Roughly eight years to the day Transformers: The Last Knight opened to underwhelming box office, a news report emerged alleging that Paramount Pictures is planning on reviving the Transformers saga. After Transformers: Rise of the Beasts failed to turn a profit and Transformers One outright bombed, Paramount is desperate for this once lucrative saga to come back to its initial box office might. The plan the studio is allegedly batting around now is getting Michael Bay back in the saddle to direct another movie.
The news isn’t exactly the brightest glimpse into the potential cinematic future of this property. In fact, if Bay does come back, it’s a surefire sign that the Transformers franchise is dead, and not just because of the quality of his initial five Transformers installments.
Returning to the Old is a Sign of Creative Stagnation
Michael Bay did five Transformers movies over ten years. They were incredibly profitable enterprises, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon grossing over $1 billion worldwide in 2011 and Revenge of the Fallen remaining the biggest non-Titanic movie ever domestically until Top Gun: Maverick flew into town in 2022. However, by the end of these five films, audiences clearly said with their wallets that they’d had enough. Transformers: The Last Knight’s lifetime domestic haul was less than the initial five-day grosses of Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon. It ultimately earned $605 million worldwide and lost a boatload of cash for Paramount.
The novelty of combining Bay’s style of action cinema with those robots in disguise had worn out its welcome with people. Since then, Paramount has tried two more live-action Transformers movies. One (Bumblebee) was a reboot that went in a radically different tonal direction than Bay’s film, while the other (Rise of the Beasts) balanced the rebooted timeline with action sequences patterned after Bay’s works. Looking back now, Bumblebee and Transformers One suggested that this series was stepping into new creative territory and expanding what Transformers movies could look like.
If Bay comes back, that would be a frustrating regression to an arcane status quo for Transformers. After so much work has been spent on more character-focused and robot-centric Transformers movies, now the franchise will presumably be trying to evoke nostalgia dollars from folks who get nostalgic thinking about Linkin Park’s “New Divide.” There’s already a problem with modern Transformers media like Rise of the Beasts being too beholden to fan service and older Transformers properties. Fully bringing back Bay to the franchise would be a sign that all creative gumption is gone. The Transformers franchise has no pulse.
Audiences Don’t Want More Transformers, Bay or Otherwise
Michael Bay coming back also sounds like a way for Paramount brass to stave off an inevitable truth: audiences no longer care for or about Transformers movies. Three of the last four theatrical Transformers films failed to turn a profit, including Bay’s final outing. Whether they’re directed by Michael Bay or rendered in a fully animated family-friendly feature, these mechanical beings are just not the box office draws they once were. Bringing Bay back into the director’s chair sounds like a way to act like it’s 2009 again, rather than reflecting modern moviegoing trends.
On top of that, Bay’s constant desire in the 2010s to leave the Transformers saga and pursue more projects like Pain & Gain and Ambulance makes it doubtful his Transformers return would even yield fascinatingly divisive results. The honeymoon has long been over for Bay and the Transformers saga; would recruiting him back into this saga really get his creative juices flowing again? Or would he just be eyeing the exit door the entire time, as he was during The Last Knight?
There’s just no end to the problems inherent to bringing Michael Bay back to the Transformers saga. Regardless of anyone’s opinions on his original five films, cinematic franchises need to evolve and grow. Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan can’t helm Batman movies forever. Star Wars has never just been a George Lucas enterprise. Transformers has yielded creative highs with Bumblebee and Transformers One in embracing this reality and new artistic voices. Bringing back Michael Bay, though, would just be a tired plea for nostalgia, solidifying the franchise’s cultural stagnation. Forget his deaths in Revenge of the Fallen and the 1986 animated movie, having Michael Bay return as a Transformers director would really solidify that the movie version of Optimus Prime is dead.
Transformers One is now streaming on Paramount+.
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