The
Decepticons attack the dam while Frenzy cuts the cryogenics keeping
Megatron frozen. We see the Autobots driving towards the battle and I
know I should be excited, but I can't help but notice there's still
FORTY MINUTES of film left. I'm terrified Bay is going to try to make
up with putting us to sleep with boring humans by putting us to sleep
with a lethal overdose of action in the Big Dumb Ending we can all
sense on the horizon.
Sector Seven
releases Bumblebee, who goes to the Cube and shrinks it down to a
more manageable handheld size just by touching it because THAT makes
sense. Lennox makes a plan to have him move the Cube to a nearby city
before Megatron thaws in an attempt to keep it as far away from the
Decepticon as possible. We get introduced
to Big Bad minutes later, as he breaks free of his prison by
transforming into a jet and flying outside where he runs into
Starscream I THINK. The camera keeps cutting between their faces as
they talk, and they look SO DAMN SIMILIAR for all I know Megatron is
doing his best Smeagol/Gollum impersonation.
The convoy of Bumblebee and the soldiers drives down the highway, soon joined by Optimus and crew. The Decepticons soon catch up to them, Optimus and Devastator getting into what I think is a fight but they could be dancing with how shitty they look when in motion. No, it was a fight because Optimus pops a blade out of his arm and CUTS DEVASTATOR'S HEAD OFF. Damn, Optimus ain't playin' no more!
We cut back to the
Hoover Damn, where the humans that NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT are
under attack by Frenzy. OH NO, I'd cry myself to sleep tonight if
anything happened to Keller, Blonde Megan Fox, Anthony Anderson or
Simmons! They're such beloved, well developed characters! I'm so glad
that this film has devoted so much time on them and their ULTRA vital
storylines.
Bumblebee and his
team arrive in “Mission City”, a made up city not far from the
Hoover Dam. They get bombed by Starscream, which annihilates
Ratchet's or Bumblebee's legs. Ah, its Bumblebee because Sam says his
name. Thanks Sam! The injured Autobot hands him the Cube, and I know
the Cube is just a magic Macguffin that works whenever what can
barely be called the plot needs it too, but shouldn't the Cube
INSTANTLY heal Bumblebee? Back at Sector Seven, Frenzy tapped the
Cube with one of his head tendrils and his entire body was grown back
in a second.
Things REALLY
start going downhill as the rest of the Transformers arrive and start
battling. I know I keep harping on this, but I CANNOT tell them
apart. In an action movie that's kind of an important thing. To make
things EVEN BETTER, Bay is filming all these scenes at Dutch angles
so extreme the screen is damn near vertical.
Things like this
are another reason why I don't understand Bay fans. Don't get me
wrong, I LOVE huge action scenes as much as the next zombie.
Terminator, Star Wars, the Matrix, Total Recall, the Fifth
Element, anything like that I could watch all day every day. But
every single one of those movies had CLEARLY DEFINED ACTION! I can
ALWAYS tell who is who, who is shooting at who, and where everyone is
in relation to things. When I'm having to pause the movie every three
seconds and rewind it to even attempt to guess what I'm looking at,
YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. And WHY the Dutch angles?! ART THOU KIDDING ME
with this?!
Megatron arrives
to fuck shit up, and his first act is to rip Jazz in two just in case
you had ANY doubt in your mind this was a Bay movie: the Black
Transformer dies first in the ending battle. Good God I hope Bay
never introduces Arcee into this series, I can't even imagine what
action movie tropes he'll subject her too. Lennox orders Sam
to the roof of a nearby building for extraction via Black Hawk
helicopters so the Cube can be taken far away, which is stupid
because he KNOWS Megatron and Starscream can transform into jets and
easily pursue. This part is funny because Sam just runs right past
Mikaela without a second thought, so she's forced to grab him and
give some bullshit lines about how she's glad she met him. They
shockingly don't kiss, but I'm sure they've saving that for the
finale.
Sam runs, the
Autobots trying to cover with from the Decepticons. The Cube starts
releasing energy for some reason, transforming nearby machines into
evil attacking robots. He passes an Escalade and once again I got
very confused here because the woman driving it looks EXACTLY like
Mikaela so I had to rewind the movie yet again to make sure I didn't
miss a scene in this clusterfuck. Why
do ALL WOMEN look like Megan Fox in this movie?!
The Cube's energy
turns the Escalade's steering wheel nto a face raping monster, which
is really
messed up because there are now four bladed tendrils ripping Mikaela
2.0's face apart. An Xbox 360 and a
Mountain Dew machine also change into killer robots because Bay has
actually been somewhat restrained on non-car manufacturer product
placement up until this point and it was starting to drive him crazy. Sam makes it to
the roof, but LO AND BEHOLD there's Megatron to shoot down the
extraction choppers. Optimus shows up AGAIN to save him (he sure
loves his dramatic timing, doesn't he?), although ends up falling off
the side or the building where Megatron falls on top of him because I
HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA. They film this shit so fast the entire movie
needs to be in slow motion to even attempt to follow it.
Alright, so we
have Optimus and Megatron ground side ready for the ULTIMATE face
off. Optimus has Sam go hide, instructing him to push the Cube into
his chest if he can't defeat his archenemy. Optimus declares “one
shall stand, one shall fall” and I would be FUCKING PUMPED UP if I
didn't know what was about to follow would be 110% indecipherable. Or... they choose
to focus on Blackout versus the human soldiers. Yeah, THAT'S what
everyone wanted to see instead. WHAT THE FUCK. They don't even SHOW
the battle, all we see is Optimus crawling around after presumably
getting his ass kicked. Fighter jets fly by and start bombing the
shit out of Megatron, Sam taking this chance to sneak into the frame
and shove the Cube into MEGATRON'S chest instead.
This apparently
kills him, which is lucky as hell because Sam really had no idea the
Cube would do that. What if it was just an Autobot thing? What if the
Cube make Decepticons even MORE bad ass? Oh well, Megatron flails
around a little bit and then drops dead in the MOST ANTICLIMACTIC
DEATH possibly ever captured on camera. He doesn't even scream, he
just groans a couple of times and then falls down. Optimus does find
a shard of the All Spark still remains, ominously examining it to
tease a sequel because Peter Cullen would love another one
of these hefty Bayformers paychecks.
Ironhide hands
Optimus the halves of Jazz's body, declaring they couldn't save him.
Congratulations Bay, not only did you kill the only Black Transformer
you also killed one of the all time most popular ones! Optimus just
kind of shrugs “oh well, whattya gonna do?”. Bumblebee, who can
now magically talk for a completely unexplained reason, tells Optimus
he wishes to stay with Sam. Montage scenes
start wrapping us off, Keller declaring Sector Seven be closed down
and the remains of the dead robots be dumped in the Laurentian Abyss.
Lennox returns home to see his family. Sam and Mikaela make out on
top of Bumblebee while the Autobots are nearby watching, which isn't
fucked up at all. I don't even WANT to read what kind of fanfiction
and Deviantart this scene must have inspired.
Sadly we get no
closure on SUPER POPULAR fan favourites Blonde Megan Fox, Anthony
Anderson, Sergeant Epps, Simmons, Banachek, hell not even Bernie Mac
gets a funny followup like I was expecting. This is really funny
from Blonde Megan Fox's viewpoint as she
figured out the signal was alien and then... never solved the
problem. Huh. They sort of forgot about the whole international virus
shuts down all global communication thing... That was a huge focus
in the beginning of the movie and the only reason she and Anderson
were introduced was to deal with it. And they NEVER DID! It's almost
like they were completely unimportant to the storyline and should
have been cut... Optimus narrates
us out, “I am Optimus Prime and I send this message to any
surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are
waiting.”.
CUE THE FUCKING
CREDITS, which are unfortunately scored by a Linkin Park song that I
assume is about hating authority or how much cops suck or something.
Oh, but we're not done because we get post credits sequences of Sam's
parents, THANK THE FUCKING LORD. God I am so ELATED they got more
screen time.
There's another
one with Starscream flying into outer space, because I guess he just
vanished during the Big Dumb Ending. You think the Autobots would
have checked into that. Or the new Decepticons, Face-Rape, XXXBox,
and Mountain Dead. We saw Devastator and Blackout get killed, but I
don't think they even showed Barricade either. He was probably one of
the mountains of CGI crap zooming around the screen bathed in
explosions, but who knows?
That was
Transformers, which in 2007 was the third highest grossing
film in America and the fifth highest grossing film worldwide. A film
with a run time of 2 hours 23 minutes, with just about half an hour
of that dedicated to the title characters in question. Those thirty
minutes are some of the most hard to follow and flat out unpleasant
to the eye barrages of action you'll ever see, filmed in either
generic slow motion or sped up so fast you'll WISH it was in slow
motion. The rest of the movie is a never ending focus on cardboard
cutout human characters so boring I constantly found myself wanting
more CGI bullshit just to stay awake.
Who out there
besides Michael Bay wanted to see nearly two hours of boring ass
humans put us to sleep while talking about masturbating and farting?
You mean to tell me people were actually entertained by Blonde Megan
Fox and her Star Trek techtalk? Anthony Anderson mugging for the
camera by being “outrageous”? Simmons doing... whatever the fuck
he was doing? Sam's parents? SAM'S FUCKING PARENTS?!?
Many many moons
ago I said The
Phantom Menace is the
longest-feeling film you'll ever sit through in your life. Well
ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to your new champion
Transformers!
The sad thing is, this is the one that has the highest approval
rating. I can't even WAIT to see how Bay can lower the bar on this
travesty of a franchise. Oh, the next movie is the one with Skids
and Mudflap? In that case, yes I can wait. Was there anything
good here, or am I just another Internet asshole that hates on
Transformers because I'm a neck bearded hipster and it's cool to hate
on Michael Bay when in reality I'm jealous of him? If you were paying
attention during the review I hope I properly expressed the stuff
that I liked, but just in case here they are:
Shia LaBeouf was
VERY endearing... in the beginning at least. Questionable decisions
to give his character almost half the movie aside- actually, hold on
there. I want to clarify something about this. Sam is the
archetypical Normal Character Introduced To A World Of Crazy
character, which is UBER important in a film like this. They take our
hand and walk us through the batshit insanity that is unfolding,
which makes the universe feel all the more real and the sense of
wonder more amazing.
The PROBLEM though
is almost all his screen time is dedicated to his life BEFORE the
crazy kicks off. Yes, you need to establish the character and his
struggles so we care about him as he goes through his journey, but
you DON'T need over forty minutes to do this! Look at Back To
The Future, Star Wars, or The Matrix. We knew EVERYTHING
we needed to know about our heroes within ten minutes tops of meeting
them. Transformers did the same thing with Sam in his history class
introduction, but then it kept going back to the well. Again and
again and again. There was some slapstick with Bumblebee, but it
wasn't doing anything to further the world of the Transformers. The
second Bumblebee found Sam we should have met the rest of the
Autobots and spent the rest of the first hour hanging out and getting
to know their world.
So yeah, Shia
LaBeouf was an actual likeable character even though by the end of
the movie they ran out of things for him to do besides yell “NO!”
a lot and run around. Peter Cullen CRUSHED IT as the voice of Optimus
Prime, despite Bay trying his hardest to degrade the character during
the slapstick shit at Sam's house. Every other time Optimus spoke, he
DAMN WELL had my attention. He made his scenes feel so epic and
larger than life, I couldn't even imagine if he wasn't in this thing.
I probably would have set my TV on fire to purge the evil out.
That's really
about it for the movie's positive, our two heroes were very well
done. All the other characters were flat, boring, or stupid, and most
were a combo platter of all those things. The Transformers
themselves were all woefully underdeveloped, ESPECIALLY the
Decepticons. It really didn't help we don't see Megatron until about
two hours in, and then he's just so “I'm evil! I'll kill you all!”
generic that he instantly fails at being scary. Starscream, one of
the most interesting characters from the cartoon, gets a few bland
lines in and then just disappears. Hell, Sector Seven made WAY better
villains and they're ostensibly the good guys.
There are so many
huge movie franchises that I can't stand, yet I totally understand
why they're popular with so many people. Transformers on paper
sounds like it'd be one of my favourite movies of all time, even with
Michael Bay behind the camera because at least that means the action
will be as widescreen and explodey as possible. But it really
wasn't. We got an hour and a half of mind numbing boredom, most
action scenes were cut up so badly or done off camera altogether, and
then the Big Dumb Ending is just a complete visual trainwreck. I got
after Man Of Steel for putting me to sleep
with its nonstop Action Porn, but at least I was able to UNDERSTAND
WHAT WAS ON CAMERA. I never, EVER thought I'd say this but here we
go... Michael Bay I am disappointed in you.
Very, very disappointed.
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