"Transformers" (2007) - Ten Years Later

You still fight for the weak! That is why YOU LOSE! - Megatron

Well. There it is. Ten years. The start of a movie franchise that's considered to be one of the worst series in the history of summer blockbusters.

In the one of the biggest summer for blockbusters, Transformers was a weird success. It was the biggest film of that summer that wasn't a sequel, in a summer that had mostly threequels, but the weirdness comes from the fact that it's based on toys rather than being based on anything else (the toys had the comics and cartoons but were toys first). Before Transformers, there wasn't a successful film based on toys, unless you count the Care Bears movies back in the 80s, so it was a risky project that paid off in the box office. What Pirates of the Caribbean for films based on rides, Transformers did for films based on toys.

It was also the "comeback" of highly divisive filmmaker, Michael Bay. After The Island flop, he was considered to be losing his power. It wasn't until executive producer, Steven Spielberg, chose him to direct Transformers. Bay was initially reluctant but wanted to work with Spielberg and wanted to make a film for kids (complete with racial stereotypes and masturbation jokes!). Ironically enough, the film was initially rated R until it was repealed to a PG-13. The film's success catapulted Bay back into the spotlight and directed 4 more Transformers, each one considered getting worse than the last, though that's obviously up for debate.

Now, I can understand why people enjoy this. It's a film about robots beating the crap out of each other and it makes no apologies for it. It's perfectly fine to be undemanding entertainment but it needs to be entertainment. Top Gun and Independence Day aren't good films but are fun to watch anyway. Transformers, in my opinion, fails to do that. It treats itself way too seriously for it's own good, regardless of the idiocy surrounding it. The plot holes are gigantic to ignore, the continuity errors go into Ed Wood territory (a fight scene transits from day to night, unless that fight was going for that long), it's way too loud in the sound and music department (seriously, there's zero moments of silence in the film; either the very generic music is cranked too loud or there needs to be something loud in the background, usually for no reason), the humor absolutely terrible, either being annoying, offensive, inappropriate for the intended audience, of all of the above, and there's just no one you want to see make it out successfully.

The characters are either underdeveloped or annoying to root for. Even in the dumbest of action films, you at least have characters you want to see succeed, but not here. The humans are absolutely flat and don't even act like normal human beings (like Anthony Anderson's offensively racist stereotype. He's a long way from Black-ish). The Transformers themselves aren't that better, either. Now, obviously, with the time and money to spend to make them appear on screen, I get they can't be in the film that much but the time still should've been to bring some personality to them. Each one has just one trait: Bumblebee is cocky (I guess?), Optimus Prime (who shows up exactly an hour in) is a leader, etc. There's not much for them for development. The crux of the "story" is Bumblebee and Sam Witwicky's (Shia LeBeouf) relationship but they don't get enough time together to really be close. It's E.T. done wrong.. The villains are even worse. Megatron isn't given any build up, outside of an expository background, and he shows up way too late, he makes Venom in Spider-Man 3 look like he had enough screen time. Not helping is the over complicated designs of all of them. I get they were made to be more alien and I do appreciate the work went to the CGI but it makes all of them hard to distinguish, which goes to my next point.

The action is awful. That isn't good from a director who claims his intentions are to entertain. The camera is almost never left alone and has to move around almost every scene. It also goes way too close to the action that it gets even harder to see what's going on, not helping matters are the way too frenetic editing and how the Transformers are designed that it looks like scrap metal beating each other. Pacific Rim, another giant robot movie, knows the concept of letting the audience having room to take in the action happening and it has an effect on you because of how they're staged and filmed. It's always been a style Bay has but it's even more pronounced in this film. It's like he's afraid the audience might lose interest so he's throwing everything into the frame to get their attention. It's the action equivalent of dangling keys in front of an infant. It's not just the action though, it's every scene, even a dialogue scene. It's as if he's shooting the entire film as an action scene. It gets very distracting if you actually care about the plot. For an action film, it fails to even do that. I could forgive the unfunny humor, the dumb plot, the thin characterization if the action was at least decent.

Overall, I don't get why people liked the film back then. To me, it was worse than the likes of Spider-Man 3 or Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and I didn't even like those, either. I respect the production values because I know it took a lot of money and hard work to manage it but they're just not executed properly. They get lost in Bay's refusal to restrain himself or to get us to care what happens, other than making a demo disc for your new home theater. I can see why others enjoy it, but it just didn't do it for me. It's sad that this is still the highlight of the series.

1.5/5