There may never be another film series quite like the five Transformers movies directed by Michael Bay between 2007 and 2017. At least, let’s hope not. The “Bayverse” version of the Transformers franchise is riddled with plot holes, and the parts that do make sense are often antithetical to the epic space opera of the real franchise. At the same time, these live-action Transformers have been so successful that they’re still being made in the same style to this day, and Bay is still a producer. We can only hope that the series continues moving towards a more faithful take on the source material, but in the meantime, read on for five of the most confounding aspects of the Transformers movies we have so far.
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Critics and fans have often speculated that the Transformers movies are successful because they’re all the fandom had to cling to, especially when the series first started. Of course, Cybertronians thrive in cartoons and comic books, but seeing them depicted on the big screen was simply too good for fans to pass up in 2007, and at this point, they can’t look away. These same voices will sometimes argue that audiences are spoiled now by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and don’t remember what it was like to be grateful for a subpar adaptation made with compromises.
On the other hand, Bay’s movies don’t even need to be contrasted with the source material to be critiqued. On a simple compositional level, they’re hard to watch, and perhaps even harder to re-watch. However, if you’re like me, a re-watch can sometimes be spurred when you’re reminded of an outlandish plot point and you need to go back and see exactly how it fits into the greater narrative. For that, here are five things in Bay’s Transformers that make no sense.
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Allspark’s History
The inciting incident of Transformers (2007) is the discovery that the Allspark is on Earth, yet, to this day, we don’t know why. We’re told that this all-powerful artifact created Cybertron and all the Transformers, and that the Autobots and Decepticons fought wars for control of it. Somehow, the cube was then launched into space, and it laid dormant on Earth for 12,000 years.
The movie implies that the Autobots launched the Allspark into space, hoping it would be lost in the void and therefore kept out of Decepticon hands. However, Megatron was able to track it to Earth (only to become comatose on the planet alongside it himself). That begs the question: why couldn’t other Transformers track this powerful object? And if they could, why would the Autobots send it away aimlessly in the first place? It also becomes increasingly hard to believe the Allspark was unnoticed on Earth for all this time when later movies inform us that Transformers visited the planet frequently in the past, but more on that below.
“Robots in Disguise”
The live-action movies maintain the pretense that Transformers are a secret from the public for way too long. Again, this is a point where fans often compare the series to Iron Man, which subverts expectations by revealing Tony Stark’s identity to the world very casually in the first movie. If anything, it should be even harder for governments and news agencies to deny the existence of extra-terrestrial robots in Transformers, where they destroy the Great Pyramid of Giza and fight openly on the streets of Chicago, among other things.
It’s not just the secrecy of the Transformers and their destruction that strains believability — Sam Witwicky’s job hunt adds to this mystery. In the same scene, we learn that Sam has been given a Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama for his bravery in saving the world, yet he is also struggling to find a job. The idea that he could withhold his experience in a job interview is unbelievable, completely flattening the joke here.
The Fallen
The titular villain of Bay’s second Transformers movie, The Fallen, has been scheming to terraform Earth for millennia, which makes no sense at all. This Decepticon leader was foiled in his first attempt by the pre-historic humans who were living on Earth when he arrived, and he was wounded so badly that, to this day, he can’t leave his life-support throne. It’s hard to believe that hunter-gatherer humans were able to fight off this threat when we can see modern Decepticons shrugging off tanks and missiles with ease.
This is also where the timeline starts to get muddled, and it never really stops. Bay’s fourth movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, informs us that there was another attempt to terraform earth before The Fallen, when the mysterious race of “Creators” visited the planet. The contradictions and conflicting plotlines here are never addressed, and it feels like they take every opportunity they can to veer further away from the lore from other mediums.
Optimus Prime Can Fly
Age of Extinction also gives us the insulting reveal that Optimus Prime can fly. Lack of flight is often a big limitation for the Autobots, even in these movies — Optimus himself rode Grimlock into battle earlier in this same movie. If he couldn’t fly himself, that might be acceptable, yet when he busts out his own jet pack in the climactic battle, you have to wonder why he’s never used it before.
Prequel Plot Holes
Finally, it’s interesting that the last two live-action Transformers movies were prequels, but they present many more plot holes that are desperately in need of patching. If Transformers were present on earth in the 1980s and ’90s, as they are in Bumblebee and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, why were they such a shock to the military when they came looking for the Allspark in 2007? Also, we have to wonder why these Transformers couldn’t detect the Allspark or the dormant Megatron on the planet during this time.
The Transformers movies have a lot of issues, but they’re certainly unique, and they keep coming back around for re-watches, no matter how much I fight it. You can stream all the live-action installments now on Paramount+. Paramount has expressed hopes of producing more films in the franchise, but there has been no news of another movie in development.
