I wasn’t as disappointed as I was with the Americanized Godzilla back in 1998, but “Transformers” suffers from similar flaws and a flood of new ones. The main problem with this movie is that director Michael Bay (“Armageddon”, “The Rock”, “Pearl Harbor”) tried so hard to make this movie the entertainment gem of the year that it ended up being more obnoxious than fun. How much sexual innuendo can you put in to a movie before it becomes lame? Not much apparently. The ADD teens and MTV crowd will love it though.
The movie’s story kind of gets lost among all the so-called jokes, special effects and explosions. The gist is that a cube containing energy to give the Transformers’ home world (Cybertron) life has crashed on Earth. The evil Decepticons are already after it and the lone Autobot, Bumblebee, calls for reinforcements. Bumblebee disguises himself as a Camaro and is bought by our human hero Sam. Sam’s connection to the war of the worlds is that his great grandfather left behind the location of the cube and both Autobots and Decepticons are after him for it.
The rest of the movie sports about fifteen other characters, who no one remembers the names of, and add only the least amount of character development I’ve seen this summer. This becomes a problem-- When you’re watching a movie about giant robots that transform and fight each other, you don’t want to sit through a full hour of the most mindless characters trying to set up a very simple storyline. You want to see more robots!
So how are the Transformers? Not as a bad as I thought they’d be, but not so good either. All of them have unrecognizable heads and we don’t get invested enough in their characters to care about all of them in the final battle. I still don’t understand why all the heads of these transformers look like bugs. Starscream proved to be the most badass of the Decepticons, but looked nothing like Starscream at all. His character was watered down and he only had one line of real dialogue. Megatron doesn’t come until the last act and he certainly doesn’t feel like the dark overlord he’s suppose to be. As far as I’m concerned, Megatron wasn’t in the movie.
The fights are rather disappointing too. There’s just not enough robot vs. robot action in this movie. Most of the film seems like a dense comedy—Mockery of the Transformers more than comedy really. But when the Autobots and Decepticons do fight, the one on one battles are too short and it’s hard to tell what’s going on. The robot designs are so poor you can’t tell if an arm, a leg or a chest plate has been hit. The shaky camera only makes this more confusing and you’re just sitting there watching two hunks of metal hit each other in blurred segments.
Other flaws lie within the story itself. If the Autobots learned the English language through the internet, how come Megatron knew it after being frozen for thousands of years? He arrived on earth before the digital age. Michael Bay said he wanted the transformations to be realistic. This means he didn’t want a Megatron that transforms in to a gun 1/8th his size. So why is a giant cube that can transform from building size to handheld size in it? How did Megatron plan on turning Earth’s computer-chip based machines in to robots before the 1930s when that technology didn’t exist? I could go on, but I get a headache.
Optimus Prime is the only one that was perfect in this movie. Not just by fan standards, but overall execution. Part of it had to be because of Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus from the 80s, was doing the character. The other part is that Optimus was fleshed out perfectly. His design looked enough like him and was one of the few where you could tell the difference between his legs and his gun. Cullen’s voice gave me goose bumps every time I heard it and I would sigh in relief whenever Prime was onscreen. Yes, he helped the movie that much. It would have truly been unbearable to watch without this character.
The special effects are very impressive. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this convinced by CGI. ILM has really raised the bar with this movie. But it’s still not really Transformers, and as cool as it looks, it doesn’t save the movie.
The movie is a mess. The characters that do have development are so unbelievable it’s hard to invest yourself in them. Shia LaBeouf does a pretty decent job, but Megan Fox can’t act to save her life. Even Jon Voit falls flat here and the rest of the actors are better saved for a Sci-Fi Channel original motion picture. The fact that the human characters are on more than the Transformers is even worse because they have no real depth to them. There’s really nothing to watch and one finds themselves wishing they could fast-forward to the last 30 minutes of the movie to watch blurred, CGI metal parts hit each other.
The biggest sin this movie has committed is, like the Americanized Godzilla, it just has no soul. Only Peter Cullen, as Optimus, gives the audience a certain amount of warmth, talent and nostalgia to increase the film’s credibility. Other than that it’s just pretty effects with bad scripting and D-List actors. So what if it’s based on an 80s cartoon that’s based on a toy line? Does that mean we should settle for something poorly done when it could have potentially been a great deal better? When the 80s cartoon and its sequels are superior, you know something is wrong. I’d like to see a sequel, if just to redeem this mess. But as far as Michael Bay’s “Transformers” goes, there’s just not much more than meets the eye.
* out of ****
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