Ranking the Transformers Movies

With there being buzz again for a new Transformers film, I thought of starting this ranking which will update through the years as more movies get added. This ranking consists of theatrically released Transformers films. Be sure to let us know your ranking too.


Ranking of the Transformers Films with Theatrical Releases


7. Transformers The last Knight

With the previous film steering things in the right direction by finally having the robots actually feel like characters and not just background noise, I was legitimately excited for this film. Megatron was coming back as well with the best design we had seen for him so far in the series and it looked like Optimus could finally be the prominent character in the film, especially based on the marketing. I mean, you look at this and Optimus is the last knight, right... RIGHT?!?!?!?!





Wrong!

The last knight is Mark Wahlberg. You wondering why? Well it's because he doesn't have sex a lot. They spend some minutes discussing that very thing. Oh and Optimus, the guy on the poster? Not in the film much. The last film ended with him setting off on an awesome revenge mission in space and this one opens with the film showing us that he wasn't really made for deep space flight. This film is a dud with the most uneven tone of the entire series. Like having some really raw and visceral medieval action intercut with Stanley Tucci being a clown as a drunk Merlin. Tone deaf, truly tone deaf. There's just so much wasted potential here. Evil Optimus? Lasts for just six minutes. Cool new Megatron? Not there much, plays second fiddle to Quintessa. Barricade returns? Taken out without Bee even needing to transform. Unicron is planet earth? Not gonna focus on that too much. Cog is called a headmaster? He never transforms into anything and is just a butler robot. The submarine is a Transformer? Never transforms. Bee can finally talk again? He does, after we were told that he still can't, and after his two second speech he goes back to the radio voice.

This doesn't feel like a Transformers movie in the least. It looks like one of the writers in the writer's room had an Arthurian legend descendants script in the works and the rest of the writers just added Transformers to it. This film is just a junk fest of scenes and random ideas put together, avoid it "no matter the cost".


6. Transformers Dark of the Moon

My issue with this film is that it is so damn boring. Like mind numbingly so. The Transformers hero characters are relegated to the background here, even in the fight scenes and they seem to have no agency. The Wreckers are there for 2 minutes of screen time and mostly in the background of those 2 minutes. This is not a joke. The montage scene of Sam looking for a random job lasts longer (it lasts for 4 minutes). And I absolutely hate how they have to write ridiculous reasons for Optimus not to join a battle (and thus save some money on CGI), like getting tied up with ropes. It just makes this huge blockbuster feel so cheap. Speaking of Optimus, any hint of that noble warrior is gone here and he's just a murderer. I get that he is beyond pissed off in Age of Extinction, which gives a reason for his overly rash behaviour, but we don't have that here. Just a murder machine who executes his mentor by shooting him in the head point blank. That particular scene does not make him look heroic in the least. And once again, Megatron plays second fiddle to another villain. Also, the studio insisting on Leonard Nimoy to say his famous Spock line in the context of villainy made me want to hurl. Although the "homage" to the Columbia shuttle tragedy is probably worse.






5. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

One thing that pisses me off to no end with these films is the total disregard for the robot characters. The live action films treat the robots as just random characters we don't need to know much about and the constructicons are a great example of this. We see them in the beginning, they aren't introduced nor so they talk among themselves to establish anything. And then later in the film, we see Devastator, who you'd think would be made up of those constructicons. But he isn't. Instead, he is made up of construction vehicles lying around a pyramid which suddenly merge together into devastator. And during that time, you have the constructicons from the beginning fighting the Autobots. It's like the writers and filmmakers are going out of their way to show how little any of this means to them. The writing is beyond poor in this film with one of the key plot points being that only a Prime can defeat the Fallen, the villain of this film which Megatron plays second fiddle to. And while Optimus does beat him after getting some parts from Jetfire, I don't see why it had to be a prime and not just any other bot who was jacked up on extra parts.

And I hate how terribly cheap the film looks with its obvious cost cutting methods. There's an important scene where Optimus is resurrected and it's entirely obscured by a tarp.

All that said, there are some good things in this film. For one, Megatron's looks are a step up here in robot mode. I like how the tank treads incorporate into his feet and the asymmetry of his arms adds a real creepy factor. This look is the one that has remained the most iconic for Megatron's Bayverse tenure even though he changed look in every film. Also, that forest battle scene is pretty incredible. Not just because it is well done, but it lasts long enough for it to become this small pocket in the history of Bay films where the robots are the main characters. Sure Sam runs around, but he serves his purpose as indicating to the audience just how different Autobot and Decepticon ideologies are. In that scene, Sam is there not as a main character but just as a means to share more info about the robots to the audience, no matter how basic that info is (Auobot good, Decepticon bad). It's an awesome 3 minute scene that you can watch again and again on youtube with no need for what comes before or after and none of the films previously mentioned have something this good.






4. Transformers Age of Extinction

This film gets kudos for actually trying to fix major issues from the previous films. For one, the bots actually feel like characters with their own personality traits. Optimus is a full fledged character here, well at least as much as any of the human characters. Sure, it's the murder machine version of the character, but at least you know where he's coming from. All the Autobots get several lines of dialogue. I remember Protoman (a reviewer on youtube and a friend) reviewing the Drift figure and saying that the character probably wouldn't have more than two lines of dialogue in the film and this film proved him (and many others) wrong. Were they good lines? I'm not even going there, I am just happy these characters have lines. And speaking of the Autobots, they are colour coded this time around to make the action scenes easier to follow. And there are some pretty kick ass action scenes, be it Hound and Bumblebee's last stand, Optimus Against Galvatron, Optimus against Lockdown, the dinobot charge, flying around Chicago, Bee vs Stinger atop the robotic Pterasaur, lots of fun stuff. Plus the villains are good here. The bounty hunter Lockdown is rather threatening and I really liked Kelsey Grammer as an 80s type villain that is just obviously evil. We even get scenes of just the Transformers heroes talking and figuring things out with no human in sight. Crazy, I know!




3. Transformers (2007)

In comparison to the rest, there isn't much to say here other than I think it was a good first outing for a franchise branching out into a new era. Sure, the humans take centre stage for most of the film but it serves as an introduction to the brand and the new mythos of this interpretation. It does an ok job at what it's trying to do even though Bay's live action style was never something I was overly fond of, especially the idea that really cool stuff will be relegated to the background and that the Transformers are secondary characters with action told from a ground witness point of view. It was fine for a first film and that point of view even works well in that military desert scene vs Scorponok but I feel what worked for one film did not work for the entire franchise. And the CGI still holds up, which is quite an achievement and it shows just how cutting edge the film was when it first came out.




2. Transformers The Movie

This film is really special and I haven't cracked the code as to why it works so well for so many of us. I just know for a fact that it is extremely captivating to kids (Or those who watched it when they were kids). The drawings are gorgeous and the animation is good. It holds up very well and you can definitely tell that this is a movie rather than another episode of the show to the point where going back to the show will feel like a downgrade after seeing it. It also feels truly epic. You feel the stakes. I feel it does waver off a bit after Galvatron's initial attack with the remaining autobots, where three parties are split off into new worlds, but everything comes back together for a grand finale. The part of the writing that I find rather impressive is everything to do with Galvatron. It's not easy to bring about the idea of a different character also being a new version of an old character, and to do that without that becoming the main plot you are telling. Here, I feel they do it effortlessly. I love how Galvatron retains the memory of his previous self and is proud of his achievements, yet you see that this is a new persona at the same time. Just wonderful stuff all around.






1. Bumblebee

This may not be a revolutionary movie for most, but to me it proves that the Transformers franchise can truly inhabit the world of classic live action films without any mockery. The film itself is excellent for what it is, an Amblin film for today's generation of kids. It goes for the 80s aesthetic all the way by not only making it the setting, and giving the robots the more classic look and feel of that era, but also in giving us a film that feels a product of that era of film making and storytelling, like ET.

I love the world building etched into the dialogue. Like how Bee's sentencing by Blitzwing shows Megatron's ideals of "Peace through Tyranny". That first segment with Bee coming to Earth is just so beautifully done. That was originally how the film began in the script, when there was no Cybertron scene and while I think that Cybertron scene is all kinds of fun, I am really impressed at what Bee's arrival on Earth accomplishes in terms of storytelling and aesthetics for this new breed of live action Transformers films. They show us how Bumblebee scans and transforms and how that changes his own aesthetic through an action scene. Right after that it shows us just how bad the odds are against the autobots with the battle against Blitzwing. We see the advantage a flier has over a bot that can only transform into a car and and there are some nice shots contrasting their size, mirroring the larger war at hand. I love how Bumblebee goes to destroy his flight mechanism to ground him first. Plus how that fight finishes shows how the Autobots had to get crafty to survive and continue fighting.



We get some more awesome fight choreography at the end against Dropkick and Shatter, and the filmmaker even throws in a few moments of showing how a Transformers fight differs from other robots fighting, with using their transformation abilities as they fight. Plus you've got a great soundtrack and good human characters, and a solid performance from John Cena (who has BY FAR the best line in the film). I am just very happy this movie came out by the time I had kids (a boy and girl) since it's a great way to share this brand I love so much with them within the modern slew of entertainment. It's the Transformers film I can truly recommend to anyone and everyone.