I must confess. There's a terrible weight on my conscience that I can't shake. I am overwhelmed by guilt for what I have just done.
By the sound of it, you could probably assume I committed adultery or homicide, but I haven't. Though had I, I'm sure the experience would have been far more pleasurable and exciting than watching the new Transformers flick... which is exactly what I did last night.
There is no exact word to describe just how horrible this film is. I can't call it a B-movie, because it had the annual revenue of a small country pumped into it. I can't use my wealth of thesaurus words relating to "crappy" to describe this film, because that will no doubtably bring to mind fond memories of laughably rank or outrageous films, made popular by grindhouses, Mystery Science Theater 3000, or other such sources.
No, no, no - no one word will do it. There is, however, a two-word combination that will sum up Transformers quite well: "Michael Bay".
Okay, so that may be a name, but it should be recognized historically as a phrase synonymous with "God awful 'films' that earn more money that they should ever deserve". Perhaps if he stopped at The Rock, he would be okay in my book, but the bugger was just plague out of control, wasn't he? Let us take a look at what his prolonged life has given us:
Armageddon (originally titled: "Another Painfully Cliche Disaster Movie")
Pearl Harbor (Ben Afflect still can't act)
The Island (which, though they deny it, is a direct remake of "parts, the clonus horror" (that's right - no caps) which was featured on MST3K)
Transformers (I'll get to this shortly)
And let me not forget to mention the horrible years in between these duds in which we waited in suspense of what crap Mr. Bay would be flinging at us next. In some ways, Michael Bay is a disaster movie.
That said, I have no idea where to start in tearing apart Transformers, much like how I wish Megatron would have done to each and every human actor in this 2 hour bore-fest (and right afterwards if he could tear up every remaining copy of the script, that'd be great, too). Ideally, you and I would break into every movie retailer, steal every copy of the just-released Transformers DVD, burn all but one, then watch that one, pausing along to way for me to point out what is wrong with every scene. Then after we'd finish with that copy, we'd drive over to Michael Bay's and force him to eat it. My only hope is that it is released as one of those special edition 5-disc bundles, so we can provide Bay with a lovely 3-course meal, with extra servings of dessert.
To start let's talk about the robots, hm? Good luck trying to tell any of them apart. Unless we're talking about Optimus Prime or Bumblebee, the Autobots and Decepticons pretty much blend into the next dark grey hunk of random metallic junk. It doesn't help that each robot is so frikin' complex you can barely tell just what the hell you're looking at. Seriously, I couldn't tell their heads apart from their asses (or their Autobutts, if you prefer). And with the cinematographer's apparent love for telephoto lenses, good luck trying to figure out just what the hell you're looking at. Even a non-film major friend of mine turned to me and asked: "wouldn't it make more sense if this was a wide angle shot?" Yes, yes it would. That just shows you that no matter how big your budget, it doesn't save you from being talentless.
For a greater part of the film we follow around a very tiny Decepticon, who is an attempted blend of comedy, ickiness, exaggerated performance, and evil. The result, of course, is pure vomit. And while that sounds really awful to put up with in a two hour movie, with its design being just too complex, it moves too fast, too over-the-top, and too unmotivated for you to even realize what you're watching. Its death scene will leave you scratching your head, wondering: "now how the hell did that just happen?!" (And you will have shouted that phrase many, many times already at that point in the movie.)
And, one more note on the robots: the inclusion of moving mouths (and teeth?) was downright off-putting. Good or bad, it didn't matter, every robot looked rather hideous. This, combined with the previous mention of their unnecessarily complex design (or ILM saying: "hey! look what we can do!"), is proof this film suffers from poor artistic design. So little actually reads (animation language for "I don't know what the hell I'm looking at") it might actually dawn upon viewers that they paid $7-10 to be confused for two hours. Listen, if I want to be utterly confused, all I have to do is contemplate why God would create a world in which Michael Bay is allowed to make crappy movies. And I do that anyway! Yet it costs nothing, and it still causes me a whole lot less grief than actually watching his movies.
Speaking of grief, let me talk a little about the human actors. Okay, okay - they're mostly 2-D, nondescript, and overwhelmingly boring - I wouldn't expect anything less from a summer blockbuster. (Note that even working with stereotypes can aid a film. It's too bad no one is smart enough to use it to make a good film.) What Michael Bay succeeds in, first and foremost, is creating intolerably annoying characters.
Forgive me - I believe "annoying" is not the correct term; I think they call it "quirky" nowadays. Well, whatever they are, you'll want to jam a novelty-sized fork down their esophaguses. And whether they're characters you're forced to watch the entire film or 5-second-screen-time characters who react "amusingly" to the chaos at hand (Mr. Bay's wonderful signature), you'll hate them all equally. So many characters are introduced for the hell of it that by the end of the film they've got too many characters than they know what to do with!
Well, those cra[p]fty scriptwriters get around wrapping up story-lines by, literally, ignoring them, hoping the audiences will be so fed up with this piece of trash movie that one more glaring error in the story won't bother them. And, in some ways, they were correct. There were four characters - the Secretary of Defense, the head of "Sector 7" (whose motivations are just so questionable you will be screaming, if not just confused to silence), an inexplicably young and uber-professional hacker (supposedly the comic relief, but is really just a fatty), and some Australian coder (whose accent, if not fake, was certainly death warrant worthy) - who got no conclusion. It didn't matter, though, because I hated them so, so much that by not returning to them I was quite relieved. I just have to conclude myself that those characters are still in the underground bunker where we last saw them doing... doing something, I don't know. This movie doesn't make a lick of sense.
Even in the aftermath of the Transformer battle that left some random city in pieces, the holes and craters impressed into the streets do not amount to the number of holes in the plot. The scriptwriters, unaware there a method of undoing words (called the "delete key"), just kept on writing. Entire scenes, characters, story-lines, dialogue amount to literally nothing.
For example, there is a scene in which some military personnel discover that even severed limbs from the robots still function. Dear Lord! How does this serve the plot in any way? It doesn't - you're just wasting my time. (Interesting to note that the severed limb comes from the first Decepticon we are introduced to - a Decepticon that looks like a scorpion, but we all recognize it as a plot hole, because, even undefeated, we never see it again, not even when Megatron calls the Decepticons to battle. Seriously, these guys are some real lazy hacks.)
For further example, there's a scene where our geeky hero, Sam, is attempting to run from the Decepticons while he carries some cube that the Decepticons really want... a cube that's supposed to create life or something (who the hell really knows?). Something happens (I'm bored to semiconsciousness at this point) and somehow the cube brings a Mountain Dew vending machine, Escalade, and XBOX 360* to life. They go ballistic, firing missiles and shooting at wild, risking human lives. But that's it... the Transformers keep battling to the very end, and even after that the scriptwriters don't even both going back to the massacre still in progress on the streets. So just what was the point of all that, you ask? Simply this: product placement. Mountain Dew, Escalade, XBOX. (Imagine how you'd feel after watching a two hour commercial, and then you have an idea how I feel.)
*Isn't it ridiculous enough that in the midst of this huge robot battle there are still people idly walking around, shopping obliviously? Honestly, even though I'm a film student, I can suspend my disbelief... but Sunday driving and the urge to play video games in the middle of a giant, deathly robot battle? C'mon! Even 2-dimensional characters run for their lives when threatened!
So, let me suspend my disbelief again: maybe you didn't watch Transgenders for story, character, plot, etc. Let's just suppose, you watched it for great action sequences.. you know, hypothetically, of course. Still, if anyone could ever be so shallow, the action sequences were forgettable. Even if you could even tell what was going on with the unnecessary close-ups, they were pretty weak. You will not find huge robots beating the crap out of each other, but you will see hunks of metal rolling around and a lot of shooting. I can see bullets in any film - I want to see metallic monsters fisty-cuffing, dammit!
Even those brief battles are overshadowed by... the human characters? Yeah, somehow they're more important than the name of frikin' title! It might have just changed its name to "Humans (and, Well, Maybe Some Robots, Too, We Don't Know Yet)". The supposed most climatic battle of the film (between Megatron and Optimus) gets second billing to the humans milling about. While they're fighting, the film cuts away to something far less important and engaging. By the time it cuts back to the battle, they're on their backs and supposedly exhausted... I think they're exhausted - I don't #$@%ing know! All I know is this film is too cheap, too dull, and too $#%^ing trite to deliver anything worthwhile! (And just wait till you see how Megatron is defeated. It's so lame, you'd swear they made it up right on the spot, if it wasn't for the massive amounts of time needed to render all the CGI.)
There may be the few of you who like to use the argument: it's a summer movie, it doesn't have to be smart. Don't ever say that - it's like an attempt to defend your own stupidity. (Likewise, saying "there are no more creative ideas" is like saying "I'm dull, and not creative, so I use this phrase to make myself feel better".) Guess what - there can be summer movies that serve mindless entertainment (guns, explosions, fights) while stimulating us intellectually. Here are some examples: The Matrix, True Lies, Minority Report, 28 Days Later, Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Arc (and the Last Crusade, for that matter), Gladiator, Casino Royale, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Die Hard... hell, I'll even toss on I, Robot, and Pirates of the Caribbean (the first) on.
These films have managed to give us action, gore, special effects, and everything we associate with Hollywood whorism AND STILL are able to give us something that doesn't treat us like complete idiots. And seriously, even I can appreciate a film with bare story and character if there's well choreographed, imaginative fight scenes. But in addition to being poorly written, directed, acted, and conceived, Transformers can't even give us good "dumb" entertainment.
And despite how long this ranted review is, it is just the tip of the iceberg, as they say. Getting into the details of the movie only uncovers more and more problems, shining a great bright light onto just how poor and pathetic these moviemakers are. If the advertisements ever claimed that you'd be talking about this film for days following, it's true. I guarantee you'll be feebly attempting to make sense of what you have just suffered through. Ultimately, you will all come to the conclusion just how the movie has no excuses and how regrettably unenjoyable it was.
