http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson...s-100m-weekend/

Does this considered as "basically dead"?

See, the reason why I partially lost interest in ROTF and completely lost it at DOTM and this was no different as well is because I feel that the story was all over the place and the special effects team has either became lazy or budget restraints(in which I don't believe that is the issue).

Scenes keep on jumping left and right and it doesn't make any sense. This was really an issue with the DOTM and AOE. One scene they were driving and suddenly they shift into another scene which literally made me went 'Wait, what happened?' The car chasing scenes especially. There's no flow or sync at all.

Transforming of the robots has been cut down alot. Most likely to save up time and do less work on the animation. Sorry, but that was the magic and plus point of Transformers 1. I loved it because of how detailed of the transformations. It looks so cool and it made sense(it totally works so well in the toys as well). Now, it's like one scene vehicle and one scene robot mode(all the toys for the current AOE line are bunch of crap with too much kibble). And Transformium cube-transforming robots? Lazy and boring!

Story wise, again, all 3 of the latest movies cannot beat the first one. First one was simple yet epic at the same time! I watched it twice in the cinema even! They really should let Orci and Kurtzman handle the script writing but unfortunately, both of them split already and now we are getting just tons of mindless and action-packed movie. When they say they are making another trilogy, I was like 'Hell no!' but luckily that's not confirmed yet. For me, best movie for me in the entire series was Transformers 1 and nothing else.