I Heart The Transformers But
No, I Don’t Like The Michael Bay Movies
By Shaun Hatton - December 22nd, 2009
When Michael Bay’s Transformers was released in 2007, I was initially quite excited about seeing my favourite cartoon being brought to life through the magic of modern technology. Big explosions, cool cars, and crazy fights were just about guaranteed to give me my giant robot fix of that summer. But I was immensely disappointed upon seeing it. I remember the experience quite vividly. As the movie started, I was incredibly thrilled. The opening scene was excellent and seemed to set what I was expecting to be the pace for the remainder of the film.
Unfortunately all the special effects in the world can’t compensate for poor acting, a convoluted plot, and stiff, unlikable characters. It couldn’t even justify the creative liberties taken with the characters of The Transformers’ universe. Having Bumblebee, the most humble and gentle of Transformers, urinate on a character was just about the low point of the movie. That, however, is arguable; there was far too much that was far too horrible in that movie for a longtime fan like me to possibly forgive. For instance, why such a huge unnecessary emphasis on the humans who have zero redeeming qualities whatsoever?
This year the world was gifted with Bay’s follow-up to the original crapfest and, in true fashion, the sequel just took everything about the first movie and cranked it all to 11. Sadly this meant out of place comedic sequences were even more out of place, racist jokes and characterizations were even more offensive, the story made even less sense, and the battles were even more confusing. Two years after the first blockbuster raked in millions of dollars, the sequel did the same despite not doing anything differently – or well, for that matter.
So why am I thinking about The Transformers, anyway? I know I don’t have to watch these movies if I don’t want to (and trust me, after seeing the first two I don’t care for a third). What brought the movies to mind was the fact that since I’m a huge fan of The Transformers, and people know this, they tend to comment about how amazing the two more recent ones are. I’m sure on some level, such as sound design or jagged metal creature modeling or gratuitous belly shots, the movies are great. I just don’t think this makes them any good.
I have a display case to the left of my desk, in my office at home. It’s full of G1 Transformers and a few pieces of gaming memorabilia, so it’s hard for me to not think of my favourite childhood show daily. In fact, today I just skimmed through some screenshots from the 1986 masterpiece The Transformers: The Movie while listening to some choice cuts from that movie’s soundtrack. I realized a few things while doing this.
The first is that no matter how cheesy that original animated movie is, no matter how horrible it is that mostly every cool character ends up dying in it, and no matter how bad the acting in it can be at times, it is still freaking amazing. The movie has a score that is continuous. Listen carefully next time you watch it; the music never stops. It adds a sense of insane urgency to everything, even during the more quiet parts. The animation is also outstanding, as is the big name voice talent in the movie. Judd Nelson? Robert Stack? Lionel Stander? Leonard Nimoy? Orson Welles? All amazing.
The second thing I realized is that if this movie were to be remade, shot for shot, with live action humans and scenery but CG robots true to their original colour schemes and alternate forms, it would be absolutely mind-blowing. Think about it. Hollywood is remaking movies all the time, including movies that were so amazing the first time around that they don’t need to ever be re-made (The Crazies, The Brood, and The Killer Inside Me are a few that are coming up, for instance). Why not re-make this cartoon classic with today’s technology? The story rocks, the music rocks, the character designs rock, and dammit – people need to know what The Transformers was really like.
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I couldn’t agree with you more! The first Transformers movie was on TV a couple of weeks and my wife and I decided PVR it and give it a second viewing the next night. Perhaps it was growing up with the Transformers cartoon that impacted our initial take of the movie, so we wanted to give it another chance.
What the hell were we thinking?!
After a hour I had had enough and decided to go and do more important things like shovel the driveway and sidewalk. My wife continued to watch the movie, in fast forward, and by the end of it all she could say was “Why?” As in “why did I subject myself to this crap?” and “why did someone make a sequel to this?”
I can proudly say that I have not seen Transformers 2, nor do I plan on seeing anytime in the foreseeable future.
I hear you. It’s really weird that the franchise has been hipped up to today’s cliché ideas of what an action movie should be.
Be strong - there’s no need to see the second movie, ever.
I saw Transformers 2 when it came out because a friend and I wanted to see a 9:30 movie and that was all that was on. I couldn’t believe how bad it was and that people genuinely swear by the film. At the time I compared it to a 2-hour movie trailer. Trust me, there’s nothing rewarding about the sound design of the movie, it’s absolutely crap. Great article, by the way.
i had to wait something like 45 minutes until I saw Optimus Prime. outside of the inditinguishable character designs (every robot is just slick silver metal) the fact that Optimus spends the beginning of the movie off the movie is unforgivable. So far I’m Tran2 Free but we’ll see what happens.
Worst part of the Bay movie: These movies are really advertisements for kids to buy toys, let’s face it. An advertisement with masterbation and humping jokes. Yeah.
Funny story: Some woman brought their kids with them, and they were being OBNOXIOUS. I don’t care if kids talk every once in a movie, whatever, they’re kids, but this was literally out loud ALL THE TIME.
So, I yell “SHUT UP!” across the theater, since clearly no one was telling them to be quiet. sure enough the mom comes over and says I shouldn’t do that. Of course, I say fair enough, but she needs to control her kids so I don’t need to say that. She says she doesn’t want her kids to learn stuff like “Shut up”, to which I just repeat she needs to control her kids before she takes them into a theater.
So yeah, recap, she doesn’t want her kids to learn to say “Shut up” while watching a movie with masturbation and racist jokes. XD Not to mention, they say Shut up many many times during the movie, not to mention a few swears, which made me laugh inside. In fact that was my favourite part of the movie.