10 Movie Franchises That Set The Bar Too High For Themselves

Things started out so well for the Transformers live action franchise.

Michael Bay's first entry back in 2007 managed to combine heart-stopping action with characters you actually gave a toss about and the result was a deeply enjoyable slice of crowd-pleasing robot fun.

Bringing in a hefty $709 million from a $150 million budget, Paramount clearly felt they had a hit series on their hands and quickly green-lit a Bay directed sequel.

However, the return of Bay, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving as the unmistakable voices of Optimus Prime and Megatron didn't produce a return to form, as 2009's Revenge of the Fallen was undoubtedly seen as a serious step down in terms of quality.

With the sequel making a monstrous $836 million, though, the film's critical panning was largely ignored by Paramount and the financial success of both Dark of the Moon (2011) and Age of Extinction (2014) showed that the rotten franchise could still get butts in seats - bringing in $1.124 billion and $1.104 billion at the box office, respectively .

2017's The Last Knight proved to be the breaking point for the series as it delivered both the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score (15%) and the lowest box office return ($605 million) of the franchise at that point.

A Bumblebee spin-off did manage to restore some faith in the world of the Transformers in 2018, however the main franchise has still yet to produce another movie which can match 2007's joyous experience.