No. Alright see you all later. I’m kidding of course. There should be another Transformers movie. Just not the one we’ll be getting in 2017.
I’ve been a huge Transformers fan since the age of three. I checked with my parents for dates. My first experience was in December of 1985. I was home suffering from pneumonia and a high fever. To help me feel more comfortable, my parents brought home an enormous cardboard box containing a VHS tape that they had rented from 7-Eleven. They did rent movies in the 80s, you can google it. The episode was Fire in the SKY. Immediately, I was hooked by the colorful robots that could change into various vehicles. My parents pick up the other two episodes available and I watched them continuously. I got the toys for Christmas and birthdays from then on. I collected the comics in high school and bought the seasons when they were released on DVD in 2001. For the first time I was able to watch all 98 episodes in chronological order. During the rest of the early 2000s I read up on every character guide and encyclopedia that I could get my hands on. You can say I’m, “uniquely” qualified to discuss such a topic.
When I found out that there was to be a live action adaptation directed by Michael Bay, I was beyond excited. I mean, come on, at the time Bay had given us Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon. And I happened to like Bad Boys II, Pearl Harbor and The Island. My article on Michael Bay forthcoming. This guy can handle big action and comes from the school of cool. A movie about an 80s toy line and cartoon series isn’t going to attract the likes of an academy award winning director such as Steven Spielberg, right? You mean to tell me he’s going to executive produce the film and hired a pair of Transformers fans to write the script? And original Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen is returning to the role! This is going to be awesome! I was totally nerding out.
Then things began not to seem quite right with the world. He passed on original Megatron voice actor Frank Welker to go with Hugo Weaving? The Autobots are now GMC and Chevrolet vehicles? Who the hell is Sam Witwicky? Oh, my God, did I just see a clip of Optimus Prime with lips? What the f%$# is going on? How are all these, “Transformers fans,” letting this happen? They’re doing this on purpose? Alright, I got to take this in stride. Certain things have to change for a film adaptation. Look at the X-Men films. I panicked for a while after hearing about the changes made to the films before they came out and I thought they were spectacular. Except for The Last Stand, obviously. The first trailer dropped and man oh man the action looked grand as I’d hoped for.
July 6th, 2007, my best friend and I got tickets to the advanced showing. I was so overcome with anticipation I don’t remember what I was doing at work. I rushed home afterwards to change clothes and meet up with my buddy to secure us some good seats. There we were with large sodas, nachos and candy from concessions. I, being the geek that I am, was wearing my Comic-Con Exclusive Transformers shirt and an Autobot hat. My phone alarm went off with the cartoon’s theme song to alert us that the movie was starting. I couldn’t have been more ready to see the, “Autobots rage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.” The lights went down and my life was about to change…
……For the worse. After my first viewing I was devastated. There was action for sure and that was the voice of Optimus Prime. But did I really just see the Transformers movie? I know I saw Bumblebee “lubricate” on John Turturro. Hell, he couldn’t even talk! Someone should have prevented Optimus Prime from saying, “My bad.” Why are there so many human characters in a Transformers movie? There are over 20 human character with only 7 Decepticons and count them, 5 Autobots! It’s called f%$#ing Transformers, NOT Humans with Robot Friends! What’s with all this pointless humor? During the climactic battle between Optimus and Megatron, we get to hear them fight while we see Shia Labeouf react to what’s happening. Even while Optimus speaks one of the most iconic lines in Transformers lore, the camera is on Shia’s f%$#ing face! I went into meltdown mode there for a moment, sorry.
I watched the film several more times like a detective trying to solve a crime. It hurt a little less each time but I chalk that up to numbness. Some of it was decent and had elements from the source material but failed to capture the spirit of what it was like watching the cartoon as a child or playing with the toys. If you didn’t know the names of the characters, you wouldn’t have known it was a Transformers movie you were watching in the first place. Few of my friends understood where I was coming from. The few that would engage me in conversation would say that there was no other way that the story could’ve been adapted. I would always say yes there could’ve been. It could have been done better.
I somehow accepted that this was the best I was going to get. I added it to my film collection and moved on with things, knowing full well that a sequel was going to be made. It didn’t take long for that to happen. 2009 brought us, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Surely, they had learned from the missteps they made with the first one right? Right?!? Sweet Jesus, I was wrong. So very, very wrong. Michael Bay and company took everything that was unappealing about the first film and said, you know what? We’re going to give you all that again tenfold! Like offensive, racist, stereotyped robots? Well, we’ll give you two! Didn’t care for all of the human characters we had before? We brought most of them back and added new ones! Oh, and we know you don’t like us messing with the mythology, so we’re going to screw with it even more! There was only one scene in the movie that was good. It was when Optimus valiantly took on three Decepticons by himself. But When the movie is 2hrs and 30min long that isn’t at all good. Sadly, the masses, myself included, spent money to see it and it turned enough of a profit for another sequel to be made.
Now this is where I shift gears for a little bit and might lose some of you. I actually enjoy 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, terrible title though. It had storyline that mostly came directly from the series. Megatron did try bringing Cybertron into Earth’s orbit in the season one, three-part episode titled, The Ultimate Doom. It still had unnecessary humor and too many humans but the darker tone made up for it. At times it felt like the Autobots might not actually be able to save the day. There was real uncertainty that victory was not a foregone conclusion. It gave it a sense of gravity lacking from the previous two. Once again, Bay was in the zone, able to give all the action sequences a sleek brilliance. Especially the freeway chase scene, which is officially a Michael Bay trademark. Lest not we forget that this one was also released in 3D, the first in the series. That definitely added to the enjoyment of this instalment.
For all that I liked about Dark of the Moon, there is absolutely nothing of worth in 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction. I will repeat myself here, there is unequivocally, not one sequence, dialog or moment anywhere in this film that is good. The whole almost 3 hour experience is garbage. You know it is God awful when you’d rather watch Revenge of the Fallen instead. It is blatantly obvious by now that Michael Bay and everyone else involved with this project just made it to make money for themselves. Or maybe they made it for the plethora of people who think big action movies are awesome because they are big action movies. They definitely knew how much of a lemming their audience was as it was the highest grossing film of the year with over 1.1 billion dollars. Despite the fact that it won almost every award for worst movie of the year, director, writing and acting! That has to tell you something. At this point in the series all traces of nostalgia and wonderment from the original series has been eradicated. All of the original Transformers characters have been killed off, except for Optimus and Bumblebee because they still sell alot of merchandise based on them. The very essence of Optimus Prime is tarnished and gone. In the 80s series, he represented everything truthful, moral and good we should strive to be. Now he tells the Autobots, “…when I find out who’s behind this, he’s going to die.” He even threatens the Dinobots, “Defend my family or die!” This the definition of the exact opposite of what Optimus Prime stands for. Speaking of the fan favorites, the Dinobots, they’ve been renamed, reshaped and undone from all characteristics that made them fun to begin with.
I could spend hours going on about the state of the Transformers film series. At the time of this writing, we are set for Transformers 5, 6 and 7, possibly two spin-off series and a shared universe with other Hasbro properties it has never had ties with before. Does the world need another Transformers movie? No, not with the people that are making them now. It’s just a way for them to continue to make money. Until one of those future projects fails. Then we’ll get the studio standard reboot. It is at that point, I pray, that a more talented crew with a real respect for the source material should be allowed to make an adaptation. It is possible to make a truly great Transformers film. You just need the Matrix of Leadership to, “…light or darkest hour.”
Don’t Forget The Popcorn…
-BB
The Movie Pit 