The beginning of an expensive bombastic gimmick

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2017)

Ten years ago, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay kick started what would eventually become one of the most financially successful and bombastically dumb summer franchises in film history. So putting aside any thoughts or premonitions about the function of this fiasco, it's worth looking back and asking how the original Transformers bodes as movie.
In the first hour, Bay succeeds in summoning some laughs out of Shia LaBoeff and his new car (the autobot Bumble-Bee in disguise). Keeping this a secret from his parents makes the hiding of ET look like a piece of cake. Enter Megan Fox, the potential love interest. When we meet her, she is inspecting a car engine, bent over it as if posing for a playboy cover. She goes through the movie with almost as little to do as she has to say; a reminder that the women in Michael Bay movies are objects.
Bay's floating swirling camera work signifies everything that is simultaneously right and wrong about him; he is a exceptional pornographer. The focal point of his direction has always been making the shot look good. In terms of performance there is nothing wrong with the camera work, but ironically its perfection is distracting; as is the application of slow motion. LaBeoff has enough energy and tongue-in-cheek to make the first hour of the movie tolerable. Halfway in we meet Optimus Prime in all his chrome bodied glory, with the sombre godly voice of Peter Cullen. He gives a cue card explanation of his job and his enemy the Cybertrons. These moments may conger feeling of nostalgia for anyone who grew up on the 80's series. For the rest of us, Optimus' lecture makes you realize how cheesy an idea Transformers really is.
Bay stages a loud numbing climax that is the film's greatest undoing. It starts with a punch that catapults an eighteen wheeler so beautifully that it would have been more thrilling to have seen the actually rigged effect on set. he may have a good eye for camera, but when it comes to editing he is virtually blind. The action takes place in the kind of dense metropolis where all the buildings are the same colour, and there is no sense of orientation. It feels as if every shot is only two frames in length, and at the speed of the unfolding chaos makes it impossible to distinguish the Autobots from the cybertrons.
Perhaps more than anything else, Transformers' biggest problem is that is that the Transfomers themselves are nothing resembling characters. They have no feelings, and their dialog seems manufactured. Certain lines are exactly what you expect to hear when you press the button on the toy.