Unfortunately I don't have time to go into all of the reasons that the new 'Transformers' movie is just painfully awful - but trust me on this: it IS painfully awful.
You may recall a few months ago I predicted that it would probably suck
I made my assumption after reading an interview with the film's director and producers in which they rambled on and on about how important the human characters are to the story blah blah blah blah.
But then the trailers started looking cooler and cooler, so I changed my mind
Alas, however, I was sadly right the first time.
Here are some impressions I got after watching this movie:
- Michael Bay hates 'Transformers'. Clearly, this was a project he took on because he's directed so many flops in a row... but make no mistake: he HATES all of the things that make 'Transformers' entertaining.
He's jammed this movie with about four thousand human characters that eat up so much screen that there seemed to be no time to focus on the characters we actually wanted to see... namely, THE FRIGGIN' TRANSFORMING ROBOTS THAT THE MOVIE IS NAMED AFTER! Bay spends insane amounts of screen time exploring the inner motivations of the most peripheral human characters and none whatsoever on the robot characters (you know - those pesky robot characters that have kept this franchise popular for over two decades).
- Michael Bay hates voice actors: Get this... at the beginning of the movie, one of the main human characters ("Sam"... who, in the original cartoon was named "Spike" - one of Bay's inexplicably lateral changes) goes to a used car lot... standing in front of the lot is a guy in a filthy clown suit holding one of those "BIG SALE" signs... this clown has one line and is on-screen for about 3 seconds and yet, in the end credits, the guy playing this clown got billing FAR ABOVE Peter Cullen - THE VOICE OF OPTIMUS PRIME!
- Michael Bay can't tell a story: If it weren't for expositional narration, Bay would clearly be up a creek without a paddle. Characters are constantly TELLING us what is happening, what's going to happen and what has happened in the past. Obviously, Bay thought it would be too much work to actually SHOW us stuff, so he has his beloved actors jabber on and on to give us the information we need.
Optimus Prime narrates "Our world was ravaged by war"... hm... gee... an antire planet of robots at war? That would be cool to see! Oh, but that would cost money - and lord knows we need that money to pay for Bernie Mac's cameo.
Minor plotpoints are spoon-fed to the audience with excruciating detail while major narrative devices are breezed over without the slightest bit of explanation ("If all else fails, put the cube in my chest, and that will fix everything"... um... okay, but WHY?! What does that DO? Help me, Michael Bay!).
Look, I could go on and on. The bottom line is that the movie was terrible, Michael Bay has cemented his reputation as a hack and I paid $14 to let these idiots ravage one of my favorite childhood mythologies.
Dreamworks should have gotten some up-and-coming director to helm this picture (ala Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson), but instead they threw a boatload of cash into a big pile and let Michael Bay burn it to the ground.
Any one episode of the original TV cartoon is a million times better than this movie - so don't bother.
Dare... Dare to believe.
