History Trivia / TransformersFilmSeries

* DoingItForTheArt:
** The movies exist [[MerchandiseDriven to sell toys]], [[ProductPlacement GM vehicles, and many other products]], but Creator/MichaelBay didn't want to do it at first. Yes, Mr. Flash Cuts & Explosions had to be talked into doing this. Bay explained that the only thing that made him even bother to consider the job is that you don't just ignore an offer from Creator/StevenSpielberg. Once he went through "Transformers School" at Hasbro, he had a wave of inspiration that was about showing something no one has ever attempted to do before. Once convinced, he made sure the CGI was some of the most detailed ever made. Industrial Light & Magic actually said they hadn't done work this groundbreaking since ''Franchise/JurassicPark''.
** Devastator is likely ILM's greatest accomplishment to date. The scenes with him had such a massive level of detail that rendering him took the ILM equipment to its limits. "Took the ILM equipment to its limits" as in smoking and melting one of the motherboards. Also prior series just made a blur of motion between the transformations, sort of "cheating" the process. Here no two transformations are identical (same basic components go to the right place but how it does that changes) and each one is appropriate to the scene, sometimes done in slow motion for dramatic effect.
** Bay insists on doing as many shots for real as possible, instead of doing everything in CGI. He rarely uses a blue screen. That really was the Hoover Dam, that was a real bus splitting in half, those are the real pyramids, that was a real sand explosion, there is a real life-size Bumblebee prop, the entire city of Chicago represents itself, etc.
** All of this can be evident in the scene in the first film where Sam is searching for his glasses and the robots are in the backyard. The visual effects were not cheap and that entire sequence was comedic in tone (Creator/StevenSpielberg even mentioned, while laughing, that he had never seen something like that before). But it also provided some of the most characterization for the robot heroes and helped to make them more than the killer robots everyone were afraid of, so that when they come to Sam's rescue we are rooting for them.
** Bay had to be coaxed into making the third one in 3D, because he said it was "gimmicky". ''Seriously''. And when the decision was made, Bay refused to work with anyone but the best. The best being the crew behind the 3D in ''Film/{{Avatar}}''.

* BackedByThePentagon: Somewhat odd, considering almost every Decepticon from the first film was a military machine, and the Pentagon typically doesn't support scripts that make the military look bad. The fact that the US Armed Forces kick a considerable amount of ass in all three movies, and the movie producers pointing out that the Decepticons picked US military machinery because it kicked the most ass, is what convinced them to sign on.

** Most of the military extras that shows up are ''actual'' military personnel. Most of the time, they don't even have a script beyond director Creator/MichaelBay telling them to say and do what they'd do in the situation.

* DoingItForTheArt: The movies exist [[MerchandiseDriven to sell toys]], [[ProductPlacement GM vehicles, and many other products]], but Creator/MichaelBay didn't want to do it at first. Yes, Mr. Flash Cuts & Explosions had to be talked into doing this. Bay explained that the only thing that made him even bother to consider the job is that you don't just ignore an offer from Creator/StevenSpielberg. Once he went through "Transformers School" at Hasbro, he had a wave of inspiration that was about showing something no one has ever attempted to do before. Once convinced, he made sure the CGI was some of the most detailed ever made. Industrial Light & Magic actually said they hadn't done work this groundbreaking since ''Franchise/JurassicPark''.

* ShowAccuracyToyAccuracy: One of the eternal demands of the fans. Despite the divisiveness of the films, the toys are of an unbelievable high quality. This is especially surprising given the ''thousands of parts'' that make the movies' CG models, yet they were still able to create [[http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/c/ce/ROTF_Leader_OptimusPrime.jpg this Optimus Prime toy]].

* ThrowItIn: Creator/MichaelBay is a fan of playing around with the script. Shia was hired based on how well he could improv. Also, the reason Sam's friend Miles starts climbing a tree at the lake party is because the actor started doing it in between takes and Bay thought it was a goofy thing the character would do.

** Derrick J. Wyatt, who worked on ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', didn't care much for the way Lockdown, who he helped create, was adapted in ''Age of Extinction''. He was less happy about the design of Hot Rod in ''The Last Knight'', responding to a tweet of the design that proudly boasted it was [[AnimationAgeGhetto "no cartoon"]] with a blunt "[[https://twitter.com/derrickjwyatt/status/761051835473928193?s=46&t=ShS5uPEPpCO7i6XGhakybQ Fuck you]]" and deriding him as a "[[InNameOnly name slap]]" in replies.

** Derrick J. Wyatt, who worked on ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', didn't care much for the way Lockdown, who he helped create, was adapted in ''Age of Extinction''.

** And then there's the ''Studio Series'' line. The premise of the entire line is to make new versions of characters from across the movie series, with particular attention to them being ''in scale with each other'' (as well as redesigning characters that had inaccurate toys due to [[AnimationLeadTime an evolving character design with the movies]]). This resulted in characters like Blackout and Bonecrusher getting better toys than originally released.

** Creator/MeganFox has had a history of badmouthing the series and its [[Creator/MichaelBay director]], and behind-the-scenes drama (most notably her saying Bay had a Hitler-like dictator persona on set and several members of the crew responding by anonymously praising Bay while bashing Fox in an open letter without Bay's approval) was why she did not return for the third film. Interestingly, Bay laughed off her comments until Creator/StephenSpielberg (who is Jewish) asked him to fire her because he was insulted that Fox would compare his friend to Hitler.

** A sixth film was planned and would've continued from the storyline in ''[[Film/TransformersTheLastKnight The Last Knight]]'', but it was cancelled due to the film's poor performance and Hasbro ultimately deciding to retool ''Bumblebee'' from a prequel to a ContinuityReboot of the film series, thus ending the [[FanNickname Bayformers]] series.

** Creator/MeganFox has had a history of badmouthing the series and its [[Creator/MichaelBay director]], and behind-the-scenes drama (most notably her saying Bay had a Hitler-like dictator persona on set and several members of the crew responding by anonymously praising Bay while bashing Fox in an open letter without Bay's approval) was why she did not return for the third film.

* ImageSource:
** CompositeCharacter (bottom)

* FanNickname:
** "Bayformers," while starting as a pejorative (and to some still is) has gone on to be an affectionate name for the series and the robot designs in general.
** "Baybies", a Film Series equivalent of a "Geewunner", it was used as a minor insult to the fans (mostly the ones who defended it) of the live-action movie.

* CreatorsApathy: It's clear that this trope kicked in over the course of the franchise, and was especially prominent after ''Dark of the Moon''. Beyond Michael Bay himself, the special effects teams and editors sharply declined in effort and quality of work.
** The editing got worse: the scenery, character positions, time of day, etc, change between cuts; the writing got worse or at least didn't get better, and began to either {{Retcon}} past films or flat ignore their continuity; and overall each film was worse than the previous, with ''Dark of the Moon'' seeing a slight uptick in critical and fan response over ''Revenge of the Fallen''.
** Perhaps most egregious for a franchise based on CGI is that the effects got ''very'' sloppy, with character models being reused between films, unfinished CGI, obvious instances when a physical prop is being used instead of a CGI model, blatant greenscreen work (including cases where the greenscreen is still visible), and it's clear when the actors aren't looking at the Transformers and aren't reacting appropriately to what they're doing and saying.
** ''The Last Knight'' may be the worst instance of this. The film changes aspect ratios between cuts, "scratch track" voice actors were retained in the final product, some of them being used alongside the credited voice actors (they either forgot to record those lines, or did and forgot to put them in), and there were two different cuts created and screened in theaters in different regions.

** ''The Light Knight'' may be the worst instance of this. The film changes aspect ratios between cuts, "scratch track" voice actors were retained in the final product, some of them being used alongside the credited voice actors (they either forgot to record those lines, or did and forgot to put them in), and there were two different cuts created and screened in theaters in different regions.

* CreatorApathy: It's clear that this trope kicked in over the course of the franchise, and was especially prominent after ''Dark of the Moon''. Beyond Michael Bay himself, the special effects teams and editors sharply declined in effort and quality of work.

* Peter Cullen reprises his role as Optimus Prime for the Michael Bay films, but he does not reprise his role as Ironhide. Frank Welker returns as the voices of Soundwave and Ravage, but his other characters (Megatron, Frenzy and Laserbeak) have new actors. He was going to portray Megatron once more, but Michael Bay decided that Welker's voice didn't match his vision for Megatron. Though he ''would'' get to voice Galvatron in AOE, and ultimately reclaimed the role of Megatron in TLK.