I enjoyed Michael Bay’s first Transfomers movie. People wanted to say it sucks, and while there’s an argument to be made for its suckage (and for the suckage of his films in general); I’d say most of those comments take the film outside its proper context. Its irresponsible to compare a Transformers movie to Inception or District 9 or Men in Black because they’re sci-fi. It’s not really even appropriate to compare it to other movies about fighting evil robots like Terminator 4: The Suckening. Transformers is a live action film about a Saturday morning cartoon from the 80’s and its related line of toys. In rating it, a more honest comparison would be against Masters of the Universe or the Power Rangers Movie.
Compared thusly it stacks up rather well. But, people like to tear shit down (it’s fun) so they go after the easy targets. And While I maintain that Michael Bay is a Special Effects guy who really has no business as an overall director, he’s more suited to the task than George Lucas. Despite my initial concern, Bay won me over before the first film’s release with an interview he gave explaining why Optimus Prime would not appear as the iconic cab over semi from the original cartoon and comic book line. When his effects team was engineering the transformation he found that a cab over only netted 15 or so feet of robot. He wanted Optimus Prime to be taller than that, hence the larger truck. While this may or may not have been true; that was the way to answer that question.
But anyway, in the first movie I found Shia and family hilarious, Megan Fox hot, and the action suitable. The fight between Megatron and Optimus Prime is better in the animated film from 1986, but Optimus murdering Bonecrusher beneath the overpass was suitably gristly. I found the backstory stupid, a good piece of the transformers’ dialogue lame, and about half the human cast a waste of time. However the other half (surprisingly) wasn’t half bad. But in pros vs cons, the pros scored a solid win.
The basic issue with the backstory was excessively compounded in the 2nd movie. Here’s the problem: whatever reasons you come up with for living robot aliens who transform in to cars and trucks fighting a war on earth is going to be retarded. The reason it’s going to be retarded is because of the 8th through 22nd words of the previous sentence. There is no way to have an exhaustive explanation of implausible, idiotic silliness that is even remotely compelling. Therefore: keep the backstory simple and keep it vague. Only explain what we need to know. And all we need to know is there are giant space robots fighting a civil war. They can disguise themselves as shit we have on earth (like cars and trucks). They do it because earth is strategically significant. Why Earth is significant should be kept to 3 or 4 words. And that’s it. We never need to refer to the past ever again.
Trying to tell a dumbass backstory is half the reason the 2nd transformers movie was a step backwards. The other half was Michael Bay can’t fuck gently or slowly. He crammed as much robo shit as possible in every shot he could and made it all move fast as all hell. The overcrowding of the action shots made them boring because we weren’t given time to appreciate what was taking place, let alone enjoy it. Also, some of the humor was bordering on too stupid for the genre (and that is a low bar). However, the robot balls, negro-stereotype midget cars, and Bay’s jackhammer^3 bedside manner didn’t bother me near as much as all the screentime devoted to the absurd backstory. I’m not going to get into the inane particulars but I was not a fan of the 2nd movie.
So, with its first portion devoted to yet more backstory, the 3rd Transformers didn’t start particularly well. And not only does this happen, but the new stupid backstory negates the previous 2 films stupid continuity.
But whatever, I’m here to see robots fight. And I get plenty of that. And Mike has apparently learned to vary the jackhammer^3 with some slow and deep and a little 20 and 5 style, so my brain was more expertly fucked during the action scenes. And besides being more fluid, the robot on robot action is just better. It’s mostly of the Optimus vs Bonecrusher level of visceral which was nice.
This movie is also the funniest by far. Ken Jeong (Community) is fantastic. Shia himself has nailed what is funny about his character. There are at least 2 parts in the film (one with Ken and the other with Shia) that I laughed my complete ass off.
There’s the usual Mike Bay transition problems between action scenes but the scenes themselves are interesting enough that you find yourself not caring.
While there’s plenty of stupid shit in this movie, I liked it. But I’m a sucker for giant robots fighting. It’s better than the first one and waaaay better than the 2nd one. Just don’t think too much about the why of any of it and you should be good.