from the first and grossed $836 million worldwide, although the critical reaction was extremely negative, with many issues taken with the film's script (which was rushed due to the 2007-2008 writer's strike, when Bay began filming without a finished script). This is pretty apparent in Revenge of the Fallen, as the film has a number of inconsistencies throughout. The movie ret-cons the All-Spark shards, presenting two of them instead of the one that was seen at the end of the first film and revealing it can be used to revive Megatron despite it killing him in the previous film.
Nobody uses the second shard to revive a slain Optimus Prime, instead needing a new device called The Matrix of Leadership which was left on Earth by the original Primes who visited Earth in 17,000 B.C. Megatron is also revealed to be working for a more evil Transformers, The Fallen, and he can only be killed by a Prime, yet it isn't clear what he has been doing all this time. Sam, a human, dies and goes to Transformers heaven, and the film's attempt to flesh out the mythology really fell half-baked, beginning a trend where later films seem to forget established history prior movies have set up.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Transformers: Dark of the Moon continues the franchise's tradition of having the 'robots in disguise' connected to various conspiracy theories, this time focused on the moon landing. It is revealed that the entire space race between the United States and the Russians was attempting to get to a crashed Cybertronian ship piloted by Sentinel Prime, the original leader of the Autobots who had lost his way and was going to align with Megatron to end the war. However, Megatron crashed on Earth, and Sentinel crashed on the moon.
After being awakened, Sentinel Prime betrays his fellow Autobots, kills long-established member Ironhide, and begins his plans to teleport Cybertron across space to Earth, where he will enslave humanity. Optimus and his Autobot forces defeat the villains, all while Sam proposes to his girlfriend Carly, as sometime between the events of the second and third film, apparently Mikaela and he broke up (yet the real reason was Megan Fox was fired by director Michael Bay for comments she made about the director). This marks the end of one chapter in the franchise, as Sam is not seen again (and later implied to have been killed... again), and the Autobot's moment of victory will be short-lived.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
After a three-year gap, 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction was an attempt to do a soft reboot of the franchise and allow for a new status quo change (even by subbing out the franchise's long-established band Linkin Park with Imagine Dragons). Following the events of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where the Decepticons invaded Chicago, the United States Military begins hunting down all Transformers, including their former Autobot allies. They kill the franchise's medical officer, Ratchet, and all the Autobots go into hiding.
The humans have aligned themselves with one Transformer, a bounty hunter named Lockdown, who has no allegiance to the Autobots or Decepticons and instead is looking to hunt down Optimus Prime because the Transformers creators want him. Meanwhile, a corporation has begun creating their own Transformers; one of them is Galvatron, who eventually is revealed to be the soul of Megatron, reborn in a new body.
The new human face of the franchise is Cade Yager (Mark Wahlberg), his daughter Tessa, and her older boyfriend Shane, who team up with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and a new batch of Autobots, including a group of ancient Transformers who turn into dinosaurs called The Dinobots. In keeping with the franchise's fascination with ancient history, this film brings it back the furthest, revealing that 65 million years ago, the Transformer's creators wiped out the dinosaurs with a device called the Seed that covered Earth with a metallic alloy called "Transformium." The film has a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Transformers: The Last Knight
The final film released in the present-day franchise, 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight, was intended to be a new turning point in the franchise. The producers assembled a writers room to come up with a variety of script ideas for the franchise to move forward, and the resulting film is smashing two different ideas the writers had: one with Merlin revealing that magic is actually Transformers technology and the other with Transformers in World War 2. The film reveals that Transformers have been living amongst mankind for centuries, their existence once guarded by a secret society of historical figures, the Order of Witwiccans, like the film's previous protagonist Sam Witwicky, who is implied to be dead.
In the franchise's biggest retroactive moment of all, after discovering that the Earth had been visited by Transformers during the age of the Dinosaurs and 17,000 B.C., the fifth film drops the reveal that Earth itself is a Transformers, the powerful villain Unicron. The film also reveals that Bumblebee, where his film featured him landing in the 1980s, is now shown fighting in World War 2, further cementing the reboot notion of the solo movie. Likely due to audiences being frustrated with the prior films in the series, Transformers: The Last Knight was the lowest-grossing film in the series at that point and, despite ending on a cliffhanger with the tease of Unicorn eventually rising, the franchise reworked itself, and it seems this plot point will remain unresolved.
Transformers Films In Release Order
The film franchise began in 2007 with the first five films directed by Michael Bay. Following the disappointing box office results of Transformers: The Last Knight, the franchise opted for a route similar to X-Men: First Class, going back and doing prequel films that also act as a semi-reboot of the franchise. With the exception of Bumblebee, all the films have been summer movies.
Transformers - July 3, 2007
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - June 24, 2009
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - June 29, 2011
Transformers: Age of Extinction - June 27, 2014
Transformers: The Last Knight - June 21, 2017
Bumblebee - December 21, 2018
Transformers: Rise of the Beast - June 9, 2023