How To Watch The Transformers Movies In Order

The legacy started by Michael Bay’s first Transformers movie is a longstanding and familiar one to general audiences, despite the inconsistent quality. While its days of being a guaranteed box office titan have come and gone, it’s undeniable that they were wildly influential in terms of both inflating studio revenue expectations, but also the cultivation of the massive-scale event movies that have come to dominate theaters every summer. Because of their ubiquity (we’ve had a Transformers movie in theaters consistently every few years for almost two decades now) and the general aimlessness of the franchise since Bay’s departure, the last few years have given us some wildly varied projects.

At first glance, the universe created by that first Transformers film back in 2007 seems disparate and cobbled together, and to some degree they are. But that level of narrative relaxation has given them the opportunity to go to some wild and audacious places. From Michael Bay giving us an Autobot adventure that connects back to King Arthur’s Roundtable, all the way to us getting a fully-animated feature taking place entirely on Cybertron, the series has reinvented itself several times with a very loose grasp on canon and continuity. The new films take place in a strange No Man’s Land, where they could be prequels to the original five live-action films, while also existing as their own offshoot.

With the success of Transformers One (and the promise left by the ending of Rise of the Beasts remaining unfulfilled), it’s safe to say that neither Hollywood nor general audiences are quite done with the franchise. So for fans looking to revisit the eternal conflict of the Autobots and the Decepticons, there are two different orders by which to rewatch all of the films up to this point. Naturally these do not include Transformers: The Movie or any G1 content, and exclusively refers to the timeline(s) created by the 2007 film.

How To Watch The Transformers Films In Chronological Order

One of the most interesting and bold choices the series continues to make is how closely it links the Transformer conflict with crucial moments in human history. Of course, NASA didn’t find a defunct alien corpse during the Moon landing, but the way that these films engage with their historical context is fascinating in a revisionist-history, conspiracy loon kind of way that’s incredibly fun at a base level.

Because of the sprawling history of the Transformers (both on and off Earth), it’s certainly rewarding to watch the films in chronological order, because even if the canon seems fragmented and disconnected at points, it’s the only way to properly contextualize the events that lead the Autobots to where they are when they first crash land on Earth back in 2007.

Here are the Transformers movies, in chronological order of the in-universe timeline.

1. Transformers One (takes place 3 billion years before the Autobots arrive on Earth)
2. Bumblebee (set in 1987)
3. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (set in 1994)
4. Transformers (set in 2007)
5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (set in 2009, with flashbacks to 17,000 B.C.)
6. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (set in 2011, with flashbacks to 1961 and the Space Race)
7. Transformers: Age of Extinction (takes place five years after the Battle of Chicago, putting it around 2016)
8. Transformers: The Last Knight (set in 2017, with flashbacks to 484 A.D. and World War II, among other historical detours)

How To Watch The Transformers Films In Release Order

While watching the movies in chronological order gives a distinct impression of how the Transformers’ age-old conflict has changed from the beginning to the present, watching them in release order really impresses just how crucial Michael Bay was to even the current direction of the franchise. Aesthetically, the series owes a lot to his distinct style of cinematic mayhem, and even now as the franchise moves away from the controversial live-action character designs, they still do borrow quite a bit from Bay’s vision every now and then. Without the escapades of Sam Witwicky and Bay’s auterist visual kineticism, it’s hard to say whether or not Transformers would have ever become the cultural phenomenon it was from the late 2000s through the late 2010s.

Here is the release order of the Transformers movies.

1. Transformers (2007)
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
4. Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
5. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
6. Bumblebee (2018)
7. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
8. Transformers One (2024)

Although there hasn’t been a direct confirmation of a sequel to the most recent installment, there are several potential directions Paramount could go in: fans have been asking for a continuation of Transformers One, the idea of a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover has been simmering for a while and Rise of the Beasts only fueled the flames, and of course there’s always the (much less likely) chance that someone will continue the cliffhanger presented by the end of The Last Knight.

There are plenty of narrative options for where the Autobots might end up next, but one thing is for certain: After the Transformers movies dominated pop culture and the box office for over a full decade, there’s absolutely no way Hollywood is done with them just yet.