Michael Bay Still Sucks

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2007)

I enjoyed Transformers, I suppose, but at the same time can't help but feel somewhat dumber after watching it. That's the same feeling you get after any Michael Bay movie, however. The robots more or less look cool, except for the mouths which was some foolish stylistic choice which was already proved a non-issue with movies like Spiderman where we know the movie can play without seeing the character's face, nevermind needing to see a giant robot's lips when he talks. But whatever.
On the upside, much action chicanery abounds. Stuff blows up and there's giant robots. Huzzah! On the downside, I'm not sure anything in the movie really makes sense if you even try to ponder it. Since it's a movie based on a cartoon based on toys, I let that slide and still give it a 7 out of 10. But really, why was part of Megatron's plan to take over all the machines on Earth if he showed up 12,000 years ago? How many machines were hanging around back then? And when did Megatron learn English? Did he have a wi-fi connection in the ice there? Were Scorpinox and Starscream just sort of ignored at the end of the film because, despite what they said, they fully intended to make sequels or were those just loose ends no one considered because Michael Bay is a poor filmmaker? I put money on both being true.
The magic box that turns any machine into a fully armed robot probably sounded good at the time, but...what? I mean really, what? All of that is easily overlooked of course. What isn't easily overlooked is the dialogue. Because even when I was wincing, I could still hear it. I think it's entirely possible that every line that comes out of Optimus Prime's little metal mouth is the stupidest line ever. This makes for an interesting paradox of logic, as he has more than one line and, logically, they can't all be the stupidest line ever. But somehow they are. I wish this movie had a script editor who wasn't a 7 year old with head trauma. That would have really improved things.
That said, maybe in the sequel the robots won't be so cheeseball when they talk and perhaps the Decepticons will have some manner of personalities. It's kind of sad that a modern filmmaker can get away with not including that in a multi-million dollar film with the promise of maybe getting it in a sequel, but meh. What ya gonna do?