Frankly, there’s probably not a lot we can say to sway you when it comes to seeing or not seeing Transformers: Age of Extinction this weekend. You should already know whether or not you’re a fan of Michael Bay’s particular brand of Kool-Aid — and now that I think about it, a grinning mug full of sugar-water bursting illogically through a brick wall is a fairly concise metaphor for Bay’s Transformers franchise in the first place. They should just go ahead and slap “Oh yeah!” on all of the posters. But assuming Age of Extinction is not on your to-do list, and assuming Snowpiercer isn’t playing anywhere near you, we’ve got seven superior alternatives to pouring Bay’s digital excess into your eye holes.

Since the Transformers movies are based on a cartoon and thus, at least theoretically, they should be suitable for all ages, we’re including a variety of different choices here, all of them involving robots in one way or another. And to hear GFR’s Nick tell it, you could marathon all of these in a row and it’d still seem shorter than sitting through Age of Extinction. Hit the jump for all our picks!