Due to its popularity, an article entitled “The 10 Most Confusing Things in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” made it to the front page of Yahoo!

If you’ve watched the movie, you’ll agree with most of what that article is saying. The critics over at Rotten Tomatoes rated it an embarassing 20/100. On my side, I thought it was a brainless, mechanical punchfest that resembled a Manny Pacquiao match more than a movie. The point I’m getting at is basically that the movie had tons of serious shortcomings.

Fortunately for Michael Bay and friends, the numbers are saying otherwise. Transformers 2 has already amassed $200 million in its first week, an amount most movies never even reach in their entire screenings. It’s pretty much a global success.

There are of course a lot of factors coming into play, but my personal top 3 reasons for their success are as follows:

1.  Going after the Right People

They had hundreds in their team and I don’t think they’re all dumb enough to overlook the fact that critics are going to hate their movie. It was expected. Instead of trying to please everyone, they focused all their energy in impressing their bread & butter—geeks, kids and fanboys. (Of course, the market is larger than this one, but the bulk of it fall under the three.)

2. Positive Focus

Again, they were aware that they had shortcomings. I’m sure some random movie critic in their team at least, pointed out to them that the story sucked or it had a lot of loopholes; but who cares? If all these movie-makers focused on fixing these inconsistencies, then there’d be no creativity or imagination. It wouldn’t be too fun if all the main characters died with a gunshot. Think Jack Bauer or Chuck Norris.

They did well by focusing on their assets (cool transforming robots, and Megan Fox…but mostly Megan Fox) and delivering what’s necessary.

3. Protecting the Brand

Transformers is all about…Transforming Robots, so they perfected it. With a film like that, people won’t really remember much of the story, but they will definitely remember the trademark futuristic transforming sound, the detailed morphing of the metal and the bangs and booms of the robotic bodies.

Because they decided to focus on protecting their brand, none of their mistakes will stop the geeks of the world from buying their ridiculously-priced action figures. More importantly, even the unimpressive acting will not stop the boys from googling “Megan Fox Transformers.”

Lesson learned: big shortcomings don’t necessarily end up in big failures.