You know something is going horribly awry when no less of a filmmaking authority than Steven Spielberg urges you to stop making Transformers movies, but Michael Bay went ahead and helmed Age of Extinction and The Last Knight anyway.
While the former did at least give the franchise the rare distinction of delivering back-to-back billion-dollar hits, earnings fell off a cliff for the fifth installment of the Bay era, while it additionally scored the worst reviews in a series that was never exactly dripping in critical acclaim.
Bay has revealed on more than one occasion over the years that he thought adapting Transformers for live-action was a stupid idea when he first heard it, so it’s not all that surprising to hear him admit to ScreenRant that he believed the 2007 original was going to be a disaster following early test screenings.
“I’m telling you, here’s a little trick. When directors go pre-screen their movies, we’re testing them, you see what [audiences] feel and whatnot, and I’ve got the sound thing there, you want to throw up. Every director wants to throw up the first time a big audience is looking at that thing. And you’ll see people walking down slowly in the test, and you want to grab them, “No, no, no. Hang on. There’s a big scene. If you miss this scene, you’re going to miss the whole thing.” So it’s intense, like Transformers…So two houses, 400 people in each house, starting 15 minutes difference or something like that.
I’m now watching it with a whole bunch of families and kids, and I’m like, “Okay, dumb robot movie. Oh my God. It’s just a kids’ movie. Oh, man. Oh, what did I do?” It gets a huge score, and it was unfinished. Then I go to the next theater, and I’ve got the sound thing and there’s an empty seat and there’s a guy, whatever. This is more of the adult kind of room, and I look to the guy and I [ask], “Do you like this movie?” And he goes, “[meh hand motion].” And I’m like, “Oh, this is terrible. I just made a terrible movie.” Whatever. Huge matching score, like a 94. That’s a spectacular movie score.”
The first Transformers did wind up with a 58% score and 85% user rating on Rotten Tomatoes, by far the best returns the Autobots and Decepticons enjoyed while Bay was heading up the property, but he definitely should have listened to Spielberg based on how rapidly things went downhill from there.