Surprisingly, this wasn’t quite as painful an experience as I had assumed it would be. I still think the Transformers look like crap but I was happy to see Megan Fox gone. I’m willing to accept crappy looking Transformers so I don’t have to look at crappy looking Megan Fox. My god I can’t stand her.
Of course, Megan Fox wasn’t the only thing that sucked about the previous Transformers films. Just about everyone in the movies drives me nuts and there’s no change here. Characters are obnoxious and stupid and usually do things that make little sense. But that isn’t what Transformers is all about, is it. With Michael Bay blowing shit up real good and Ehren Kruger, the brilliant writer behind such crap as Scream 3, The Skeleton Key, and the last Transformers movie, the only thing that matters is watching the CG madness unfold onscreen.
That’s where I actually enjoyed the movie. The first film just seemed like giant lumps of shiny silver beating the crap out of each other. I couldn’t tell who was who or what the hell was going on. This time around I could actually recognize which character happened to be beating the crap out of another character. It’s just too bad they couldn’t build some sort of storyline to back it up.
This time lets try actually blowing them up. Trust me, nobody will notice Shia LaBeouf is missing.
Despite its running time of 157 minutes, it still seemed like giant chunks of the plot were missing. It was like someone would say ‘Hey, you know what we should do!’ and then it was suddenly done and they would respond with ‘That totally worked!’ What worked? Did I miss something? That’s how I felt the entire time. Like I blinked and missed something. Maybe I just kept nodding off in between rounds of explosions, that’s a possibility…
This is the perfect example of mindless entertainment, something Bay is obviously very good at. Who cares about characters or plot when you can make stuff go BOOM! I’m a big fan of mindless entertainment. I love a great action flick and I don’t go into something like this looking for great character development. It would be nice if I didn’t feel like I was missing stuff the entire time but I can even overlook that. The real problem is that Bay is doing Transformers. Something that most of the people my age grew up on. I watched the cartoon religiously and even went out of my way to pick up some of the comic series. I can’t say I know as much about the history of the Transformers as others do, but I know what I like and those first moments of seeing what Bay had done to my beloved Transformers is something I just can’t forgive.
It may sound like Optimus but there's no reason to so drastically alter his appearance.
There’s no way these flicks are made for the hardcore fans out there that grew up watching Transformers. I don’t think I know anyone who was a fan of the cartoon and enjoys the movies. What this movie really does is remind us that we’re getting old now. Movies like this aren’t made for us. They’re made for the kids that wouldn’t know the Transformers existed before Bay came along. My demographic doesn’t make up the asses that are in the seats now so nobody is planning on catering to my demands.
Transformers may appeal to those that didn’t grow up on it, but it doesn’t appeal to me. Bay will always be able to deliver some great action sequences but I just hope he moves on from something I love and switches over to something new. It would be nice if he stopped producing terrible fucking remakes as well. That’s probably way too much to ask though, isn’t it?
Under the marquee – Will
