10 Sci-Fi Movie Rip-Offs You Won't Believe Exist

Of course this list wouldn't be complete without an offering from straight-to-video schlock-peddlers The Asylum, who a week before the release of Michael Bay's first Transformers film dropped this hilariously shameless quasi-parody in stores around the globe.

Transmorphers marks a clear attempt by the studio to confuse more casual moviegoers and, again, grandparents who don't know any better, to sink a few bucks on a movie that seems to be superficially within the ballpark of Bay's film.

Very superficially, that is.

In reality, Transmorphers feels as indebted to the future war scenes in the Terminator franchise as Transformers, given that it takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where alien-piloted robots (!) have conquered Earth and forced the surviving humans to live underground.

Unsurprisingly the acting and visual effects are both rancid throughout, though what truly sinks Transmorphers is its sheer lack of fun - it's so soulless and boring. If you're gonna rip off a $200 million tentpole, at least have a sense of humour about it, no?

Yet the business model evidently paid off, as The Asylum made a prequel just two years later, Transmorphers: Fall of Man, which released a week after Bay's own sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.