Currently basking in the aftermath of some of the best critical reactions to one of his movies in a long time for Ambulance (read our review here), Michael Bay has been reflecting on his five-film Transformers legacy, admitting that “they were fun to do” but he “made too many of them”.
He of the hyperactive edit and pyrotechnic budget of a small country’s GDP, Bay was speaking to Unilad about everything from the success of the first film, through to franchise producer Steven Spielberg advising him to “Just stop at three”.
Released in 2007, Transformers was the perfect blend of Bayhem and Spielberg-style heart, which kickstarted the franchise with over $700M at the worldwide box-office. Bay said of the experience, “The first one was scary. It was technology we didn’t know would work, and then it became very successful. It was the first time digital effects were that highly reflective, so it broke a lot of new ground.”
SEE ALSO: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts to launch new live-action trilogy, animated film coming 2024
Unfortunately, despite posting Autobot sized numbers for the sequels that followed – Revenge of the Fallen ($836M), Dark of the Moon ($1.12B), Age of Extinction ($1.1B), The Last Knight ($605M) – the quality of the movies fell off a cliff, and Bay acknowledges that while he enjoyed making them, he should called it a day sooner. He said “I made too many of them. Steven Spielberg said, ‘Just stop at three’. And I said I’d stop. The studio begged me to do a fourth, and then that made a billion too. And then I said I’m gonna stop here. And they begged me again. I should have stopped. They were fun to do.”
Even though Bay has now stopped playing with Hasbro’s toys in order to fly a drone around after Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Transformers have continued to roll-out, with 2018’s really rather terrific Bumblebee, and 2023’s new trilogy launcher Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in post-production.
SEE ALSO: Michael Bay and the Finer Points of Bayhem
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