Critically speaking, Bumblebee has been the most well-received of the Transformers movies, as evidenced by its 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. CinemaBlend’s own Dirk Libbey was among the its many supporters, giving Bumblebee 3.5 out of 5 stars in his review. However, it failed to commercially outperform any of its predecessors, and it also turns out that negative fan reaction towards the spinoff influenced how Transformers: Rise of the Beasts came together.
Transformers franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura revealed this information in one of the featurettes attached to Rise of the Beasts’ home media release (via Slashfilm). As the man laid out:
Well, one of the interesting things about Bumblebee was, while people seemed to really love the movie, a lot of the fan base was not entirely happy with the scale of it. It was very intimate, and it was consciously intimate, and there was one refrain that came out of a large group of them, which was, ‘Where’s the explosions? Where’s all the stuff?’
So despite Bumblebee being such a critical hit, there was a segment of the Transformers fanbase that there was a lack of spectacle in the story focused on the yellow Autobot. That’s one element that was certainly plentiful in the first five live-action Transformers movies, all of which were helmed by Michael Bay. Evidently there was enough of an outcry that when it came time to plan the next Transformers movie, rather than move forward with Bumblebee 2 (which Hailee Steinfeld is “not necessarily” surprised didn’t happen), Paramount Pictures instead greenlit Rise of the Beasts, which felt like a traditional cinematic story about the robots in disguise.
Granted, fan criticism alone likely didn’t dictate this creative pivot, because as mentioned earlier, there was a time when Bumblebee was the lowest-grossing Transformers movie, making only $467.9 million worldwide. Ironically though, not only did Transformers: Rise of the Beasts inherit that last place spot by only collecting $438.9 million in total, it earned more mixed critical reception. Our own Mike Reyes was among those more kind towards the movie, saying in his Rise of the Beasts review that it “further embraces a new form that opens itself to a wider audience than ever before.”
Although groundwork was laid in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ ending for a direct sequel and/or a crossover with G.I. Joe, if not a mix of both, there’s been no official word yet on if such projects will actually happen. For now, the next Transformers movie will be Transformers One, an animated prequel set on Cybertron featuring the vocal talents of Chris Hemsworth as Optimus Prime, Brian Tyree Henry as Megatron and Scarlett Johansson as Elita One, among others.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription alongside Bumblebee and the other Transformers movies, and Transformers One is slotted for a September 13 release on the 2024 movies calendar. As for whether Rise of the Beasts’ performance will result in the next live-action Transformers movie going through any kind of overhaul, we’ll just have to wait and see.