How to watch the Transformers movies in order

❘ Published: 2023-06-07T16:05:27

A still from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the seventh of the Transformers movies

Paramount Pictures

Here’s your guide to watching all of the Transformers movies in order, including the order of release, chronological order, and where to watch them.

While the franchise dates back to Takara and Hasbro’s toy line in the ’80s, it entered the live-action realm with 2007’s Transformers, the first blockbuster entry in the blockbuster series.

Michael Bay’s stewardship resulted in some of the most bombastic, bonkers mainstream films you can find, including but not limited to alien technology on the moon, robot spines being ripped out, Dinobots, and Merlin – yes, the wizard.

Fate may rarely call upon us at the time of our choosing, but as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts arrives in cinemas, we’ve arranged all of the movies in release and chronological order. Autobots, transform, and roll out.

Transformers movies in release order
Transformers movies in chronological order
Where to watch the Transformers movies

Transformers movies in release order

As always, watching a franchise in release order is always the most straightforward – and let’s be honest, the best – way to go. Here’s the release order for the Transformers movies:

Transformers (2007)
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009)
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014)
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Bumblebee (2018)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)

There are a total of seven Transformers movies, with the third three in the franchise considered to be a loose trilogy, given they follow Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and – for the first two, at least – Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes, before Bay fired her.

Age of Extinction and The Last Knight introduced a new cast led by Mark Wahlberg, though they directly follow on from the previous three entries. Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts are where it gets a little more complicated, and there’s even more to come: the latter movie is hoped to be the launchpad for a new trilogy, and there’s Transformers One, a prequel set on Cybertron.

Transformers movies in chronological order

While 2007’s Transformers opens with a prologue before time began, with “the cube”, we’re going to keep this as simple as we can so you don’t have to hop, skip, and jump between all the flashbacks. There’s also other continuities to consider, but we’re going to stick to the films:

Bumblebee (2018)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Transformers (2007)
Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen (2009)
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014)
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

There is some debate about what’s considered canon and whether these should all be considered as part of the same timeline – so, let’s get into the chronological order of the Transformers movies.

Bumbleebee

Bumblebee is the sixth installment of the Transformers franchise, serving as a spinoff and prequel to Bay’s earlier movies. It follows Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), a teenager who receives a Volkswagen Beetle as an 18th birthday present, only to discover it’s actually autobot B-127 – aka Bumblebee, sent to Earth by Optimus Prime to set up a base amid the war on Cybertron.

It unfolds in the 1980s, but there are some major continuity issues to consider if you’re trying to connect the dots: what about the Knights of Iacon, did Bumblebee fight Nazis in World War II, and what happened to their G1 designs between now and the first movie? Our advice: don’t think about it or your head will hurt.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

The latest Transformers entry, Rise of the Beasts, takes place in the ’90s, and serves as a direct sequel to Bumblebee. It’s concerned with the emergence of the Terrorcons, a dangerous species without any allegiance to the Decepticons, Autobots, Maximals, or Predacons.

Two humans – Noah (Anthony Ramos) and Elena (Dominique Fishback) – get caught up in the battle for the Transwarp Key, an ancient contraption that could destroy the world.

Transformers

If we’re ignoring their early arrival on Earth in Bumblebee (and all the sh*t with Merlin that happens later), Transformers was the movie that started it all by bringing the war between Autobots and Decepticons to our world, and introducing Megatron to the mix after being discovered frozen in ice.

This time, Optimus Prime is desperate to find the AllSpark, a cube that also happens to be the source of all life on Cybertron, while the Decepticons want to use it for… bad stuff. It also features the likes of Bumblebee, Jazz, Megatron, and Starscream, and it introduced us to LaBeouf and Fox’s characters.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Set two years after the first entry, we catch up with Sam in college – but he’s not doing too well. Visions of Cybertron symbols are driving him crazy, and the first-ever Decepticon – The Fallen, otherwise known as Megatronus Prime, voiced by Tony Todd – hatches a plan to kill Optimus Prime and destroy all life on Earth.

LaBeouf and Fox reprise their roles alongside Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, and John Turturro, and it directly follows the events of its predecessor, so there’s nothing too outrageous… yet.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

The third and final entry for LaBeouf’s Sam, Dark of the Moon pits the Autobots and Decepticons against each other in a war for ancient technology abandoned on – you guessed it – the dark side of the moon. In this story, Apollo 11’s true mission was to investigate the crash site of a downed aircraft: the Ark, from Cybertron.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley gets her one-and-done debut as Sam’s new girlfriend, and there’s a new Autobot leader: Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy), who gets one of the most controversial deaths in the whole franchise.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction

The movie that retconned the extinction of the dinosaurs: it wasn’t a meteor, it was caused by an alien race carpeting the planet with Transformium. 65 million years later, we meet Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), an inventor who discovers Optimus Prime and fixes him up.

Of course, this draws Cade into another conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons, alongside his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor), Stanley Tucci as aspiring Transformer assembler Joshua Joyce, Kelsey Grammer as a CIA agent and professional robot hater; good, evil, or anywhere in between. At least there’s Dinobots.

Transformers: The Last Knight

A still from Transformers: Age of Extinction

The fifth and final movie with Michael Bay in the director’s seat, and this movie is a supersized, dreadful dose of head-scrambling insanity: it begins in Arthurian times with Merlin (played by Stanley Tucci, though completely unconnected to his previous character) discovering Transformers in the form of the 12 Knights, who give him a magical staff, before we fast-forward to present day with an evil Optimus Prime trying to track it down.

At this point, all Transformers are now illegal on Earth, which has only heightened the raging battle between them and the TRF (Transformers Reaction Force). With otherworldly bots planning to destroy humanity, Cade teams up with a mysterious British figure (Anthony Hopkins) and professor (Laura Haddock) to save the world.

There’s a scene where Hopkins’ character gets absolutely murked by Megatron, and that’s pretty much the only reason to watch it.