Transformers: Age of Extinction was one of the worst films in recent memory. A mind numbingly long three hours of explosions, scantily clad women, and muscular men yelling at each other (but despite the title a surprisingly small amount of actual transformers), Age of Extinction was positively derided by critics, with such choice descriptions as “incoherent mess” and “endless barrage of nonsense and noise,” ultimately getting an 11 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 32 on Metacritic. American audiences didn’t flock to it either, with a final grossing of $245,439,076 stateside. Not a terrible amount, but significantly less than its predecessor, Dark of the Moon, which coughed out a cool $352,390,543 back in 2011.

 

Likewise, with a budget set at $210,000,000, plus an extra $100,000,000 on marketing, distributions costs, and spray tan for Michael Bay, American audiences labeled Transformers: Age of Extinction a critical dud and a financial flop, with less people showing up to see the famous robots in disguise than ever before. But Age of Extinction was still a financial success, a huge one actually, a billion dollar film and the highest grossing movie of 2014, all thanks to our friends and brothers across the sea.

 

In China alone, Age of Extinction grossed over $300,000,000. Extinction was a huge success in many other predominately non-English speaking countries, setting box office records in several of them. Over 70 percent of profits were from non-American audiences, painting a pretty clear picture. This was not a movie made for Americans. With its generic, easy to translate dialogue, big budget special effects, and a third act actually set in Hong Kong, Extinction was the perfect big, dumb, destruction-filled film, that while derivative and generic for the United States, provided a distraction for audiences in countries where the movie studios don’t routinely pump $200,000,000 budgets into one film. However it’s far from the first film to showcase this unfortunate phenomenon.

 

One of the most notable box office bombs of all time, 1995’s Waterworld, ended up a financial success after grossing huge in foreign territories. Many other dumb, turn off your brain movies also proved to be far more successful when released outside of America. It didn’t take long for producers to realize that quality didn’t matter, just a plot that’d be easy for foreigners to follow, dialogue that’d be simple to translate, and enough ‘Merica style action to keep them briefly entertained. This led to a string of awful, critically derided, but (primarily outside of the United States) financially successful films that still come out to this day, including such gems as 1999’s Wild Wild West (17% on Rotten Tomatoes), 2004’s The Day after Tomorrow (45%),and a personal hatred of mine, 2009’s 2012 (39%). Alas, the production of these foreign-pandering films seems to only be increasing.

 

With the Fast and Furious 7, Transformers 5 and 6, Jurassic Park 4, Terminator 5, and twenty-plus comic book movie, America is the blockbuster king of the world. But as stateside ticket sales continue to slide, with the summer of 2014 the lowest grossing movie season in eight years, producers are relying more and more heavily on foreign audiences to pick up the slack, at the cost of quality. So get ready for Hollywood to introduce such high-brow fare as Explosion-Fest 3: More BOOM BOOM and Amazing Spiderman 17: Laundry Day. Hey, at least the Chinese will get a kick out of it.