Summary
- Transformers: Rise of the Beasts had a bad box office run, confirming the sad truth about the franchise's popularity decline.
- Despite the lower box office performance, Rise of the Beasts tells a coherent story and sets up the future of the franchise effectively.
- The movie's character-oriented formula and nuanced storytelling are a refreshing departure from Michael Bay's action-heavy approach, but the high budget remains a challenge for future profitability.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts didn't perform as well at the box office as Paramount had hoped, and it, unfortunately, confirms an inherent problem with the Transformers franchise. The new Transformers movie continues on from 2018's Bumblebee, which was a prequel to the very first Transformers movie in 2007. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts does a great job of telling a coherent story and setting up the future of the franchise (something that the previous Michael Bay-directed movies lacked). At the end of the new movie, a crossover between G.I. Joe and Transformers is teased, hinting at a huge universe expansion too.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts also continued Bumblebee's more character-oriented formula and nuanced storytelling instead of being full of impossible-to-follow action sequences and explosions. However, despite the much higher Transformers: Rise of the Beasts had a bad box office run. The movie made $429 million worldwide, which sounds good, but when considering the $200 million production cost and the marketing cost, Paramount would have been lucky if the studio broke even. Unfortunately, the 2023 movie's box office performance confirms the sad truth about the Transformers franchise.
Rise Of The Beasts Made Less Than The Transformers' Worst Movies
Excluding the 1980s animated movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the lowest-grossing Transformers movie to date. While the 2023 film's Rotten Tomatoes score isn't the best, it still has a better Tomatometer score than every Michael Bay-directed Transformers movie outside of the original 2007 release. Despite that, the movie struggled to cross the $400 million mark, which is a number most other Transformers movies, including the worst ones, would have crossed not long after their opening weekends.
However, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts struggled due to tons of competition at the box office. The summer 2023 box office was stacked with major Hollywood movies, as the newest Transformers film was sandwiched between Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was released a week before, and The Flash and Elemental, which was released the following week. In that respect, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was a victim of its release and it never stood a chance. Nevertheless, even if the 2023 Transformers movie was released without any competition, it still wouldn't have come close to the billion-dollar figures the previous Transformers films were bringing in.
The Transformers Biggest Movies Are Some Of Its Worst
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the highest-grossing Transformers movie to date, as it made a huge $1.12 billion worldwide. The follow-up, 2013's Transformers: Age of Extinction, did just as well, earning a total of $1.1 billion. Those two movies happen to have two of the series' lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores, with a "rotten" 35% and 17%, respectively. The only movie in the franchise with a Rotten Tomatoes score lower than Transformers: Age of Extinction is 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight, which holds a miserable 16% on the review aggregate site. Comparatively, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' 53% is something of a victory.
However, Michael Bay's Transformers movies had a lot of momentum behind them. The movies were released on such a consistent basis, as opposed to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts being released six whole years after the last main Transformers film. The Michael Bay movies had a lot of star power too, whether it was Megan Fox or Mark Wahlberg, whereas the 2023 movie has no star power whatsoever and attempted to get by on the established IP alone. Nevertheless, despite being blockbuster popcorn flicks, they were criticized to no end for being empty-calorie action movies with no character development.
Why Bumblebee And ROTB Could Still Be A Better Direction For The Franchise (Despite Box Office)
While Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and 2018's Bumblebee made way less money than any previous Transformers film, the franchise was already declining in popularity before the 2018 release. As a result, Bumblebee was such a fresh take on the series that focused just as much on the human characters as the Transformers, and the 2023 movie continued that to an extent. That formula is clearly working better than Michael Bay's approach from a critical standpoint, and the future of the Transformers franchise should continue that recipe, but Paramount needs to make one significant change to the franchise to become profitable.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' budget was too high. The movie had a sky-high budget of $200 million when it could have been made for much less. That's already been proven given that director Travis Knight made the critically acclaimed Bumblebee with a budget of $135 million (via Box Office Mojo). If Paramount can find a way to continue this prequel series with a lower budget, the franchise can find financial success again. However, keeping the budget down will undoubtedly be difficult given that the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ending teased a huge crossover event movie between G.I. Joe and the Transformers.
Sources: Box Office Mojo
