Mechs and violence

Rating: 5/10 (22 July 2007)

I've never watched an episode of Transformers, never owned a Transformers toy, never sung along to 'You Got The Touch'. The main reason I went to see this film was... well, my inner 12-year-old wanted to see giant robots fighting each other and smashing stuff.
My inner 12-year-old left mostly satisfied. Giant robots do indeed fight each other and smash stuff. But my adult self was somewhat less easily entertained, and left feeling disappointed by a messy script full of holes (what happened to Barricade, the Mustang Decepticon? As far as I could tell he vanished right after the start of the freeway chase), unnecessary story lines (the hackers could have been removed entirely just by giving the line about how Sector 7 find Sam to another character) and action sequences that turned into nothing but a big blur.
Probably the most irritating aspect of the film was that it was full of annoying characters who did one-note comedy 'schticks' rather than behaving like people. Having a comic-relief character is one thing; in Transformers, it seems practically *every* character was there to deliver unfunny one-liners or sight gags. Sam's parents, Sam's friend, Sam's teacher, Bernie Mac, his grandmother, Anthony Anderson, *his* grandmother, his cousin, Agent Simmons, his sidekick, the Indian guy on the phone... Nor were the robots immune, as Frenzy (the boombox Decepticon) was a straight-out 'wacky' character, and even Optimus Prime ended up doing slapstick!
Michael Bay is a director I have mixed feelings about; he's done some movies I really enjoyed (The Rock), and others I hated (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor). What I find ironic is that his earlier films, when he was a relative unknown and was working on smaller budgets, did a much better job of delivering thrills and excitement, probably because he was forced to use real cars and real people shot by real cameras on real locations. Now, every action shot in his movies seems to involve some CG vehicle whipping past a (simulated) millimetre from a wildly shaking virtual camera. Everything becomes indecipherable streaks of light and colour. It's not thrilling, or exciting - just confusing.
The Transformers themselves are impressive to look at, but they would be even more so if I could actually see what they were doing. All the publicity has gone on about how many millions of parts and zillions of polygons the CG models are built from, but on screen they just become a whirl of silver and coloured body panels. The only robots who were easy to identify in the finale were Optimus (blue and red) and Bumblebee (yellow). All the others were just shades of grey and black running around and somersaulting like speed-crazed acrobats. Sometimes I could only tell if I was looking at an Autobot or a Decepticon by the colour of their eyes (blue=good, red=evil).
There were some odd directorial choices as well. If I hadn't known in advance that Jazz would die by being ripped in half by Megatron, I would never have realised that was what happened! Instead there was just a flurry of movement in long shot, then a cut to something else. Come on, one of the good guys has just been killed! Where's the shock? Where's the horrified reaction from his friends? Where's Megatron taking a moment to gloat, even?
So ironically, in a film about giant robots, I felt as though I didn't get my fill of giant robots. If the film had been 20-30 minutes shorter - take out the hackers, take out the Secretary of Defense fighting Frenzy, take out the pointless sitcom-level minor characters like the surly cop or the fat dancing cousin - and at least the proportion of mechs to meatbags would have felt more balanced. The movie is called 'Transformers', not 'Annoying People', after all...