Final part of my review
So, wasn’t that a great movie?
Well, what can I say? I am extremely torn on this movie.
On one hand, it solved a LOT of issues I had with the previous films. For once, not a drop of toilet humor to be found. This is the first of these movies to be practically devoid of the unfunny garbage comedy that positively plagued the first three. No accusations of masturbation, no sexual jokes, no getting “high” on pot brownies, no exposure of sexual body parts, no antics in the bathroom; it’s all pretty much cleaned up its act for this movie. Every joke in this movie was either legitimately funny, or not that funny for entirely different reasons unrelated to vulgarity.
And it gave PLENTY of focal attention to the Autobots as characters, rather than as set pieces in the background. They were almost as every bit involved in the story as much as the lead humans were. And despite that, Bumblebee’s exposure was severely toned down in this movie to the point that there were times where I’d forget he was in this movie (though, to be fair, the movie itself also seemed to forget about him at points, but I digress). And all of them felt more like characters than ANY of the Autobots from previous movies (well, aside from the twins, Wheelie, Jetfire, and Sentinel Prime, that is). And they were really likable for the most part (I’ll get to more of this later).
Speaking of likable characters, this movie had hands down the best human cast of them all. Cade, Tessa, and Joshua were the best of the protagonists, while Attinger and Savoy (despite their cartoonishly evil depictions) were passable human antagonists. And while Shane was a somewhat pointless character, he wasn’t detestable or annoying, so I’m just indifferent towards him, and I’d rather feel indifference than hatred towards anything.
And Lockdown was a pretty cool villain overall in spite of his limited screentime.
And because of how great a presence the Transformers actually had in this movie, this is the first one to actually feel like a Transformers movie. It’s the first one to actually BE about the Transformers as characters rather than as plot devices. Though I’ll argue that the first movie was a better movie in general, it wasn’t as much a Transformers movie as this one is.
But…
*sigh*
On the OTHER hand, this movie is a mess. Plain and simple. As I’ve stated before, it feels like two separate movies smooshed together with the plots of each competing with each other, especially in the final act in which the final battle could essentially be broken down into five phases:
- Phase 1 - Joshua and Yueming vs. Cemetery Wind
Phase 2 - Cade vs. Savoy
Phase 3 - Dinobots vs. Prototypes
Phase 4 - The Giant Vacuum Cleaner
Phase 5 - Optimus vs. Lockdown
But you know what? Ehren Kruger has openly stated that he wasn’t trying to make a movie that holds narrative structure and/or logical sense to any high regard:
So in the minds of these filmmakers, logical sense intentionally gets thrown out the window, these movies are treated less like movies and more like theme park attractions, and narrative attentiveness is specifically shoved way down the list of priorities.How do you write for Michael Bay’s style?
Writing for Michael is very — he’s a very sensory director, and sometimes an “overload” director. He’s someone who is always looking to top himself, certainly from an action perspective and a stylistic perspective. So very early on we’re throwing ideas back and forth. We talk about sequences and visuals and moments. Whereas in some other films, or “ordinary” films, you might be very slavish to story and narrative first, and logical sense above all. When you’re talking about aliens, robotic machines which disguise themselves as vehicles and animals, you start to make your peace with the idea that logical sense doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all. It needs to be amazing fun for the audience. They need to be swept up, and be promised that they’re going to see things that make it worth spending money on a ticket.
This film, and some other Transformers films, does away with, for example, some basic connective tissue between story sequences.
At moments it is quasi-experimental, yes. You have to understand, with a big summer movie like this, especially this franchise, [Michael Bay] doesn’t quite look at it like competing with movies. He looks at it like “should I go see Transformers, or spend a day at Six Flags?” There’s a big spectacle quality to it that he is promising, and that is one of the things that makes this franchise different than your X-Men, Spider-Man, or Planet of the Apes films. It’s something this series does that is its own style. That is all part of the package. Some days, it’s like writing a Cirque du Soleil show.
Would some of those quasi-experimental aspects be received differently if there was a name on the tin other than Michael Bay?
Like… Nicolas Winding Refn? Yeah, maybe! It probably wouldn’t have the box office. [Bay] is a populist entertainer, and he’s delivering spectacle the way that P.T. Barnum promised. Every time out, he delivers it. He pushes ILM and effects companies to do things they’ve never done before. He always wants to push thrills, spectacle, humor, and fun. Somewhere way down the list is “all the ‘i’s must be dotted” for old-fashioned narrative practices.
Can we not SEE what is wrong with this picture?!
First of all, I get it. I get that Bay likes putting emphasis on the spectacle aspects of his movies. I get that he prioritizes that above all else. But really, that’s the issue. To put it another way, he focus primarily on making the most delicious cake icing ever tasted in existence, rather than putting enough focus on the actual cake itself. But the cake is main part of the dessert, with the icing being the extra flavor. Meaning that Bay gives more attention to the extra flavoring than he does to the main body of his work, and tries to hide the subpar body of the work behind layers of additional flavoring. To use a different metaphor, he tries to cure the symptoms rather than cure the disease itself.
And as for the theme park ride comparison, it really does show in this movie, with a LOT of the action sequences relying heavily on fast motion and crazy camera angles. But for me personally, whenever it's a decision between "going to a theme park" vs. "going to a movie I've been wanting to see," unless abnormal circumstances arise, "going to the movie" will almost always win in the end. In other words, I go to movies because I want to see movies, not theme park rides. And, frankly, that's probably why I feel iffy about these movies and yet have zero complaints about Transformers: The Ride – 3D. That ride is awesome, as it's a ride that succeeds at being a ride, while the films feel more like they're trying to be something that they're not by trying to be rides instead of films.
Stepping away from the technical criticism, let’s take a look at some of the more characterized issues I have with this movie. Namely that the Autobots, while I admit to their being entertaining, they are HORRIBLE people. They are mean-spirited, cruel, and spiteful psychopaths with homicidal fetishes. They are the worst heroes we’ve ever had in terms of morality and honor. They may have likable personalities at heart, but they’re hidden beneath external vices and actions that go way too far too many times. Especially with Optimus. What this movie did to him was completely appalling. This isn’t a team of heroes meant to appeal to everybody, this is a team of heroes for the antisocial! And that is pathetic.
And far too many things go unexplained or unexplored in this movie. The Creators are an enigma, the Dinobots are completely forced in and treated like we’re expected to already know about them, the new Autobots are dropped in on us like they’ve been here all along, and Galvatron’s state of being is just one giant headache of confusion. For once, this is the first movie to have no supplementary material published alongside it, so we can’t turn to any comics or novels for any answers to these unanswered questions. We can only hope that the fifth movie goes further into the things we want to understand, and that it helps to makes them make sense. But as Kruger said above, “logical sense doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all.”
Switching back to Galvatron, what a waste of a character. He gets one battle scene in the whole movie, instigates a robot uprising of which he mostly remains on the sidelines all throughout, and only pops up one more time later after it’s over, just to go walking away. If he’s only being shoved aside to return in the next movie, they might as well had just left him out to debut in the next movie. What they could have done instead was have Cade call Joshua to instead warn him about the danger of the Seed, rather than specifically Galvatron, and have it be Attinger who activates the Prototypes when Joshua hesitates to pay him for the Seed. And when the movie ends with Galvatron being the only Prototype still in KSI’s possession, they could have given us a scene where Galvatron’s eyes open on their own, as a cliffhanger lead-in to the next movie, possibly having this as a mid-credits/post-credits scene.
And there are parts that are just. So. DARK. Like Lucas’s death scene that was just deplorable on every level conceivable. There was no reason for this movie to have such unwarranted levels of darkness in it. All of its darkness was done for the pure sake of it, lacking any real meaning in it needing to be so dark. It’s like, these movies confuse “realistic” with “dark”, in that in order for them to be believable, they have to be as depressing and soulless as they possibly can be. It strikes me as though these films are afraid of seeming even remotely like something for kids or nerds, trying to be as grim and edgy as they can be, like an insecure male teenager who arbitrarily condemns anything cute or silly as a shallow means to assert his manhood and "maturity", when in reality such beliefs are no less juvenile and foolish than the things said teenager condemns. Some of these things might even be more mature than the teen believes without his realizing it since he’s blinded himself to a chauvinistic, false sense of “manhood”, just as these movies blindly operate on a chauvinistic, false sense of what makes for a well made movie.
So yeah, this isn’t a good movie.
But…
It’s…
It’s not a good movie… in the sense that Super Mario Bros. is not a good movie, or that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is not a good movie. At best, it’s a spectacle movie worthy of being considered a guilty pleasure to watch and does have a fair amount of little things to like about it. To be perfectly honest, most of the little complaints I’ve made throughout this review can be forgiven since they’re mostly just nitpicks. But the bigger complaints I’ve made are ones that I cannot let slide as they seriously do bug me. This movie is both an improvement over the first three in some regards, and a step down from improvement in other regards. It’s not as well structured and/or as sensible as the first movie, but it did give us better characterization to the Transformers. It’s definitely a step up from ROTF in terms of decency, but… Actually, I can’t really think of much that ROTF did better than this one (in terms of things that actually mattered in ROTF, that is), so it stays above ROTF. And it’s certainly not as depressingly miserable as DOTM was, but this one still does have some unnecessarily dark moments that are darker than DOTM’s dark moments. I’m hesitant to really consider it better or worse than DOTM overall.
But in the long run, I really don’t believe that there’s ever really been a theatrical Transformers movie that I would consider to be a “good” movie. Not even the 1986 G1 movie, as that was so blatantly an extended toy commercial that it hurts. Beloved characters are sacrificed for consumerist purposes, new characters and concepts are brought in with no explanation or formal introduction (save for Galvatron and his pals), and the storytelling quality is so different and disconnected from the kind of storytelling that was offered by the cartoon itself that the movie is completely disingenuous, fooling those who had only seen that movie and not the cartoon into thinking that cartoon itself is just like the movie, when the two are vastly different animals. But I digress.
Overall, this movie is far from perfect. Did I enjoy it? Parts of it. Will I watch it again? Can’t say for sure. Will I recommend it to others? Only to form their own opinions about it, if they’re curious about it, that is. It’s very much a movie that I feel mostly indifferent towards, as I keep finding a lot of things to counter the things I dislike about it, and simultaneously keep finding things to counter the things that I do like about it. It’s a movie that’s really one of a kind, and a real… piece of work.
But don’t let my opinions stand as an intrusion upon your own. If you like the movie, that’s on you. If you don’t like the movie, that’s fine too. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, and we all see and think about things differently.
To close, I feel it would be appropriate to end on a quote from episode #283 of the radio series Adventures in Odyssey, spoken by the character of Jack Allen (voiced by the late great Alan Young), as it really applies to these kinds of situations where we review and critique things like this:
”I guess the important thing to remember whenever we want to pass judgment or draw conclusions is, that we’re all at different stages in our growth and development… The truth is, every one of us is at various points in the process of change.”
Final Verdict: Indifference.
I got exactly how you view the film. 
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) and feel more satisfying. 
