Image by Sascha Kircher from Pixabay Franchise moviemaking seems to be the norm these days. Whether it be superhero cinematic universes by Marvel Studios, Sony and DC or film series with entries spanning decades like Rocky/Creed, Jurassic Park/World, Fast and Furious and Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, there is some safety for movie studios to rely on franchises to help keep them afloat.
For one thing, they’re typically big money makers since moviegoers these days generally prefer to have some idea of what they’re going to watch and, therefore, sequels and spin-offs tend to guarantee an audience in the theater. Also, studios can play a numbers game. What I mean is even if half of the films in a franchise are critically panned, the other half will likely be well received. And audiences are often much more forgiving of franchise flicks and thus the ones who studios actually need to spend money on tickets will flock and help the movie make some money. Of all the franchises out there, of which I’ve written about plenty (as evidenced above), there is one that I told myself I would NEVER discuss. Why? Because, of the five mainline films in this specific franchise, NONE OF THEM ARE GOOD. Since the title of this blog already revealed the mystery, let me just get my not-at-all controversial opinion out of the way… I do not like Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. Let me explain why. Transformers (2007) With action films like Bad Boys, The Rock, and Armageddon under his belt, I can see why Paramount Pictures chose Michael Bay to direct a live-action film centered on the incredibly popular & profitable toy line of transforming robots from Hasbro. And, from their perspective, I’m sure that they still believe they made the right choice (especially since the five Transformers films that Bay directed grossed more than four BILLION DOLLARS at the global box office). But, in my humble opinion, Bay was not the right person to make one blockbuster about alien robots fighting out their war on Earth. Let alone FIVE OF THEM! ☹ All that being said, the first Transformers movie has somewhat of a better reputation than its four sequels. Despite many people who call themselves fans of this franchise writing off much of the franchise, they still hold the 2007 flick in higher regard because…actually, I don’t know why. It’s a bad movie. Even when it tries to be good, it’s bad. If you ask me, there are several reasons for this. The most obvious problem to me is that the basic things this movie should accomplish—delivering competent action set pieces that are straightforward and entertaining, first and foremost—it just doesn’t. There’s a sliver of promise in the tease of a fight involving Bumblebee (Mark Ryan), but Bay decides to instead show teenagers Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) fend off a computer-generated monstrosity. And the idea of the third act fight in urban Nevada may have been cool, but in practice it just ends up as several minutes too long of metal clashing against one another in CGI blurs that almost compel the audience to look away. The movie fails at being a competent action movie, but surely it has other redeeming qualities like the characters and direction? Right? … I give Shia LaBeouf credit for sticking out these first three Transformers movies (he must’ve really needed those paychecks!). Simply put, I think he is a great actor when given the right roles (watch Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy or Tyler Nilson & Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon if you don’t believe me). Unfortunately, the writing in these movies does little to make Sam Witwicky a complex or interesting character with a meaningful arc in the trilogy (let alone each movie individually). But, I appreciate LaBeouf recognizing the mediocrity of these films and running with that by playing up his emotional reactions to the CGI insanity happening around him. Fortunately, this approach seemed to leave a mark on at least some of the actors that shared scenes with him: notably Sam’s parents Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White). This trio injects enough unintentional comedic relief in their scenes to make the slog of a plot around them somewhat bearable. But they can only do much to help the audience get through the other parts of this movie. Because even setting aside the not-so-subtle racist and misogynistic undertones rampant in Bay’s portrayal of women and people of color AND the overtly jingoistic atmosphere in how he glorifies & romanticizes the U.S. military, Transformers ultimately cannot rely on its human characters to justify its existence any more than on the alien robots. If anything, watching this movie should help anyone who wasn’t a big fan of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla appreciate that movie more. While the human leads in that film aren’t super memorable, either, at least the depiction of the titular monster is cool (especially in the third act). And we get thirty minutes of an relatable father-son dynamic between Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Bryan Cranston to get us into the story, at least. Transformers has none of that, and thus should be proof enough that it’s not just that this franchise never gets better after the first one. Rather, it’s proof that this franchise wasn’t good to begin with. Michael Bay set out to make a competent mid-2000s action flick and failed. And, shockingly, the movies don’t really get any better. THEY JUST. GET. WORSE!! Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) Given the mixed critical reception of the first Transformers movie, I would’ve hoped that Michael Bay re-evaluated his stylistic and storytelling approach for the sequel to ensure the audience would be more invested in the characters, narrative, and action this time around. But, given his cinematic resume prior to this franchise…why ON EARTH would I ever expect that out of this man? ☹ Revenge of the Fallen not only doesn’t understand the assignment of making a decent follow-up to a mediocre action movie, but somehow falls so far from anything close to meeting that expectation. On top of that, though, Bay decided to double down on the lofty world building and pseudo-thematic approach of the first Transformers movie. Surprise, surprise! It sucks even more, and not even Shia LaBeouf and his parents’ quirky dynamic can save this one. By the nature of this film’s narrative, Sam Witwicky’s more eccentric side is less fun this time. Instead, Bay has LaBeouf lose his mind in the first act due to an alien artifact stripping away his sanity by causing him to see symbols in the air & compulsively draw them. While this makes for some swing-and-a-miss physical comedy in college classes, it doesn’t play into LaBeouf’s strengths as an actor (to be clear, I’m just referring to what he did in the first Transformers movie and nothing more). On top of that, though, Bay decides to triple down on the use of racial and misogynistic humor. The former is evident in how he directs the voice performances of Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), two Transformers with uncomfortably stereotypical speech patterns. The latter “shines through” in how he shoots Megan Fox’s character to strip what little humanity she had in the first film to make her out as a pure sex object in this movie. Sure, the comedy doesn’t work. But the plot probably carries the film, right? WRONG AGAIN!! What little I could understand of the narrative of Revenge of the Fallen falls flat, but everything else simply plays into the worst sequel trappings with Bay trying to inject more complexities into this story but utterly failing to do so with grace or sophistication. What doesn’t help the nonsensical narrative & uninspired dialogue is how Bay’s visual sensibilities make this film legitimately difficult to look at for extended periods of time. For whatever reason, I didn’t notice his more overt cinematographic tendencies as much in the first Transformers movie. Needless to say, the excessive slow-motion and nausea-inducing camerawork in lieu of deliberate and meaningful use of the lens is simply too overbearing to be ignored in this movie. On top of that, Revenge of the Fallen is the first film in the franchise that includes far too many inexcusable rejections of the laws of physics. To be very clear, this isn’t like watching a comic book movie and asking yourself: “I wonder if Natasha Romanoff could come away from that car wreck unscathed?” This is more like normal humans without any kind of spy training crashing through several floors of skyscrapers or smashing through cement walls (all while being protected by the METAL HANDS of Transformers) & coming out on the other side without so much as a pool of sweat on their brows. All in all, there is very little (if anything) redeemable in Revenge of the Fallen. It tries to me a more dramatically compelling, high-concept sci-fi action movie and fails SPECTACULARLY. In most film franchises, it would easily be the worst in the bunch. BUT NO! Michael Bay AMAZINGLY directed three more of these flicks that compete with this one as the worst of them. READY…SET…GO!! Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) My understanding is that most people who watch this franchise generally agree that Dark of the Moon is a SLIGHT improvement over Revenge of the Fallen. And while I will argue in favor of that perspective, I want to make it clear that it’s a very bad movie and that you shouldn’t watch it. The third time around, Michael Bay apparently finally came around to reading “Screenwriting for Dummies” because he seems to have begun to grasp how a character arc works. By that I mean he gives both our human and Autobot protagonists—Sam Witwicky and Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), respectively—somewhat interesting motives for their actions & adequately compelling dynamics with other characters. Regarding the former, LaBeouf’s character finds himself a young adult in a world that doesn’t give two shits that he helped save the world…TWICE. This causes him to have to confront whether or not being Optimus Prime’s lackey is good for his life & his future. Again, this isn’t handled with any sort of grace or nuance. But it’s there, so…there’s that. Honestly, the more compelling arc is that of Optimus Prime who must wrestle with his mentor (and former Autobot leader) Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) as a turncoat for the Decepticons. In this regard, Dark of the Moon is somewhat worse than its two predecessors because it offers a glimmer of how these movies could be good by giving the Transformers meaningful characters arcs & thus treating them more like characters with agency as opposed to the impetus for CGI-fueled action sequences. If handled by a better director and better writers, the journey of Optimus’ relationship with Sentinel could have been engaging and emotional. Instead, it just comes off as too little too late. Which gets to one of my biggest problems with this entire trilogy starring Shia LaBeouf: Sam’s relationship with Bumblebee. I know this should be obvious, but I don’t get why these movies made people fall in love with Bumblebee. Not only is he not a particularly interesting character (and not just because he can’t talk), but any idea of a “relationship” that he has with Sam is a figment of people’s imagination. If you want to see an E.T.-inspired relationship form between a likeable human protagonist and this Transformer, watch the Bumblebee movie starring Hailee Steinfeld because you won’t it in Dark of the Moon or any of Michael Bay’s Transformers flicks. One last note about Shia LaBeouf before we say goodbye to him forever in the next two movies. While his more on-the-nose comedic moments in the preceding two Transformers films helped make those slightly bearable, Dark of the Moon lacks virtually any “Witwicky eccentricities” that helped LaBeouf make this character remotely endearing. No matter how good his character arc is (which it isn’t), the writing of Sam’s personality itself is bland to the point that not even LaBeouf’s hammy performance can save it. To make matters worse, Sam’s parents are barely in this movie which just shows that Michael Bay did not understand what character stuff worked before. Instead, he began a new awful trend of this franchise: retconning human history to demonstrate the Transformers meddling with it. By orienting the story around Sentinel Prime’s crash on the moon as the catalyst for the Space Race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Dark of the Moon is arguably the most grounded narrative in all five of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, but it does make it SLIGHTLY better in comparison to the trash that came before it (not to mention the two pieces of flaming shit that succeed it). Again, I want to make it clear that this is a bad movie. Its plot is more coherent than Revenge of the Fallen, but the characterization, action, and special effects are basically on par with it and the first Transformers film. Overall, it’s still a terrible flick compared to most movies ever made. Which means, so far, we have zero wins for Michael Bay as the primary creative voice behind this pathetic excuse for a blockbuster franchise. After watching these first three movies in one week, I took a months-long break just to let some brain cells heal. And when I stepped my toe back into the Transformers movies, I deeply regretted my decision to write this blog more than I ever thought I could. Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) With the end of the first Transformers trilogy, Michael Bay switched out actors for the lead role. No longer are we following the journey of Sam Witwicky. Instead, we get the incredible acting chops of Mark Wahlberg playing the all-time worst inventor & douchiest father Cade Yeager. Surely, Wahlberg has the potential to give a good performance (like in P.T. Anderson’s film Boogie Nights). However, the material he’s given in Age of Extinction does him no favors & Yeager ends up a bland protagonist with virtually no interesting quirks or personality whatsoever. Combined with the supporting characters—his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) and his business partner Lucas (T.J. Miller)—Wahlberg and the ensemble he leads are bland characters who lack any kind of interesting chemistry with one another. Thus, we have no reason to care about them & the insanity they are swept up in. The result is a first hour that forces us to watch characters we don’t like in situations that don’t make sense & that aren’t entertaining one iota. The plot surrounding them involves Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), the CEO of K.S.I. Industries, trying to harness & weaponize Cybertronian technology with the help of Galvatron (Frank Welker), who’s really just Megatron in disguise. None of this works, and offers no promise of the movie getting better in the second hour. And it doesn’t. Instead of using the second act to flesh out its characters and build its world in a compelling manner, Age of Extinction is overstuffed with overly CG-infused action that doubles down on all the cartoonish physics & lack of investment in characters that the first three Transformers movies “excelled” at. Yet, somehow, Bay outdid himself in how mindbogglingly asinine & utterly trashy these set pieces are. The constantly-moving camera forces the audience to hold their breath to the point of asphyxiating them with this terrible approach to cinematic action. By the end of the second hour, I hoped that the film was almost over. BUT NO! IT GOES ON FOR NEARLY ANOTHER WHOLE HOUR!! HOW THE F**K WAS MICHAEL BAY ALLOWED TO RELEASE A THREE-HOUR MOVIE?!? WHO THE F**K AT PARAMOUNT LET THIS HAPPEN?!?! … I need to breathe. If you haven’t figured it out, Age of Extinction isn’t just the worst Transformers movie thus far. It’s not only one of the worst action movies of all time. It’s not only one of the worst movies of the 21st century. It’s one of the worst movies EVER MADE (and I’m not being hyperbolic about that). Don’t watch it; it sucks. But, surely, it can’t get any worse than th-- Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) I…I…I can’t…WHAT?!?! My naïveté convinced me that it truly couldn’t get any worse after Age of Extinction. As bad as that movie was, I laughed a couple of times at unintentional moments of humor. But, by the time the credits rolled on The Last Knight, I could not think of a single redeeming quality about it. Somehow, this franchise GOT WORSE. Once again, Mark Wahlberg does little to endear the audience to his character. Nor does he try to develop chemistry with any of the supporting characters like teenage orphan Izabella (Isabela Moner) or British professor Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock), which is impressive considering how drab his dynamics were with his own daughter and best friend in the previous film. By the end, Cade Yeager has not gone on any kind of arc or journey wherein he learned something or changed in some significant way. Admittedly, the more prominent character “arc” in The Last Knight is that of Optimus Prime who is brainwashed by the Cybertronian goddess Quintessa (Gemma Chan) & turns on the Autobots and their human allies for the majority of the movie. Not only does this idea feel worn out in the past years given how often it’s happened in movies, but it just comes off like the “creatives” working on this franchise ran out of ideas and thus landed on the question, “What if Optimus turned bad?” It’s not done well by any means, and his reversion to the good-guys’ side feels even more abrupt & forced. While the actors in previous entries in the franchise could inject a little bit of hammy, over-the-top acting to offer mild entertainment for the audience, The Last Knight bogs its performers down so much in crap lit on fire that they can’t even do that. It’s no surprise that, of the newcomers to the franchise, Anthony Hopkins does what he can in his scenes by overdoing it in a good way. But, even that’s not enough to make the two-and-a-half hours of vomit-inducing garbage that is this movie remotely tolerable. Especially when everyone else of note isn’t really trying, there’s no point bothering an attempt to invest yourself in their characters. Shockingly, even the narrative of The Last Knight “outshines” Michael Bay’s previous Transformers flicks. By that I mean that there is no narrative; instead, the “plot” of the movie is just a bunch of pathetically written excuses to have fight scenes between more CGI robots that is a complete eye sore five films in. And it gets even worse when the humans are involved because, like Bay’s previous movies in the franchise, any semblance of grounded physics goes completely by the wayside in favor of poorly-choreographed action sequences. Which gets to the (unsurprisingly) other negative of The Last Knight: Michael Bay’s directing. All of his worst tendencies are on full display here. The way he uses the camera feels “anti-purposeful,” as in he never once uses the camera movement to let the audience know what we should be looking at in any given frame. A BASIC prerequisite for being a competent direction, and he CAN’T EVEN DO THAT!! I still don’t understand why on earth the studio kept paying him millions of dollars to make these movies because HE’S NOT GOOD AT IT!!! WHY DID THEY KEEP PAYING HIM TO MAKE THESE MOVIES?!?! AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! … But, maybe I’m being too harsh on the Transformers franchise… NOPE!!! These “films” are utter trash that NOBODY should ever watch again! Michael Bay should NEVER be allowed to sit behind a camera and direct a movie EVER AGAIN!! Just watch Bumblebee. Need I say more? 😊 If you care, below is my ranking of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies (which, if you haven’t figured out yet, I think are ALL BAD):
Which Transformers movie do you hate the most? Do you hope that the franchise completely retcons the five Michael Bay flicks in favor of the universe established by 2018’s Bumblebee? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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