I see a lot of people on this forum getting bummed out about Age of Extinction's rottentomatoes score. Watching Michael Bay's Transformer movies, it comes as no little surprise that these are not "good" movies. They're often fun movies, and very entertaining movies, but there is no cinematic quality there. This is not only a good thing, it’s THE BEST THING that could happen with the brand.

Let’s go through all the possibilities a Transformers Movie could achieve to prove my point.

1. Critical Failure + Commercial Failure = Brand goes into hibernation, Hasbro puts their money elsewhere for a while, perhaps reboots in 20 years. Possible brand death. As much as a nostalgic darling the 1986 movie might be, it almost killed the brand – and it did kill several other cartoons Hasbro had in partnership with Sunbow.

2. Critical Success + Commercial Failure = Basically the same as above, but Transformers gains more older fans with no interest in buying toys.

3. Critical Success + Commercial Success = The studios and filmmakers – and perhaps worse, a viewing public - feel there is now a “definitive Transformers”, and don’t see the need to revisit the material any time soon. (That is, once the sequels run out.) We get a reboot in maybe 30 years.

4. Critical Failure + Commercial Success = The best possible situation for Transformers fans. All you need the movie to do is make money. Making money now keeps the brand alive into the future. Any fun but terrible movie that does commercially well but is critically panned, will be remade in about 10 when some other director thought the idea was great, but they could do it better.

Other Things to Celebrate:

Film Money = Toys: You could personally hate all the movies, but a good ‘movie year’ means more toys overall, because every movie year means a big boost in all Transformers sold. The more money Hasbro makes on toys and the film itself, the more they can afford to take chances and give us really strange Generations toys and odd Kre-Os, and bit homages that strengthen the brand overall.

Proven Brand ‘Transformation’: As much as someone like me who grew up with Generation 1 could gripe, the new films and related toys have the grasp of young Transformers fans as being relevant and fitting for the brand today. This proves the same designs can be reproached while wearing a completely different thinking cap, and there’s no reason not to expect the brand to continue to…err…’transform’.

Summary: Maybe you don’t like Bayformers. Maybe you love them. But so long as the brand continues to make money and not be too commercially successful, we’ll get new designs, new movies, new toys, and more Transformers.

So, don’t let those rottentomatoes get you down.

//Panjumanju