Transformers Timeline: Every Movie in Story Order

Transformers One (2024), directed by Josh Cooley, comes first in story order because it shows Cybertron before the Autobots and Decepticons exist under those names. The film never gives a calendar year, so it opens the timeline without a date, and every other film builds on the war it starts. Its leads are Orion Pax, a cogless miner in the underground city of Iacon voiced by Chris Hemsworth, and his best friend D-16, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, with Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1 and Keegan-Michael Key as B-127.

The plot hinges on a cover up. Alpha Trion shows the group that Sentinel Prime murdered the real Primes to take the Matrix of Leadership, and that he has been sending Energon to the Quintessons in return for power. D-16 later kills Sentinel, takes the cog of Megatronus Prime and names himself Megatron, while Orion is revived as Optimus Prime and exiles him. Optimus then names his followers the Autobots, and Megatron turns the exiled High Guard into the Decepticons, so the long war known from the rest of the franchise starts here. The transformers one film page covers the full cast.

Bumblebee (2018), directed by Travis Knight, is the earliest live action film in story order, set in California in 1987. Optimus Prime sends the scout B-127 to Earth while the Autobots lose the war on Cybertron, and B-127 crash lands into a Sector 7 military exercise led by Colonel Jack Burns. The Decepticon Blitzwing then ambushes him, rips out his voice box and damages his memory before B-127 destroys him, and the wounded scout scans a Volkswagen Beetle and goes dormant.

Charlie Watson, played by Hailee Steinfeld, is still grieving her father when she finds the car, names it Bumblebee and helps him recover. The Decepticons Shatter and Dropkick arrive on Earth and convince Sector 7 that the Autobots are the real danger. Charlie revives Bumblebee with a jolt of electricity that also restores his memories, and the finale at a harbor tower ends with Dropkick torn apart and Shatter crushed by a cargo ship in the flood.

Bumblebee then says goodbye to Charlie above the Golden Gate Bridge, takes the form of a 1977 Camaro and reunites with Optimus Prime, who survived, as more Autobot escape pods head toward Earth. If you want the full film, see the bumblebee movie page, and for the characters, bumblebee transformer and charlie bumblebee.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023), directed by Steven Caple Jr., takes place in 1994, seven years after Bumblebee, and it is the third film in story order. It opens far from Earth, where Unicron attacks the Maximals' homeworld and Optimus Primal escapes with the Transwarp Key, a device that opens portals. The story then jumps to Brooklyn, where Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), a former soldier desperate for money to help his sick brother, tries to steal a Porsche that turns out to be the Autobot Mirage.

Museum intern Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) cracks open an ancient falcon statue and exposes the key, which pulls Noah into the mission of Optimus Prime. Scourge and his Terrorcons take the key after killing Bumblebee, and the heroes travel to Peru to find the missing half, where Scourge corrupts the Maximal Airazor. In the final battle Mirage becomes an exosuit for Noah, Bumblebee is brought back online and Optimus Prime destroys the key to collapse the portal and strand Unicron. Afterward the Autobots settle on Earth and Noah is recruited into G.I. Joe, which sets up a crossover with that franchise. The transformers rise of the beasts page has the details, and noah diaz transformers covers the new lead.

Transformers (2007), directed by Michael Bay, is the fourth film in story order and the first of five Bay films. Its backstory reaches to 1897, when Captain Archibald Witwicky finds the frozen Megatron in the Arctic, and Sector 7 later builds the Hoover Dam around the AllSpark, the cube that can create life. The main story is set in the present day, where Decepticons attack a US base in Qatar and then chase the knowledge held by Sam Witwicky, whose family heirlooms carry the key to the cube's location.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf) owns a car that is the Autobot Bumblebee, and with Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) he meets the Autobots led by Optimus Prime. After Sector 7 takes the two into custody, the fight moves from Hoover Dam to Mission City, where Sam drives the AllSpark into Megatron's chest and destroys both. Optimus keeps a shard of the cube, the government disbands Sector 7, and Optimus sends a signal calling the surviving Autobots to Earth. The human side of the saga begins with sam witwicky, the villain is covered at megatron transformers and the film has its own page at transformers 2007.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), directed by Michael Bay, slots in fifth, two years after the fight at Mission City. By then the Autobots have joined human forces in a task force called NEST, and Sam Witwicky is packing for college. A leftover AllSpark shard in his jacket fills his head with alien symbols and wakes up kitchen appliances, and the Decepticons soon bring Megatron back under the orders of the Fallen, a rogue member of the first seven Primes who once tried to destroy Earth's sun.

The back half moves to Egypt. Jetfire, an ancient Autobot, teleports Sam, Mikaela, Leo, Simmons and two small robots to a desert tomb that hides the Matrix of Leadership. Optimus Prime has already fallen protecting Sam, and the Matrix turns to dust in Sam's hands. Near the Giza pyramids Sam dies too, and the old Primes send him back to revive Optimus. Jetfire gives up his own body to power the leader up, and Optimus wrecks the sun machine and kills the Fallen while Megatron and Starscream escape. That open ending is what carries the story into the next chapter. Full coverage is on the transformers revenge of the fallen page, and the Decepticon who survives is profiled at starscream transformers.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), directed by Michael Bay, is sixth in story order and the film that leans hardest on real history. Its opening goes back to 1962, when a ship called the Ark comes down on the far side of the Moon, and to 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission is quietly steered toward it. Only then does the story jump to the present, where Optimus Prime traces a Decepticon target back to that wreck.

On the Moon the Autobots find their former leader Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) beside five Pillars that can open a Space Bridge. Once revived, Sentinel turns on them and joins Megatron, hoping to rescue the dying Cybertron. The Decepticons use the Pillars to drag that planet toward Earth and take over Chicago, where Sam, Lennox and the NEST troops fight street by street next to the Autobots. Bumblebee knocks out the Control Pillar, and Optimus then kills both Megatron and Sentinel. The Autobots stay behind as Earth's defenders in the wake of the battle of Chicago. Sentinel has his own entry at sentinel prime transformers, and the film is covered at transformers dark of the moon.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), directed by Michael Bay, is the seventh film in story order and is set five years after the battle of Chicago. It begins with the Creators using devices called Seeds to turn Earth's surface to metal and wipe out the dinosaurs. In the present, humans see the Transformers as a threat, and a secret CIA unit called Cemetery Wind, led by Harold Attinger, hunts the Autobots with help from the bounty hunter Lockdown, who kills Ratchet while searching for Optimus Prime.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a Texas inventor, finds and repairs the wounded Optimus, which draws Cemetery Wind to his farm, and Cade, his daughter Tessa and her boyfriend Shane escape with him. In Chicago, Cade finds that Joshua Joyce of the tech company KSI is melting down fallen Transformers to build drone soldiers, and one of them, Galvatron, is built from Megatron's remains and breaks free of Joyce's control. The fight moves to Hong Kong, where Optimus frees the Dinobots and earns their loyalty, and he later kills Lockdown with Lockdown's own grenade. Galvatron flees, and Optimus takes the Seed into space with a message that he is coming for the Creators. For the new lead, see cade yeager, for the villain galvatron transformers, and for the film transformers age of extinction.

Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), directed by Michael Bay, is eighth in story order and closes the Bay run, yet it stretches the timeline furthest back, to 484 AD. In that opening Merlin is handed a staff by the Knights of Iacon, robots hiding on Earth, and it helps King Arthur win his war. The present day then finds humans hunting Transformers with a government task force, while Optimus Prime, who left Earth after Age of Extinction, arrives at the ruins of Cybertron. There Quintessa corrupts him into Nemesis Prime.

Cade Yeager, who shelters outcast robots in his junkyard, is summoned to England by Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins). Oxford professor Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock) turns out to be Merlin's descendant and the only person who can wield the staff. The Decepticons, now allied with Quintessa, seize it, and Megatron kills Burton at Stonehenge. Cybertron then starts draining Earth, which hides Unicron at its core. Cade's talisman becomes Excalibur, Optimus shakes off the corruption and beats Megatron, and Viviane uses the staff to halt the damage before the Autobots head off to rebuild their home.

A short scene begins seconds into the credits, with Quintessa in human form crossing a desert toward scientists studying a giant horn in the ground. She tells them not to touch it, and when they ask who would object, she says "Unicron." Find the full breakdown at transformers the last knight.

The Transformers: The Movie (1986), directed by Nelson Shin, is listed last in story order, and it tells its own animated story of Cybertron's fall. The Decepticons conquer Cybertron, Optimus Prime beats Megatron but dies of his wounds, and the Autobots lose the Matrix of Leadership that he carried. Unicron, a planet eating Transformer, then rebuilds the dumped Megatron as Galvatron and devours Cybertron's moons, while Hot Rod and Kup are captured by the Quintessons. In the end Hot Rod activates the Matrix, becomes Rodimus Prime and destroys Unicron.

The voice cast includes Judd Nelson as Hot Rod, Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron and Orson Welles as Unicron. The transformers the movie 1986 page has the full breakdown.

In my opinion, the Transformers timeline reads cleanly on Earth and loosely on Cybertron, because the films hand out Earth dates and almost no Cybertron ones. The Earth calendar runs from the Creators wiping out the dinosaurs in Age of Extinction, to Merlin in 484 AD in The Last Knight, to Captain Archibald Witwicky finding Megatron in 1897 in Transformers (2007), to the Ark crash in 1962 and Apollo 11 in 1969 in Dark of the Moon, then Bumblebee in 1987 and Rise of the Beasts in 1994, and finally the present day of the Bay run. That is why the story order puts the two newest live action films ahead of the 2007 film, even though they arrived in 2018 and 2023. Among the live action films, the five Bay films keep the same order in story and in release.

A few threads make the order feel connected. The Matrix of Leadership matters in the 1986 film, in Revenge of the Fallen and in Transformers One. Unicron devours Cybertron's moons in the 1986 film, turns out to be Earth's core in The Last Knight and is stranded by Optimus Prime in Rise of the Beasts. Sentinel Prime betrays the Autobots in both Transformers One and Dark of the Moon, and Megatron is rebuilt as Galvatron in the 1986 film and again from his remains in Age of Extinction. That being said, the films never state whether the animated version and the live action versions share one history, so I read these as echoes more than proof of a single shared past.

The stretch that sits most awkwardly, as far as I can tell, is the Autobots' arrival on Earth. At the end of Transformers (2007), Optimus Prime calls on the surviving Autobots to make Earth their home, yet Bumblebee ends with escape pods already heading toward the planet, Rise of the Beasts has the Autobots settling on Earth in 1994, and The Last Knight adds the Knights of Iacon hiding on Earth since 484 AD. It could be argued that the later films quietly retcon how long Transformers have lived on the planet, and the films do not stop to reconcile it.

If you are new to the saga, watch in release order using the transformers movies in order guide, then return here for a rewatch that starts with Transformers One and ends with The Last Knight, with the 1986 film as a final animated chapter. The transformers movies hub lists every title, how many transformers movies gives the count, and transformers characters, autobots names and decepticons help you track who is who. If you want a verdict on which film is best, see transformers movies ranked.