Michael Bay Sucks!!!

Okay, I’ve lived with watching Transformers all my life. I’ve gotten to know their basic storyline (G1), and religiously followed their cartoons (given the time), and collected some of the figurines. I loved Transformers, because of the ingenuity of the idea, a normal machine transforming into a gigantic robot.

But, when I watched Transformers last night, I was deeply frustrated. I mean, there’s too many scenes with too much flesh in it (both literally and figuratively). When we want to watch Transformers, we want to watch those autonomous mechanical organism from Cybertron, in most, if not all scenes. There’s just too much rubbish in this movie.

Okay, to be fair, the visual department did a fine job, if only there’s more. 1 thing they lacked, however, is a non-close up angle of the robots transforming. If I’m not mistaken, only Frenzy managed to have most of its transformations not being shot up close. I know, we do like to see the details, but not all the time. A mixture of both should be done in the right ratio, rather than limiting what the audience can see.

The final bout in the end, were superb, effects-wise. The robots looked real, even the way they move about. Of course, in the cartoons, all robots lose their sense of weight when they transform, but here, they move accurately. Ironhide and Brawl move a little sluggish, as compared to the smaller robots.

Audio side, the voices for the robots are cool. They’re a lot more mechanical, alien and menacing rather than the cartoons, but it served the purpose. I mean, Megatron should be that menacing…and but I do feel that Optimus Prime lost his bass a bit. Maybe it’s due to the weight loss? He does look skinny in this movie.

Okay, here’s my grudge. As I said (written) before, There’s too much flesh. Too many babes. Too many weird characters. Too much rubbish. I mean, what is the significant of the Sector 7 fella? Agent Simmons’ eccentric, weird, and wearing a Sector 7 logo made to look like a Superman logo. His character, is rubbish. There’s a good half hour gained to show more metal if his character is not there.

Same goes to the super-hacker Glen Whitmann. He’s a comic relief, but luckily, his appearance is justifiable. And to hook up a computer to produce Morse code, while the enemy is banging at the door: Capt. Lennox or Agent Simmons, or even the Defense Minister Keller himself should be able to just tap the cables together, to produce a signal. Oh wait, it’s a Michael Bay’s movie. After all, he did send a gattling gun on to space, for a drilling job.

Not to mention that this movie tries very hard to be funny. I mean, if I were to see a funny movie, I should go for the likes of Scary Movie, or even Mr Bean. NOT Transformers! Most of the jokes were uncalled for, and seems to be just there to waste time.

The love scenes between Sam and Mikaela, should be a side story, or none. Although their role do serve well in the movie, but too much time wasted on them having no chemistry, and too little time on them for their relationship to make an impact.

And lo and behold, my biggest grudge. The lack of character development of the Transformers. The only Transformers to have proper character development, is Frenzy and Bumblebee, and even so, Sam’s “understanding” of Bumblebee seems to come out of no where. Suddenly, he understands what Bumblebee wants, and what it’s FM voice is saying.

Starscream, to me, is the epitome of the bad guy. Yes, Megatron is the Big Bad Wolf, but Starscream is the hunter who killed the wolf, sold the fur, and raped little red riding hood and her grandma’s corpse! He has no ally, but wants everything for his own. He even hates Megatron, but leaves the commanding to him, since that would leave much room for Megatron to die, and him to take it’s place.

On the Transformers podcast, they said there would be some exchange of insults between Megatron and Starscream, as it were in the old days. But after thousands of years being frozen, all Megatron have to say is 1 line. 1 freaking line! I curse more during a 30 minutes rush hour than Megatron who’ve had the Allspark but frozen for thousands of years!

The death of Jazz was downplayed so much, that he’s like a lowly sidekick who gets to get laid and get to be killed in the first 10 minutes or a horror movie. In fact, Bonecrusher, Barricade, and Blackout’s death took more focus than the whole scenes where Jazz is in it. Heck, even when Bumblebee got captured and when he lost his legs, there’s a sad song. For Jazz, nada.

I don’t think that if any of the Autobots die, the audience would feel for them, except for Bumblebee. Even Optimus Prime don’t get much love from the audience.

Speaking of Optimus, he’s a sissy compared to the one we’ve grown to know all this time. In the cartoons, he’s a Leader. The kind Maximus was set to be in Gladiator. But in this movie, he acts like a Squadron leader (notice the capitalisation and the decapitalisation of the letter L), with not much of a leading capability although Optimus did show it’s capability in hand-to-hand combat. Heck, I’d even compare Optimus to The Rock’s character in Doom! The Optimus in this movie, did not have the charisma, that the Optimus we know have. It’s not the looks or the voice, but the way he handles things. Especially after the hiding around the house scene.

So, all in all, It was an enjoyable, no brainer movie. Everything is explained in simple words…so don’t bother doing your research on Transformers’ history. But if I were to watch it again, I’ll just sleep for the first half, and wait until the last 40 minutes or so.

I give it a measly 3 out of 5 stars.