Only 1 Transformers Movie Is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, And It's a Spinoff

Summary:

• Despite usually great box office hauls, the Transformers movies have never been considered quality cinema
• The entire franchise's Rotten Tomatoes scores prove it
• However, one movie managed to break the curse — unfortunately, it's not any of the "main" Transformers films

The Transformers franchise may be tired, but it has amassed over $5.28 billion in box office, inscribing itself in the movie history as the 13th highest-grossing film series of all time. That alone says something; however, one may never refer to the Transformers series as an example of a high-quality cinematic universe.

Critics were never too fond of the movies about giant alien robots whose biggest wow-effect was that they, well, were able to transform in a neat way. The franchise's Rotten Tomatoes streak does look rotten indeed: not a single movie with "Transformers" in its title managed to get more than 57% on Tomatometer.

Sometimes, audiences were a bit more merciful: for instance, the first Transformers movie that released in 2007 got 85% from viewers, while the most recent installment, Rise of the Beasts (2023) got even further and scored as much as 91% from moviegoers.

But only one movie of the franchise managed to become certified fresh, and the fact that it stepped away from titling itself "Transformers" may be an indicator of success. We're talking about Bumblebee, of course — the 2018 movie that decided to focus on a single robot and his story.

Bumblebee boasts an exclusive (for the franchise) Rotten Tomatoes score: 90% on Tomatometer and 74% from viewers! That's quite rare, considering that usually viewers were the ones to rate the Transformers movies higher than the critics.

Why Was Bumblebee So Good?

Some people believe that the recipe for a good Transformers movie is painfully simple (painfully for one particular director).

"I knew it had good reviews, but I'm pretty stunned at how well they were able to make a Transformers movie actually good. Of course, when you take away Michael Bay, it shouldn't be horribly hard. Regardless, the acting, story, and special effects were all very well done," Redditor dancingbriefcase said.

Others argue that Bumblebee took everything that the first Transformers movie failed to deliver and fixed all the mistakes — that's why, combined with all the good stuff from part one, the 2018 movie turned out so good.

However, when it comes to box office, Bumblebee is a record-breaker too, but this time in a bad way: the yellow autobot's story grossed the least, earning $467 million worldwide. Given that the franchise has at least two movies that easily joined the $1 billion box office club, this result is quite underwhelming.

But fans have an explanation even for this.

"It came too late. The Transformers franchise had finally burned out all the goodwill audiences, even general audiences, had for it. The movies had been too bad, for too long, and Bumblebee, despite being a really solid movie, was too little too late, and paid for the sins of Michael Bay," noted Redditor Richard_Sauce.

Where to Watch All the Transformers Movies?

If you want to go straight for the franchise's greatest, Bumblebee is available for streaming on Paramount+ and fuboTV.

The first Transformers movie is available for streaming on DirecTV, or you can buy or rent it on Prime Video. On Paramount+, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction and Rise of the Beasts are available. To watch Revenge of the Fallen, you'll have to go to Max.

Age of Extinction is also available on Prime Video.