‘Primetime’ Star Robert Pattinson Picks the Movie That Defined the 2000s
Robert Pattinson is in the middle of one of the busiest stretches of his career. Between ‘The Odyssey’, ‘The Drama’, ‘Dune: Part Three’ and his latest A24 release, he currently has what one outlet called all of the motion in Hollywood. That means he is also spending plenty of time talking about movies, including the ones that shaped how he sees them.
His newest project is a good example. ‘Primetime’, released by A24 on September 25, stars Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the host of ‘To Catch a Predator’, and is set in 2006. Directed by Lance Oppenheim, it uses heavy saturation, a boxy 4:3 frame and grainy filters reminiscent of early 2000s tube TVs, which makes the decade feel like a character in its own right.
So it is perhaps no surprise that Pattinson has been thinking about how that era looked on the big screen. In comments shared via A24, he described early-2000s movies as having “super bright, saturated colors and really glossy stuff,” and said that look culminates with ‘Transformers‘ before it kind of ends.
It is a bold pick, but the numbers show why it works as a marker for an era. Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ arrived in the United States on July 3, 2007, starring Shia LaBeouf as teenager Sam Witwicky, caught between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons. Megan Fox also starred, and the film was based on Hasbro’s toy line.
A24 x @Letterboxd present The List with Robert Pattinson & Lance Oppenheim. Primetime is now playing in theaters everywhere. pic.twitter.com/Zjczrrjghr
— A24 (@A24) October 1, 2026
Critics were mixed, with some of the criticism aimed at the focus on the human characters over the robots. Audiences didn’t care. The film grossed about $709.7 million worldwide against a $150 million budget, making it the fifth most successful release of 2007, and it was nominated for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards.
It also launched a franchise. ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ earned $836.5 million in 2009, and ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ pulled in $1.124 billion in 2011. Over time, the series grew into a franchise worth around $5.3 billion at the box office.
The “and then it kind of ends” part of Pattinson’s remark also lines up with what happened later. After Bay’s exit, returns shrank: ‘Bumblebee’ was the franchise’s worst-performing movie since 2007, with $468 million worldwide, and ‘Transformers One’ made $128.9 million. Critics warmed to some of those later entries, but the era of the glossy, over-the-top blockbuster that Bay helped define was clearly fading.
The comment struck a nerve online. The post drew more than 539,000 views and thousands of likes, with fans debating whether another film better captures the decade. That kind of reaction suggests the question of what defines a cinematic era is far from settled.
For Pattinson, it also loops back to his own work. A decade-defining look can be a perfect reference point for a performer who plays characters shaped by their time, and it helps explain why ‘Primetime’ leans so hard into its 2000s texture. It will be interesting to see which films he points to next.
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