Fan Fest News

News for Fans, By Fans!

Is ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ the Last Straw? – Lowest Series Opening & More

Transformers: The Last Knight hasn’t even made it to its first ‘Weekend Box Office’ yet and it’s already facing obstacles. Like other Transformers films, the movie released midweek, though this time around with a mere $15.65 million opening – the lowest of the franchise. Weekend Box Office Projections have it bringing in about $60M, which is the lowest of the series. Though to be fair, this is the fifth film in the franchise.

Title Opening Weekend Domestic Box Office International Box Office
Transformers $70M $319M $390M
T: Revenge Of The Fallen $108M $402M $434M
T: Dark Of The Moon $97M $352M $771M
T: Age Of Extinction $100M $245M $858M
T: The Last Knight ? 60M ?

The Transformers films have been on a steady decrease for years now. They’re films that focus on massive special effects and cool robots while forgetting about the story. This is best reflected when comparing Opening Weekends to Domestic Box Office. Take Transformers: Age of Extinction for example. The film was being marketed as heavily featuring the Dinobots – long time fan favorites – which caused the 2nd highest Opening Weekend. Though once reviews got out and people learned the Dinobots were only in 2 scenes, the initial illusion was shattered and the film became the lowest Domestic grossing film of the franchise yet.

Transformers: The Last Knight initially set up a similar situation with the three-headed dragon, which also turned out to be a minor movie point. Add in the movie reviews and things get even worse. All the major name drops and lore items in Transformers: The Last Knight seem to be the end result of Transformers Ad-Libs rather than woven together by a team with deep love and respect for the lore. Though the weirdest marketing tactic yet is how the film is being set up as “the end of the series” – which it very much isn’t. Between the film blatantly setting up for Transformers 6 as well as all the talk from producers and studios about Spin-Offs starting production, it makes it seem like the Marketing Team didn’t know anything about this film to begin with when making the multiple “unforgettable journey” themed trailers – or maybe they think their audience is that gullible?

So what does this mean for the franchise as a whole – if anything? Will Transformers’s spin-off films get booted and the entire series rebooted? I wish, but I also know better because no matter how bad this series is in terms of plot, continuity, and migraine inducing visuals, it does AMAZINGLY well overseas! The franchise has grown in leaps and bounds overseas and even if Transformers: The Last Knight tanks here, the rest of the world still wants their taste of “Bayhem” – and they might get it!

After every Transformers film, Michael Bay says he’s exhausted and won’t be the lead on the next one. He, of course, said that for this film, and people – even star Mark Wahlberg – are calling him out! This is a franchise Michael Bay has been involved with since Day 1 and whereas wrangling in these movies is no easy task, they are still his “baby” in a sense. Though when you have movies that cheapen the mechanics of ‘transforming’ in each film, it’s hard to ignore the fact that there might be some burnout on the production side. Remember how crisp the transformation mechanics were in the first film? In Age of Extinction, half of the Transformers just swirled into a mass of metal chips and became a car. Maybe Bay does need a break, but with almost 14 additional films already in the works – seriously – it’s hard to know when (if ever) the franchise will throw in the towel.

Is ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ the Last Straw? – Lowest Series Opening & More
Image: EW via Paramount Pictures

In the end, the Transformers film series has become pure distilled “Bayhem”; and whereas that’s not a bad thing, it certainly starts to wear thin – on some faster than others. Maybe one day we’ll get a movie with cool transforming robots AND a decent story. It doesn’t have to be a great story! I’ll settle for a simple story over one that goes out of its way to be convoluted and full of plot holes! *crosses fingers*

We’ll know more it the coming weeks with how it does overseas, but there might be some bad news on that front too. The majority of the ‘International Box Office” is China and there The Last Knight only opened with $6M. For comparison purposes, Fate Of The Furious got $9.1M and Warcraft got $7.6M. We’ll keep watching the numbers, but it looks like both domestically and internationally Transformers: The Last Knight might indeed be the straw that broke the transforming camel’s back.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *