I don’t know if “franchise fatigue” exists. Otherwise, the MCU, which kicked in with Iron Man in 2008, would be suffering from low box office by now. Instead, it is poised to overtake Avatar as the #1 box office of all time. It started at about the same time as Transformers live action and has gone on for more than a decade. They started out slow but sure and look at what they were able to accomplish.

And, again, Transformers started out in a much, much better position because the first movie was so well-received whereas Iron Man didn’t have anything in its pockets before and live action Captain America movies that came before the MCU were mediocre efforts to bring Marvel characters into the big screen.

Whatever I knew of Hulk was from the TV series with bill bixby then later on with Eric bana which was critically panned by fans. Then it went through another remake with Edward norton then the current actor after all that controversy. So it took sometime until they were able to figure out the winning formula.

It took a Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau to turn that all around and made the Marvel characters outshine even established DC superheroes.

It’s More like, “bad movie, bad story, plotholes, lack of characterization, lack of world-building, same thing happening/uninspiring/inconsistent narrative that is becoming more and more jumbled and incoherent with each movie, meaningless interactions among the characters, meaningless battles, worsening/thoughtless designs, main characters serving as background” fatigue.

 

DOTM was 2011

 

The thing is, I don't think the "bad" live action films were any worse in overall quality than the "better" TF films. The 2007 film really wasn't any better in terms of plot, character, dialogue, or lore than the sequels; it was just as bloated and shallow as the sequels, perhaps even more so in many ways. The concepts and characters weren't fleshed out any more. If anything, I thought some of the sequels actually had more of a thematic edge to them and had characters with a little more to them. The 2007 film just had the novelty of live action TFs for the first time. Nor were the post-DotM films any worse than the first trilogy. Some things were actually improved post-DotM. The earlier films were just more comfortable and familiar to both new and old fans alike, but familiarity =/= quality.

And that last point is the thing I think. Some people claim that the movies are all the same, and they do indeed follow similar formulas, BUT what are the vast, vast majority of complaints about the Bay films? From G1 fans and some earlier fans, it's that they changed too much from the source material (even though all five films are heavily inspired by G1), and from Bayverse fans, that they changed too much from what they originally were in 2007, even though the earlier films and later films aren't any different in quality as overall films.

People are perfectly entitled to prefer some of the films over the others, but it's silly for fans to pretend that there's a huge gulf in quality between the different TF movies, and it's silly to single out any single one of the movies as being the cause of the moves' recent decline in box office, when EVERY single one of the movies has always been blasted by critics and fans alike for some reason in its time, and there's always been some scapegoat: Bay, Orci and Kurtzman, Shia, Megan Fox, then it was the Writers' Strike, then it was Kruger and the new designs which replaced the old designs people hated so much, then it was the Writers' Room, and now it's Lorenzo.

 

You know in retrospect that should have been obvious to me.

 

The Chicago attack in DotM was phenomenal. AoE was my second favorite movie. I just wish they didn't kill off so many star characters. Actually, I even felt bad when lesser characters like Que and Leadfoot died.

 

I...I don't know. I guess it fills the brainless action niche?  

 

No offence, but I think it's too far-fetched to call Detective Pikachu a masterpiece in story telling.
I think you're looking for Endgame.

 

Its not a matter of opinion. Read the posts before yours.

See TheSoundwave's post.

 

My reading ability is more than sufficient, as is my researching ability, thank you. I stand by what I said like a redwood tree, and provided more than ample evidence to back it up. . .Even the former CCO of Pixar, John Lasseter, states the same thing -the explosion of CGI as a major force in movies goes back to '82. . .And even inspired him in his ventures in animation, as well as creating an influx of folks entering the computer field-especially as it applies to filmmaking. . .I also recall personally seeing magazines in '82 attesting to that fact. . .CGI exploded long before Michael Bay came into the picture (pun intended), at around the time he was graduating from high school and was interning with George Lucas. . .

SOURCES: John Lasseter (and actually many other sources)

Michael Bay - Wikipedia

 

They were pretty fun, and from 2007-2011 most people actually wanted to see them. By the fourth movie I'd wager there wasn't much competition that summer (Captain America: The Winter Soldier had come out well beforehand, and Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't on its way until August). The fifth only suffered because it was stacked up against Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales all at once.

 

  but.....Im not saying TF2007 is the reason behind the explosion of CGI movies, I'm referring to films like Iron Man and movies past 2007...

 

Which is exactly why I made the point I made . The CGI advances that made Iron Man, and several other effects-heavy films BEFORE AND AFTER IRON MAN goes back long before Iron Man to films like TRON (1982) . . .

 

Transformers got very huge fan base in the world, if the Sequel did as good as or better than original 2007 movie, the result will be like Marvel movies, but it's just somehow all gone wrong.. Can you imagine how good the box office will be if Paramount/Michael Bay did it correctly..TF3 and TF4 still can earned over a billion even it was bad.. They just spoil the whole franchise... Hopefully they can fixed it in the future..

 

Marvel was brilliant with how they slowly kept expanding their universe with end credit scenes and small things here and there. It gave fans reasons to want to see all the movies, for that overall arc.
Transformers could have done something similar by trying to weave all the mcguffins together to lead to Unicron. I think they tried to start doing that in TLK but it was too late. If they started earlier it may have worked.
They could have used an end credit scene to tease Devastator in the next sequel, then have the Constructicons be the focal point. Maybe they're digging for something at some point of the movie but don't get to it. Then, in the end credit scene, we see it's the Dinobots, and the next sequel features them. I think that progression would have kept people's excitement and nostalgia levels high and created a universe to challenge Marvel.
To be fair, though, the TF base material isn't a universe builder like Marvel. Marvel had all the different comic titles that tied into each other, so they already had the framework for an expanded universe. TF fiction was usually just a single show or comic that wasn't branched out, so they didn't have that set up in their mythos.

 

If you look at the history of film you can find all sort of examples of where ticket buyers got burned out because there wasn't enough innovation to keep people interested. Universal was a dominate force with their monster movies at one point, but as the quality of the films dropped off and it seemed like the gimmick of cross over their monsters was the only idea the studio had the monster movies faded out of style. There was a time when musicals where a top draw but people burned out. Westerns once dominated the entertainment landscape until it seemed like all the good stories had already been told. Even James Bond has had a roller coaster ride at the box office.

What Marvel/Disney seems to have done is they have kept the movies from feeling exactly alike even if the basic building blocks are the same. Sometimes Marvel/Disney is serious and sometimes they are hey let's just have fun, sometimes it is the fate of the world on the line and sometimes it's something small and personal, sometimes it's the big team up movie and other times it's just one hero. Doesn't hurt the superhero era of domination that other studios have also learned to shake things up so that Into the Spiderverse, Shazam and Deadpool don't feel exactly like a Marvel/Disney movie.

 

China!
Casuals too.

 

China wasn't a major contributor to the success of the franchise until well into things (the first few films were massive successes in North America as well). They've become such a huge market now that theyll be pivotal to any future success.

As for casuals, every successful film is fuelled by 'casuals', there simply aren't enough diehards in the world to bring in the kind of money we're talking about here. But then again, every diehard starts out as a casual, and I've seen enough hectoring of new fans over the last decade to realize that all of us need to be welcoming of people dipping their toes in the brand.

 

Does the dark and gritty trend of trying to be like Dark Knight reminds you of the same thing that happened in the 90s when comic makers were imitating Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, Frank Miller and Alan Moore and took the wrong lessons?

 

Nostalgia, and before Transformers, there were almost no movie of giant sentient robots fighting against giant sentient robots, which also can change shape to promote all sort of cool cars.