I'm of the opinion that these movies keep getting worse and worse (thanks Ehren Kruger). Besides Kruger, I attribute that to three other factors: each movie is not as funny as the previous one, Prime's portrayal worsens with each movie, and they keep coming up with contrived reasons as to why the Transformers are tied to earth's past. Why? Its awful. I thought ROTF might be an abberation, but nope, they keep going back to the well and the coincidences have gotten out of control. Lockdown says earth isn't the center of the universe, but by all accounts in these movies earth not being the center of the universe is as ridiculous as Optimus Prime saying honor while stabbing Lockdown in the back. Can't wait to see what other secret event happened in earth's past in TF5.

So, with that in mind:

1. TF 2007
2. ROTF
3. DOTM
4. AoE

While I give kudos to DOTM and AoE for at least trying to be more of a proper Transformers movie, they just aren't that much fun. Fun factor is how I rank these movies.

 

1. TF 2007 (Great start for the franchise. Tight pacing and really sold that robots in disguise tagline. It's a classic "boy and his car" story but this time the car is alive. Both camps of robots were colorful and smaller, allowing greater interactions and fights between them. The Decepticons were legitimately terrifying, unlike they were in the other films.)

2. DOTM (It's a close second. Great action, the twist actually blindsided me, Megatron was a real nasty hobo, Shockwave was the silent BAMF, Optimus Prime finally had a trailer. I could go on but I won't, don't worry. The third act was just mindlessly killing drones but meh, it ended the trilogy quite well.)

3. ROTF (Rewatched it a few days ago and it wasn't that engaging aside from the fight scenes. Great action and beautiful cinematography. The twins really rub me the wrong way now and Leo wasn't entertaining in the slightest. The focus on the human cast really hurt this film. Plus, I have terrible memories associated with this film, so that's some bias.)

4. AOE (For whatever reason, the first time I saw AOE it left a bad taste in my mouth. I like Mark Wahlberg and Kelsey Grammer as actors and Frank Welker as Galvatron was cool but it just didn't sit right. Optimus was angsty like a teenager, everyone cool was dead; it was an interesting premise like the Transformers: Bumblebee graphic novel I own but the execution was off. Hound was hilarious though, and the moment with Ratchet was genuinely sad.)

 

1. Tf1
2. Tf3
3. Tf4
4.TF2