Jul 3rd, 2007
Transformers - Not Much More than Meets the Eye
In 1986, a young boy went to see a film about sacrifice, growth, and redemption that captivated his imagination and stirred his spirit. That movie was The Transformers and it scored a 10/10 on the bad-ass scale.
In 2007, a 29-year old young(I think) man went to see a movie with the same name and left feeling dirty and used by the Michael Bay piece of crap that he had just spent the past two hours watching.
It will never cease to amaze me how Hollywood continues to destroy the relics of my childhood by overly contriving and commodifying stories that I used to love. First, they gave the Dark Phoenix saga a golden shower; then they castrated Venom; and now this - they have turned the Transformers into a CGI-ed up version of the Village People.
Oh, it wasn’t that bad Jiyan. With a budget of around $200 million, surely there must be some redeeming elements in the film?
Sure - there was some redeeming elements in the film:
The one thing I enjoyed about Transformers
Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the one redeeming quality of Transformers would be the fact that it sold sex considering that Michael Bay got his start directing Playboy video centerfolds, which in fact is the only Michael Bay film I would be willing to watch in the future given the fact that he pimped the Transformers like Terrence Howard pimped Taryn Manning in Hustle & Flow.
Instead of listing out the 100 things I found disgusting about Transformers, I’m going to provide 5 suggestions for how they could have made this film bearable. Spielberg you senile S.O.B, I hope you are listening:
- Include characters in the movie - Guess what idiots? People like characters. There were no characters in this movie. There was a crap load of boring stereotypes and some CGI robots that I couldn’t care less about. I literally vomited in my mouth during Bernie Mac’s cameo and during Anthony Anderson’s introductory scenes (both of whom have talent), when they were both essentially asked to use their blackness to bring some flavor to the film; I almost spat out my $10 aquafina when they had the audacity to play a tragic composition when Bumblebee was trapped by the police (guess what a$%holes, you only play a tragic composition when something tragic happens); and I almost walked out during the ‘is man worth saving’ dialogue between Optimus Prime and Megatron as they rolled around like two extras from ‘Rent’ in the ”climax” to the film. I’m not even joking when I say this movie had no characters and would have been less of a joke had there not been one word uttered in it, which brings me to my second point:
- Hire a screenwriter who didn’t learn to read and write from Hooked on Phonics - Immediately after the film ended I ran to the bathroom and began beating my head against the sink in an effort to forget all of the movie dialogue that had entered into my short-term memory because I realized that my IQ would drop 50 points if I committed any of the dialogue to long-term memory. In all honesty, the dialogue from the film made me feel embarassed. They literally tried to inject some message about humanity into the film. Obviously, this film was not intended to be An Inconvenient Truth so why even try?
- Include a plot in the movie - I know it is hard to impose a narrative structure onto a two-hour long car commercial but they honestly could have tried. There was no sense of narrative coherence in the movie, no pacing, and no plot. It was literally a bunch of people and robots running around and speaking incoherently to one another for two hours. Next time, try to put some semblance of a plot together - maybe even think about copying a plot from the original Transfomers series?
- Don’t give me an epileptic seizure - I couldn’t understand what was happening in any of the battle scenes. They wasted millions of dollars on CGI when they could have hired a bunch of Korean kids to animate the film for $10,000 bucks because no one had any idea what was happening at any point when the robots were on-screen. The final scene was so confusing to watch that there was a kid crying in the audience. I’m lying - that kid was me.
- Hire a real director next time - It is one thing to hire Bay to direct The Rock or Bad Boys - stories that no one really cares about and will be gone from our culture in a few years. It is another to hand the reigns of a brand like The Transformers over to Bay. Next time hire someone who actually understands the cultural significance of the Transformers and cares enough to actually put some effort in.
Allright - I’m getting bored with trashing the film. Do yourself a favor and save $10 bucks by skipping this movie and just renting the original.
That’s hot!
Being one to always give something a try, regardless of what other people say, I went to see the Transformers yesterday. Besides I was hoping to say, “But Jiyan, you are a grown man now and some of the things that we may have found amusing and exiting as a kid may not cut it these days for us”, but after seeing it for myself, I must say you are right. True the movie could reach historic earnings in its first opening week with all the hype that the media has given it and thanks to the movie made in 1986 but overall it was horrible. True it was actually pretty good the first 60 minutes. My heart raced and danced with excitement as I sat there with anticipation; however once Bumblebee transformed himself into a brand new yellow Camaro, everything went down from that point. I almost went to sleep! They either dragged the plot or there were so much compact actions that it left you wondering what the heck is going on. And don’t even start with me with the cheesy lines and how predictable it was, I mean, Optimus Prime was like Xaviar in X-men and Megatron was like Magneto…same old, same old Hollywood super hero type of movie. All I have to say is that it was a big disappointment for this chica! It was poorly written. For example, why is it that the kid had to carry the cube to the top of the highest building when NONE of the Autobots can fly and just about all the Decepticons can??? Why didn’t they save Bumblebee when clearly they could have without hurting the humans or why was it that most of the humans that were either “about” to or got crushed were some blond bimbos (especially the one in the turquoise dress) with huge tits, it just made it hard for me to take the movie seriously. Michael Bay spent too much energy on trying to make the Autobots, especially Optimus Prime “human-like” that he failed to capture the essence of my once beloved cartoon characters and filled it with some stupid, sappy, and cheesy lines like at the end with, “humans are more than meets the eye…” It was very sad if not disturbing as I was a complete tomboy as a little girl and Transformer was one of my all time favorites right after Voltron (the lion version), Thundercats and X-men. By the way, Voltron is due out sometime next year and I don’t know if I am ready to be disappointed again. I mean I was so into Voltron that as a little girl, I used to pretend that V-8 tomato juices were “blood” in order to get myself to drink that stuff like the Evil king Zarkon…LOL!
-Helen
Thanks to Jiyan’s review, I saw Knocked Up instead of Transformers. Awesome movie. As a bonus, after Knocked Up was over I caught the last 10 minutes of Transformers while I waited for my friends. Probably the worst 10 minutes of film I have ever seen, but they were enjoyable since it made me feel even better about my movie choice. Thanks Jiyan!
Does anyone else thing Michael Bay looks like Michael Bolton?
THANK YOU GOD!! Everyone I talk to loves that movie and I think it’s the stupidest most pointless movie evr made!! I walked out of it… when the robots were walking around the backyard and no one seemed to FUCKING NOTICE IT!!! AHHH!! hahaha I’m not that mad really… It was just not something I wanted to waste my life on haha Thanks again
[...] review of it. I tend to be much more of an angst-driven writer and therefore it takes stinkers like Transformers or X-Men 3 to get me off my ass and [...]
Stop with the critics man, this movie’s good with nice special effects.
ERROR! Re-e-e-ejected! Jian need to take more thought. riii-iiii-iiii-cliiichkt Bay could do worse. Try watching tra-a-a-ansformers energeon or cybrtron you see no goof in movie compared to those mooovie make goood, atract new fans drgiiiiiiiitcht. A little heavy on the electrons pe-e-erhaps but movie make people to look back zzzzzzzztz make to remember tranzformerz of yezteryear rikcht. ERROR! Rejec-Rej-Rej-Reject! I am Shrapnel! Destroy all Autobots! RI-I-I-I-I Head crushed by Kup. C-C-C-Cannot funtctzion Must live on Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiichhhhhhhht Na-a-a-ay …………………………………………………………………………. We belong to Unicron now. We ar sweeps the huntsmen of scourge!
WTF?
your totally wrong about transformers its one of the best films ever! knocked up was shit compared to this tbf.
Your all fucking pricks if you didnt like transformers its amazing.
Its funny and considering transformers are toys its awsome!
so GET OVER YOUR LITTLE PATHETIC LIVES AND LEARN ABOUT GOOD FILMS!
your probs the type of ppl who think James bond is a good film.
well its not its crap! so i laugh at choo cos your lame.