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No franchise can escape the law of diminishing returns forever, but very few of them continue to bulldoze ahead despite taking continuously dropping from chapter to chapter. Apparently unbothered by such trivialities as dwindling box office, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts even set up a crossover with another series that currently boasts a zero-for-three success rate, which is hardly encouraging.
After reaching the halcyon days of back-to-back billion-dollar hits during the Michael Bay era through Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction, earnings then fell off a cliff when The Last Knight earned $500 million less than its two immediate predecessors to become the lowest-earning battle between the Autobots and Decepticons yet.
Undeterred, Travis Knight stepped in to helm Bumblebee, which is comfortably the saga’s finest installment by a country mile, but it still earned less than the one that came before it. In came Steven Caple Jr. for Rise of the Beasts – boldly proclaimed as the start of an entire trilogy – which made it a three-peat after this summer’s seventh entry once again became the lowest-grossing Transformers blockbuster for the third time in a row.
And yet, the seeds have been sown for a G.I. Joe crossover, hardly a wise move when that IP has seen The Rise of Cobra, Retaliation, and Snake Eyes all failed at the first hurdle in launching a universe of its own. Sure, FlixPatrol may have named Rise of the Beasts as one of the Top 10 most-watched features on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Rakuten, and Paramount Plus, but does anybody really care where the story goes next?