It has been noted how franchises/shared universes are rapidly becoming a risky move to make in today's cinema. The general consensus is that by producing a franchise, the effort in making the standalone film becomes lost in the gargantuan shuffle of attempting to produce several films at once. But across four films, the live-action Transformers franchise has done little to suggest that the war between Autobots and Decepticons stretches any further than Earth. Given how previous Transformers fiction has handled an expanded universe (especially the comics), it is somewhat surprising that the films haven't yet jumped on the Marvel/DC band-wagon of developing the stories behind the characters and events that occupy the Transformers universe. Such a move may well seem cheap for the above reason, but it would show that whoever ends up making future Transformers films has at least looked to the stars and realised that when you've got a race of warring alien robots who come from a different planet that there's plenty of opportunity for the story to blossom into something magnificently expansive.
Senior editor for the superhero/comic book hub A Place To Hang Your Cape. BA in Creative Writing and Film Studies from Hull Uni. Currently getting lost in the big wide world of freelance writing. And some other stuff.
