$1.1B Blockbuster That Rocked Theaters 10 Years Ago Only Has 18% on Rotten Tomatoes

If there's a franchise that could have suffered a worse fall from grace than Michael Bay's Transformers, we've yet to find it. So promising after the first movie, and so overwhelmingly hated after the last, fifth one, it's hard to believe there was a hidden gem in there. At least in terms of commercial success.

Many believe it was the second film, Revenge of the Fallen, where everything went wrong. Affected by the writers' strike, those working on the script could not finish the job, so the studio decided to continue with what they already had. Inconsistent, hard to understand and badly paced, the end result hit the first low point and became the beginning of the end.

The third film buried the franchise even further instead of lifting it up. The fifth, Transformers: The Last Knight, was so bad that it even managed to lose Paramount about $100 million upon its release, considering the cost of marketing and promotion.

So how did it happen that the fourth movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, ended up hitting the jackpot in 2014, beating out The Hobbit, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Maleficent at the box office?

Transformers: Age of Extinction Box Office

The fourth installment of a franchise managed to earn $1,104,054,072 at the box office, making it the most commercially successful movie of 2014. Although it did quite well in the United States, it surprisingly managed to outperform itself in the second largest market, China, where it grossed $301 million.

This unexpected success can be explained by two factors. First, the original Transformer toys were very popular in China, not only with children, but with men of all ages. Therefore, the male audience was easily lured into the theaters. Secondly, a good third of the film was shot in China, which definitely helped to build interest.

In China, Transformers: Age of Extinction was released on the same day as the United States, leaving no time for people to gather more reviews.

If they could, they would find out about the overwhelming number of characters, action sequences and special effects that ultimately put an end to any kind of story that was supposed to happen.

The graphics and explosions were good, of course. But no one expected less from a movie with a budget of $210 million.

If you don't really remember Transformers: Age of Extinction but want to refresh your memory, you can stream the movie on Amazon Prime Video or Paramount Plus.