Since Transformers: Dark of the Moon is coming out in the beginning of July, I thought it would be a good idea to review the two movies that came before it this June, as a sort of a retrospective. After those are published, I will release a recommendation as to whether or not you should go see Dark of the Moon, based on the first two movies, the trailer, and my previous experience with Michael Bay. I will try to see and review the movie during its run, but before I do so, the recommendation would serve as an unofficial review for those thinking about seeing it in the theaters. It would not reflect the actual quality of the film; it would just be an educated guess based on what I’ve seen.
Let’s start at the most convenient spot to start, the first movie of the new series, 2007’s Transformers. Before this movie was released, Transformers was a beloved toy franchise that spawned a number of spin-offs, television shows and animated movies. This movie, directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg, serves as sort of a reboot to the series, replacing the clean-cut, colorful, toy-like look of the robotic characters with a grittier, gunmetal design. I’ve heard nothing but bad things about Transformers, but I wanted to give it a fair look for this review.
I knew this movie was in trouble right from the opening credits, as the Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures logos were accompanied by mechanical whirring and whooshing sounds. This reminded me that this movie was the byproduct of the Hollywood machine, created to attract as wide of a consumer base as possible, yet giving nothing back to the viewer. This reminded me that the movie I was about to watch was going to be a shallow, loud, big-budget mess of a summer blockbuster. The rest of the movie confirmed this.
The entire film was shot in this very frantic pace, quickly switching from roaming shaky cam to extreme close-ups to perspectives inside the robots to slo-mo action to some other random angle. There were times in which I thought I would become physically sick from watching this film. One of the only consistent features in all of these shots is some sort of a bright light, whether it was the sun or a car headlight, which would create an annoying lens flare that would take up about half of the screen. I remember when shots like this were considered bad cinematography; in Transformers, it is “artistic”.
To complement the chaos of the cinematography, the acting in Transformers is equally manic, thoughtless, and annoying. Shia “no no No No N-NONONONO!” LaBeouf, who leads as Sam Witwicky, gives the hands-down most annoying performance in this movie, running around all over the screen, screaming like a caffeinated squirrel-monkey, and turning this otherwise relatable character into a pervy creep. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, though; Sam’s parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are both equally annoying with their grating voices and constant blabbing. Outside the Witwicky household, Mikaela Baines (played by Megan Fox) and the rest of Sam’s high-school class annoyingly play up their respective high-school stereotypes. Josh Duhamel and Tyrene Gibson, as captains of a special operations team, annoyingly shout out all of their militaristic lines. John Turturro plays the annoying member of the annoying Sector 7 that annoyingly passes off the concerns of the other annoying characters. Are you sensing a pattern here?
To accompany all of these annoying characters, there also exists a little bit of racial tension in many of the scenes that I found uncomfortable to sit through. Anthony Anderson and Bernie Mac seem to embrace their roles as ugly African-American stereotypes (I literally cringed when Bernie Mac’s character called out “Hey, Mammy!”). One of the Autobots, Jazz, was another horrible black stereotype (“What’s crackin’, li’l bitches?”) who, coincidently, was the only Autobot to die. There are also derogatives and stereotypes in the dialog that referenced Hispanics, Chinese, and Iranians. All of these racial stereotypes just make the writing in Transformers appear childish and insensitive.
Despite all of these complaints, I admit that if I squinted my eyes and cocked my head to the right a bit, I could see how some people might think that Transformers was a decent action movie. Especially in the last scene, the action is packed and hard-hitting. The production value is very high, and you could be amazed as to how they could incorporate all of this CGI so well with the live-action. And, unlike what many critics have said, I was able to keep track of the robot battles and the individual Autobots and Decepticons (not that it mattered; the Autobots only had a handful of lines to introduce their one-dimensional personalities).
All in all, I do not recommend anyone watching Transformers. The cinematography is dizzying, the characters are extremely annoying, and the dialog choices are very poor and exploitative (there is one scene of shameless self-promotion when some character exclaimed that something was as awesome as Armageddon, another Michael Bay film; that made me die a little inside). If you are desperate for an action flick, there are worse movies, but not many. I would even recommend District 9 over Transformers; at least that movie TRIED to be somewhat intelligent!
Rating: 2 Stars
Okay, so this isn’t a great start to the Michael Bay series. But a decent director with the right studio can recognize this criticism and use it to improve the sequel. All they have to do is make the cinematography more coherent, make the actors less annoying, get rid of the racial references, develop more meaningful characters, improve the dialog, maintain the level of production, and stay true to the original franchise. Since Michael Bay has a deep history in filmmaking, he is fully capable of doing all of these things. Therefore, the sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, cannot help but be the better film, right?
…Right?
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Studio: DreamWorks Pictures
Running time: 144 minutes
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