How Did Michael Bay Accomplish This?

After three Transformers movies, it only made sense to make a fourth, right? Not only that, but Michael Bay also decided that changing all the characters (because everyone loves when that happens in movies) and making his latest film, Transformers: Age of Extinction,165 minutes long would be the best way to win over the audience. Oddly enough (and I do mean really odd), he did just that. In fact, Transformers: Age of Extinction has become the number one movie of the year, according to a recent report by Box Office Mojo.

If you’re suddenly wondering what black magic Bay is using to sway moviegoers, don’t worry, because I am, too. The movie, which made its way to theaters on June 27, has managed to reel in a worldwide gross of $752,531,000, taking the top-ranked spot of 2014. Behind this comes X-Men: Days of Future Past in second, Captain America: The Winter Soldier in third, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in fourth.

On the plus side, this is definitely saying something for the worth of superhero movies and their popularity, but it still amazes me that this fourth Transformers movie fought its way to the top.

Not gonna lie. The nerdy girl in me is pretty much obsessed with Autobots like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and I’m always one for a sweet fight scene. Oh yeah, and though I’m not sure if this freakishly long movie was worth it, (SPOILER ALERT) the helpful dinosaurs at the end were pretty badass. I mean, come on, tell me you wouldn’t want to ride a giant robot T-Rex, amiright?

Yet with pretty sweet-looking Autobots aside, not even Mark Wahlberg’s good looks and interesting “Chicago” accent could save this movie, which received a great deal of criticism from expert critics and Transformers fans alike.

Did people buy tickets to see this movie because they were secretly hoping that it would be a success? Or did they simply miss the showing they were supposed to attend of How to Train Your Dragon 2? Perhaps, Bay sent thousands of tiny Decepticons to infect our brains so that we’d go to the movie, or maybe the Chinese man who bought hundreds of tickets to Transformers to win back his ex-girlfriend helped contribute to the sales.

Whatever the reason may be, this recent report doesn’t actually mean the movie was good. It probably just means that we all need to stop being sheep, blindly following each other into theaters worldwide because, once again, Hollywood has duped us into believing a movie will be amazing with a decent trailer and some superb film promotion. Otherwise, we'll end up like these guys:

Images: Paramount Pictures, reactiongifs, Dante Smilodon/deviantart