TRANSFORMERS (2007)
1/2* (OUT OF FOUR)
I don't buy into the "I enjoyed it as a kid, so I have to see it now argument". My little sister enjoyed Barbie as a kid, but now that she has become an adult, she's left stupid, childish things behind. Michael Bay once said (in response to criticism that he only makes films for teenage boys), "I make movies for teenage boys; oh, dear, what a crime". He also said (in response to criticism by Roger Ebert towards Pearl Harbor), "Does he actually think we research every nook and cranny… he's watched too many movies". And in a more recent quote about the look of his the transformers in his latest film he said:
"Well, it's just, you know, listen, it's like...I didn't want to make the boxy characters, you know? Think about it, 30 feet in the air in the real world, just boxes, you know and it'd just look more fake, you know? And by adding more doo-dads, you know, stuff on the...stuff. Stuff on the robots, more car parts, and...you know you can just make it look more real."
Michael Bay is right - making a movie for teenage boys is not a crime (although I do question the decision of giving a project of that nature (and $150 million) to someone who speaks like a 14-year old girl). But just because it's made for that audience doesn't exempt it from being grounded, relatable in some sense to the audience, and at least logical within the film universe it occupies.
Transformers is bad on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. So I guess I'll start with the opening sequence in which we follow a gigantic cube floating through space. It's accompanied by an extremely cheesy voice over (and I do mean extremely cheesy) explaining only that the cube is important. The camera turns and spins on every physical plane humanly possible (while asteroids explode upon contact) until we see that the cube is headed toward Earth. Smash cut to present day where a helicopter that was shot down three weeks ago mysteriously shows up on a military base, transforms into a robot, and kills everyone in sight. At this point, I'm still on board – it's not great, but it'll do.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf, the talented young actor from Disturbia, and one of the film's only bright spots) is a high school junior hoping to land his first car. That is, if he can get an 'A' on his class presentation about his family's history - which, of course, ties in nicely with the history of the transformers and the upcoming destruction of planet Earth. "The owner doesn't pick the car, the car picks the owner", so says car salesman Bobbie Bolivia (Bernie Mac) in a movie-long trend of would-be humorous scenes that are stretched out far too long (another coming later in the film when Sam brings Optimus Prime and company to his house while he searches for a pair of glasses essential to the plot that wears out its welcome by a solid five minutes). Sam discovers later that the car that chose him is one of the autobots, the good guys of the alien robot race that has infiltrated us and remained in disguise for nearly a hundred years, dragging Sam and his soon-to-be girlfriend, Mikaela, into the middle of a all out robot war. Once the top military minds in the world are persuaded by two high-school kids and a local hacker (who are granted access to places that the Secretary of Defense himself has no knowledge of) that not only are there cars that transform into robots but that there are "good ones", the US military is in on the gig and prepares to battle the decepticons (yeah, I know, I knew it was stupid when I was four).
I must give some credit to Transformers for its simplistic story. It doesn't fall into the textbook popcorn flick trap of overwhelming us with terrible side plots. The sad part is that, even with no side plots to deal with, the film still fails miserably at making its main one remotely interesting. It moves at a snail-like pace, not delivering the goods from an action standpoint until over and hour and a half into the show. Instead we see a lot of Sam, Mikaela, army guys, FBI guys, hackers, and the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) running around like chickens with their heads cut off wondering aloud as to what the hell is going on – all of which are so one-dimensional that nothing that comes out of any of their mouths is worth being scribbled on Fisher Price desk with a crayon, much less a professional screenplay. And once the action does arrive, it's painfully mediocre. The battles between the transformers are very poorly shot – the camera can't stop moving around long enough for us to ever get a clear view, much less a comprehensive look, at what's going on. It's the equivalent of zooming your home video camera in as far as it'll go on your toolbox while one of your buddies rattles it around.
The action also suffers from the same problem as the latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, that is, pointless drama seems made up out of the clear blue no matter how illogical or irrational simply to keep the action going. There's a scene during the climactic battle in downtown Los Angeles where transformers are kicking the shit out of each other (or so I assume as I couldn't see any of it) and the air force is on standby waiting to join the action. But amidst all the carnage that's taking place (buildings crumbling, cars flying, fires burning, etc.) the planes can't come by and do their thing until Sam runs to the top of a building and sets off a flair so they can locate the action. Maybe that gives you some sort of idea of the brainwave this film is floating on.
The movie drags on and on and on, giving us pointless and boring flashbacks and it's over halfway into the film before Optimus Prime finally and desperately explain things to us in true early morning cartoon fashion (I promise you that the feeling of the film is exactly the same as the cartoon, and the dialogue spoken by the robots is worse than nails on a chalk board). Apparently Michael Bay, unlike Roger Ebert, hasn't seen enough movies. Or he'd know that the best sci-fi flicks are the ones that keep us in the dark. How can you attempt to explain the actions and reasoning of beings from another galaxy, which have absolutely zero relation to anything in our world? I believe that there was potential for something interesting here. At least Independence Day built some sort of tension and felt somewhat inspired. Instead Bay, who doesn't have a sense of good storytelling in his whole body, just cuts straight to a car racing down the road to the newest, hottest rock track on the top 40. Transformers feels more like a hundred 90 second trailers mashed together with a Linkin Park music video, mashed together with a Chevrolet commercial (I kept expecting to see "professional driver on closed course, do not attempt" as I watched countless helicopter shots of the new Camaro cruising down a twisted road interspersed with quick panning shots across the logo on the front of the car). He's simply a sellout, in every sense of the word.
Transformers is bad even for Michael Bay, whose proved once again that he's just as deserving as Uwe Boll for the title of the biggest hack filmmaker of our time. It's his worst film next to Pearl Harbor and easily the worst film of the year. It's a lock to win Oscars for its sound design (which is amazing) and special effects, but in recent years those categories have basically become a large-scale substitute for the Razzies worst picture of the year award. I think that sound design and special effects should add up to something, and, God forbid, contribute to the picture. But there's nothing here worth contributing to. This will make a killing at the box office. The real atrocity is how many people will actually go back for a second go-round or purchase the DVD. Anyone who's old enough to grow pubic hair and enjoys this unwatchable garbage is mentally underdeveloped and should be shot - they're the reason why there are hundreds of great scripts and talented filmmakers out there that will never see the light of day. Because they'd rather spend their hard-earned money to see a no-talent ass clown director essentially masturbate with Paramount's money. Fuck Michael Bay. Fuck the Transformers. And fuck anyone who supports them. - Brandon Nease
"Well, it's just, you know, listen, it's like...I didn't want to make the boxy characters, you know? Think about it, 30 feet in the air in the real world, just boxes, you know and it'd just look more fake, you know? And by adding more doo-dads, you know, stuff on the...stuff. Stuff on the robots, more car parts, and...you know you can just make it look more real."
Michael Bay is right - making a movie for teenage boys is not a crime (although I do question the decision of giving a project of that nature (and $150 million) to someone who speaks like a 14-year old girl). But just because it's made for that audience doesn't exempt it from being grounded, relatable in some sense to the audience, and at least logical within the film universe it occupies.
Transformers is bad on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. So I guess I'll start with the opening sequence in which we follow a gigantic cube floating through space. It's accompanied by an extremely cheesy voice over (and I do mean extremely cheesy) explaining only that the cube is important. The camera turns and spins on every physical plane humanly possible (while asteroids explode upon contact) until we see that the cube is headed toward Earth. Smash cut to present day where a helicopter that was shot down three weeks ago mysteriously shows up on a military base, transforms into a robot, and kills everyone in sight. At this point, I'm still on board – it's not great, but it'll do.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf, the talented young actor from Disturbia, and one of the film's only bright spots) is a high school junior hoping to land his first car. That is, if he can get an 'A' on his class presentation about his family's history - which, of course, ties in nicely with the history of the transformers and the upcoming destruction of planet Earth. "The owner doesn't pick the car, the car picks the owner", so says car salesman Bobbie Bolivia (Bernie Mac) in a movie-long trend of would-be humorous scenes that are stretched out far too long (another coming later in the film when Sam brings Optimus Prime and company to his house while he searches for a pair of glasses essential to the plot that wears out its welcome by a solid five minutes). Sam discovers later that the car that chose him is one of the autobots, the good guys of the alien robot race that has infiltrated us and remained in disguise for nearly a hundred years, dragging Sam and his soon-to-be girlfriend, Mikaela, into the middle of a all out robot war. Once the top military minds in the world are persuaded by two high-school kids and a local hacker (who are granted access to places that the Secretary of Defense himself has no knowledge of) that not only are there cars that transform into robots but that there are "good ones", the US military is in on the gig and prepares to battle the decepticons (yeah, I know, I knew it was stupid when I was four).
I must give some credit to Transformers for its simplistic story. It doesn't fall into the textbook popcorn flick trap of overwhelming us with terrible side plots. The sad part is that, even with no side plots to deal with, the film still fails miserably at making its main one remotely interesting. It moves at a snail-like pace, not delivering the goods from an action standpoint until over and hour and a half into the show. Instead we see a lot of Sam, Mikaela, army guys, FBI guys, hackers, and the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) running around like chickens with their heads cut off wondering aloud as to what the hell is going on – all of which are so one-dimensional that nothing that comes out of any of their mouths is worth being scribbled on Fisher Price desk with a crayon, much less a professional screenplay. And once the action does arrive, it's painfully mediocre. The battles between the transformers are very poorly shot – the camera can't stop moving around long enough for us to ever get a clear view, much less a comprehensive look, at what's going on. It's the equivalent of zooming your home video camera in as far as it'll go on your toolbox while one of your buddies rattles it around.
The action also suffers from the same problem as the latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, that is, pointless drama seems made up out of the clear blue no matter how illogical or irrational simply to keep the action going. There's a scene during the climactic battle in downtown Los Angeles where transformers are kicking the shit out of each other (or so I assume as I couldn't see any of it) and the air force is on standby waiting to join the action. But amidst all the carnage that's taking place (buildings crumbling, cars flying, fires burning, etc.) the planes can't come by and do their thing until Sam runs to the top of a building and sets off a flair so they can locate the action. Maybe that gives you some sort of idea of the brainwave this film is floating on.
The movie drags on and on and on, giving us pointless and boring flashbacks and it's over halfway into the film before Optimus Prime finally and desperately explain things to us in true early morning cartoon fashion (I promise you that the feeling of the film is exactly the same as the cartoon, and the dialogue spoken by the robots is worse than nails on a chalk board). Apparently Michael Bay, unlike Roger Ebert, hasn't seen enough movies. Or he'd know that the best sci-fi flicks are the ones that keep us in the dark. How can you attempt to explain the actions and reasoning of beings from another galaxy, which have absolutely zero relation to anything in our world? I believe that there was potential for something interesting here. At least Independence Day built some sort of tension and felt somewhat inspired. Instead Bay, who doesn't have a sense of good storytelling in his whole body, just cuts straight to a car racing down the road to the newest, hottest rock track on the top 40. Transformers feels more like a hundred 90 second trailers mashed together with a Linkin Park music video, mashed together with a Chevrolet commercial (I kept expecting to see "professional driver on closed course, do not attempt" as I watched countless helicopter shots of the new Camaro cruising down a twisted road interspersed with quick panning shots across the logo on the front of the car). He's simply a sellout, in every sense of the word.
Transformers is bad even for Michael Bay, whose proved once again that he's just as deserving as Uwe Boll for the title of the biggest hack filmmaker of our time. It's his worst film next to Pearl Harbor and easily the worst film of the year. It's a lock to win Oscars for its sound design (which is amazing) and special effects, but in recent years those categories have basically become a large-scale substitute for the Razzies worst picture of the year award. I think that sound design and special effects should add up to something, and, God forbid, contribute to the picture. But there's nothing here worth contributing to. This will make a killing at the box office. The real atrocity is how many people will actually go back for a second go-round or purchase the DVD. Anyone who's old enough to grow pubic hair and enjoys this unwatchable garbage is mentally underdeveloped and should be shot - they're the reason why there are hundreds of great scripts and talented filmmakers out there that will never see the light of day. Because they'd rather spend their hard-earned money to see a no-talent ass clown director essentially masturbate with Paramount's money. Fuck Michael Bay. Fuck the Transformers. And fuck anyone who supports them. - Brandon Nease
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