Loads of people ask "what was the start of the doom of the Bayverse?" Some say TLK; others say the decision to continue the series after Dark of the Moon. My personal view was that it was ROTF that was the beginning of the end for the Bayverse.

The core problem with ROTF is that it crammed too many elements of the Transformers mythos into a single film. You have the Matrix of Leadership, you have combiners, Pretenders, the concept of the Thirteen Primes... when you'd need a whole movie simply to explain what combiners do. Basically, the writers picked out things they liked and tried to cram them into the script, with no thought of what would work best with the story they wanted to tell.

ROTF also introduced the toilet humour and the brutality that ultimately tanked the franchise. Part of the reason why I've only watched ROTF once in the past five years (and turned it off about a third of the way in) because of the vulgar humour. With that present, parents are simply going to look for other, more child-friendly options. And, with the rise of the MCU, they got them.

I've spent the past six years frequently babysitting (mostly younger relatives, neighbour's kids and kids of my parents' friends), which has made me more attuned to what is and isn't child-appropriate. The only Bayverse movie I've ever shown them was the first one; the violence and dirty humor in the others was just too much.

That's alright, there's plenty of alternatives; aside from the obvious Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks/Illumination you watch with kids, we've watched most, if not all, of the MCU and DCEU's film library, as well as Bumblebee, the Jurassic Park franchise, all of the Monsterverse, Star Wars, amongst others.

ROTF's negative reception also led to the Bayverse's laissez-faire attitude to continuity; DOTM makes barely any mention of it (and indeed openly contradicts it; how could Megatron have been allied with the Fallen and Sentinel Prime simultaneously?), and its followups continued introducing contradictory details. This meant that the continuity was a massive random mess.

I think ROTF will also be remembered, along with all the other 2009 summer stinkers (Terminator: Salvation, G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as the end of the big, bloated summer blockbuster age. Until then, big CGI spectacle was all you needed to get people to shell out to see a movie. And I'll be telling my kids about the end of that age one day.

Imagine being twelve and coming out of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and thinking "That was shit." Not only were the special effects crap and the plot convoluted and derivative, that film sparked a three-year-long hatred of Channing Tatum that only abated when I saw 21 Jump Street.

Or Terminator: Salvation and listening to your father having a profanity-filled rant all the way home from the cinema about how bad it was compared to the first two. Seriously, he loathed it; the sad thing is, he took me (and a couple of my friends) because he wanted to introduce me to the Terminator franchise. Didn't work out that way; I didn't see Genisys or Dark Fate because I had a bad time in Terminator Salvation.

Or leaving X Men Origins: Wolverine with a few friends and all of us mutually agreeing, before our mums picked us up, that it was utter shite and that it didn't do justice to the Wolverine we all knew and looked up to.

Whilst all these films were profitable, they were also widely derided by critics, fans and the public at large. That was when we all realised that Iron Man had been a commercial and critical success the previous year because it had a sensible budget and a focus on story and character. So that's what we started looking for in movies.

Audiences are more discerning than studios think; we will not tolerate shite when there is quality on offer. Marvel have known this since 2008; it's the reason why the MCU films are always top quality, with story and character in focus. After Justice League, the DCEU began realising that and, with Bumblebee, Bay, Spielberg and the others involved in the live-action Transformers budget are starting to realise that too.

 

First of all, do you remember "Sam's happy time"? Also, what makes you think that toilet humor and brutality killed the franchise? Do you realize the next two movies after RoTF made more than it did?

 

In my unpopular opinion, I don't think Revenge of the Fallen was any worse than the 2007 film. Sure, it did some things worse. Geographical continuity, for instance. However, many things were of the same quality, and some things were actually improved. The 2007 movie had the same over-the-top humor as RotF. You had disappearing characters in 2007, like Barricade. If anything, RotF's plot, as silly as it may be, is actually more logical than 2007's, which has Megatron imprinting Archibald Witwicky's glasses (?!?) with the Allspark's coordinates (Why did he conveniently crash into the Arctic if the Allspark was not in the Arctic, when every other Transformer in all six live action films has landed on Earth with no problem at all unless shot down by enemy fire?). The Allspark being as big as a house and shrinking into the size of a box that can be carried by Sam is just as ludicrous as the Allspark imprinting its energy on Sam's mind.

As far as personal enjoyment, I place RotF well above the 2007 movie.

 

I wish RotF was about how Combiner a BIG PROBLEM, like, maybe The Fallen is controlling the Devastator as the main enemies, for the main dish of the battle, not just some hulking gorilla that got defeated by human weapon.

 

Didn’t care to read the whole rant. But I feel like your digging way to deep into it....If you think Rotf was the downfall then you think Rotf was the downfall. You don’t need half a page to explain that lad.

 

True dat. Jay Sherman can do it in just 2 words.

 

I think the end of DotM was the downfall of the future movies. They killed almost all the Decepticons, including Megatron a second time. It really felt like a finale. I really liked AoE but I think if they went another direction, like sending the surviving Autobots into space to face new aliens, it may have made things feel fresher...

 

Well, the fourth movie already had Autobots and humans fighting bounty hunters and other aliens on an alien ship and ends with Prime flying off into space. I suspect an "Autobots in space" movie probably wouldn't go over well with general audiences IF that was all the movie was and there were NO humans on Earth.

I genuinely wish the fifth movie had shown more of Prime's journey in space and the Creators and less of the "Unicron is Earth/Cybertron is coming a second time," but I don't think a movie entirely or mostly in space was realistically ever going to happen.

 

I liked the ROTF Devastator design - because something Devastator's size would not be able to support its own weight on two legs. It was a nice little touch of realism. Still no excuse for the wrecking balls (other than for the sake of an awful pun).

However, yeah, you would need a whole film to explain what combiners are, why they're such a big deal and why they're, comparatively, rare.

 

If they do reboot the movies I think they should take this approach. Dedicate a movie to the Constructicons, another to the Dinobots, etc. Treat the unique characters special.

 

Technically, the first movie was the beginning of the end. That's how beginnings and endings work.

Anyway, whatever your personal feelings toward RotF, it was popular. It did better at the box office than the first movie, and DotM did even more than RotF. Those higher numbers mean general audiences were satisfied with RotF, and so were willing to come back in even greater numbers.

What this shows is that RotF was in the middle of an upward trend, not the start of a decline. Feelings and facts are two different things.

 

No, I didn't mind the appearance (love it too), I mean, his role in the film is nothing more than hulking beast, destroyed by human weapons. He should be the one who force OP to go all savage around, because he is just so damn big.

 

Then we got bumblebee and the image of the franchise turned away from a bad franchise to what a good franchise it can be if they stick to one script one idea one location a perfect runtime a low budget

 

AoE was the beginning of the end. Too many characters the audience knew were blown up in DoTM. It was also when the franchise fatigue started to show. It still could be kept profitable and going for a while, but then TLK basically sabotaged what plots and story seeds were placed in AoE.

 

I personally feel that RotF put the franchise in a quality ditch that it couldn’t get itself out of. They almost did with DOTM, then AOE knocked it back down and TLK was the final nail in the coffin.

 

The primary reason why I haven’t watched it, and probably never will...

 

The problem with threads like this is so many fans like to choose a scapegoat film that they like to blame as being the "bad" film. First, the 2007 movie turned off some existing fans with its designs and other changes. Starting in 2009, people started blaming RotF, even when most everything present they disliked in RotF was present in the 2007 film. Then after the end of the first trilogy, many blamed DotM's ending or all three existing films for not fulfilling their fandom expectations. Then in 2014, AoE became the scapegoat, to the point that some fans were throwing it under the bus and making it sound like TLK was going to be so much "better." We all see how that worked out.

So I don't think any single film was to blame for the dramatic decline in box office in 2017. I think it was a combination of things. Furthermore, at the very least, I think the first three sequels (RotF, DotM, and AoE) were actually much closer to being best case scenarios rather than worst case scenarios for Paramount and Hasbro. RotF was made during the writer's strike, DotM made even more box office, and AoE made almost as much despite no human characters returning and the robots being mostly new.

 

I was not saying that ROTF was not profitable or that it was not popular. ROTF, like Terminator: Salvation, X Men Origins: Wolverine and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was profitable; however, it was also widely derided by critics, fans and the public at large.

What I was saying is a lot of things people cite as flaws of the Bayverse originate from ROTF; the excessive brutality and vulgar humour, plot holes and a laissez-faire attitude to continuity.

I think @Omegashark18 best sums this up:

 

The earth's magnetic field is strongest at the poles and weakens as you move towards the equator.

 

I am well aware of that. My point is that EVERY single Transformer in the films who wasn't shot down landed on Earth perfectly fine. Including Lockdown, whose ship is actually seen anchored in the Arctic. Furthermore, Megatron had no reason to be even near Arctic. The Allspark he was after and whose coordinates he imprinted on the glasses was thousands of kilometers further south. There was no reason for him to go near the poles if their magnetism was a potential danger.