Transformers 4, or Transformers: Age of Extinction opened worldwide this weekend to an astonishing $302 million box office haul. Not only is that impressive for the fourth film in a franchise, but also because it received absolutely scathing reviews from critics, sitting only at a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Additionally, it has a runtime of nearly three hours (two hours and forty five minutes to be exact) so it’s not exactly the breeziest moviegoing experience, in theory.
Michael Bay was hesitant to return to Transformers again, as I don’t believe he wants the series to define his career, but he’s never been attached to a money-making vehicle quite like this, and he’s assuredly being well-compensated for his time. He’s one director who actually gets a cut of the profits of the film he’s making, rather than a flat fee, so the more Transformers makes, the more he makes. And the franchise is approaching $3 billion in box office receipts, if it isn’t there already.
Why is Transformers such a mammoth, blockbuster series, even in the face of critical lambasting and eternal snark? To be short, the general public doesn’t care about critics or internet commenters.
Rather, Transformers exists as nearly a perfect mindless blockbuster. The formula is the same each and every time, involving good robots, bad robots, a likeable male lead (Shia LaBeouf, back when he was at least somewhat likeable, and now Bay-buddy Mark Wahlberg) and a smoking hot newcomer actress (Megan Fox, then Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, now Nicola Peltz).
The plot? It’s not non-existent, but it’s something you really don’t have to pay attention to at all. Good Transformers try to stop evil Decepticons from doing…something, all the while managing to sell Chevy products while Michael Bay cuts in slow motion shots of his leading lady.
It’s the pretty faces and action people show up for, and they have to do nothing but sit there and be entertained, turning their brains all but completely off in the process. Only their id needs to stay active to appreciate what’s happening onscreen.
A Transformers movie is more or less the equivalent of a monster truck rally. It’s loud, there are machines, people cheer, things get destroyed in a spectacular fashion. Now, the machines talk and the destruction is CGI, but it doesn’t matter, it’s exactly the same effect. Similarly, it’s why Roland Emmerich can keep making movies about the Earth getting destroyed every few years because people eat up destruction time and time again.
I suppose you could credit nostalgia a little bit for the initial success of Transformers. There’s a generation of adults out there, myself included, who grew up with the toys and cartoons, and that surely drew many to the original big-budget reboot of the series. But now Transformers has morphed into something else entirely, a blockbuster action spectacle the likes of which the film industry has never seen. Things like plot and script are irrelevant, all that matters is action.
This is also what helps Transformers perform well around the world, often making 100-150% of its domestic haul overseas. While the nuances of some American films, even blockbusters, may get lost on foreign audiences, that simply isn’t a problem when it comes to Transformers, where there’s no translation necessary for any of the enormous action set pieces that define these movies. In this latest film, Age of Extinction, the trailers have Optimus Prime wielding a sword riding a mechanical dinosaur. I’m not sure you need anything else to sell a film.
The question is how long this can last. Pirates of the Caribbean had a similar run, with an initial trilogy followed up by a questionable fourth installment that still made quite a bit of money. But unlike Pirates, Transformers still has its leading man. Not LaBeouf or Wahlberg, Michael Bay, the architect of all this madness. So long as the films can keep him around (and paying him tens and tens of millions is likely to do that), Transformers can continue to be profitable even on sprawling $200M budgets. The latest film made that back the first weekend alone, which is a clear message to the studio, “don’t stop making these.”
Critics and sarcastic internet folks (like myself), can laugh all they want, but the market for these movies is there, and they aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
[Photos via Paramount]
