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Though six live-action movies have been made to date, the series has had a long reputation for causing confusion, dissatisfaction, and even hatred among fans of the overall franchise as well as general moviegoers. The assumption has always been that critics have been the biggest enemy of the live-action movies primarily due to Bay's infamously anti-cerebral style but is that really the case? Which of the live-action movies did critics respond the most well to and which did they hate most ionately? Let's look at every live-action Transformers movie and their score on review aggregate site Metacritic to find out which entries are considered the best, and which are considered the worst, within the series so far.
Transformers: The Last Knight (27)
The critical score for Michael Bay's last Transformers movie quite clearly demonstrates the sense of fatigue felt amongst critics and even fans regarding the franchise, acting as the final nail in the coffin for that particular style in the live-action movies.
Anthony Hopkins couldn't make critics see the fun side of things anymore, effectively ending Bay's reign as a director on the movies for the foreseeable future.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (32)
Losing lead actor Shia LaBeouf and replacing him with Age of Extinction introduced some long overdue Transformers to the live-action movie world while delivering much of the cacophonous action spectacle that Bay's movies were known for.
Even though the movie was a massive success at the box office, even becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year of its release, producers seemed acutely aware of how much patience was dwindling with the franchise after the word of mouth reaction to the movie but, as the score for The Last Knight shows, the franchise's fate was already sealed.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (35)
The first sequel to Bay's original live-action Transformers movie introduced fans to the messy plotting that would go on to define so much of the rest of the franchise.
Whilst full of varying locations and explosive action, Revenge of the Fallen largely exhausted critics and general audiences and dashed most hopes that the series would move past the human characters to focus more on the Transformers themselves.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (42)
The third of Bay's live-action Transformers movies and the last featuring lead actor Shia LaBeouf, Dark of the Moon was an improvement over the previous installment in the eyes of critics yet still strongly indicated dissatisfaction with the overall direction of the movies, a sentiment that was echoed by fans.
Dark of the Moon was also the first live-action movie to not feature LaBeouf's primary co-star Megan Fox, who was replaced as a love interest by Rose Huntington-Whiteley, despite a vast majority of actors from the previous movies returning for their roles and being ed by impressive ing players like s McDormand, Alan Tudyk, Ken Jeong, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey and even second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin as well as the voice talent of Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy.
Transformers (61)
Though all of Michael Bay's live-action movies are fairly vitriolically hated amongst some circles of fans, his first entry into the franchise was a big hit with critics and audiences, and the good faith that it built up carried the series much farther than most would have assumed it could get.
Bumblebee (66)
The latest live-action Transformers movie did away with most of the Bay-isms of the previous movies in the series and acted as somewhat of a prequel to–and somewhat of a rebooting of–the movie franchise.
Taking a slower, more upbeat, approach to the source material, 1980s and even though it was technically the lowest-grossing movie of the franchise so far, it was considered the biggest success for the live-action movies in quite some time and takes the top spot as the best-reviewed entry to date.
