Revenge Of The Fallen Death You Likely Never Noticed

While Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” continued the franchise’s box office success, earning more than $800 million worldwide against a budget estimated to be in the $200-210 million range, the film was a major critical flop — especially compared to the first “Transformers.”
2007’s “Transformers” wasn’t a critical darling by any means, but it did earn a 57% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 61/100 on Metacritic — the highest score among the Bay-directed movies. Meanwhile, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” saw its scores sharply fall from its predecessor, with a 20% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 35/100 on Metacritic. So, what changed? According to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a major factor for the film’s critical downfall was a rushed script and production, and the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. “That really screwed us up,” di Bonaventura told Empire Magazine (via Readly). “The problem is you don’t get to evolve your script […] Paramount didn’t have a lot of other assets at that time, so the decision was to plough forward.”
While the third film in the franchise performed slightly better with critics, the last two installments directed by Bay never reached higher marks than the low scores of the Megan Fox-less “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” Thankfully, dedicated fans wanted to see visual effects and style over substance, as the first five “Transformers” films all performed well at the box office, as they didn’t skimp on the blockbuster action and were true popcorn flicks, regardless of the critical reception.