More Reasons Why The Transformers Movie Sucks
I’ll admit my previous reaction to the Transformers movie by Michael Bay was written in haste and thus I didn’t get to address a bunch of things that also helped kill the movie.
Let’s talk Decepticons.
I usually love the Decepticons (and all villains, for that matter) but this movie really does nothing to endear them to be. The most badass Decepticon, Megatron, is frozen for most of the movie. On top of that, he doesn’t really do anything once he’s thawed out that would cement him as their leader and therefore biggest threat to the Autobots. Sure, he does apparently at some point kill Jazz by ripping him in half but such little attention is paid to it that it’s easy to miss.
It’s sad that the Transformer that’s given the most screen time is Frenzy, the annoying Pit Droid knockoff that doesn’t appear to have any sort of tactile physical form. Instead, he’s just a mass of shards of blades. Come to think of it, a lot of the robot designs are very much the same, only scaled up.
The Decepticons don’t speak English natively, yet when Megatron thaws out, the first thing he says is “I am Megatron!” After that, Megatron seemingly has about 5 minutes of total screen time.
Another thing about Megatron is his complete stupidity and its heavy role as the key plot point, which ironically enough, is the biggest hole in the plot.
Thousands of years ago, Megatron traced the AllSpark cube to Earth but crashed in the arctic before being able to retrieve it. Along comes Sam’s grandfather, who for the sake of this review I’ll call Gramps Witwicky. Gramps decides to explore the Arctic Circle and low and behold – finds Megatron, frozen. Somehow, Megatron is able to imprint a map of the location of the AllSpark cube. But WAIT! At that moment in time, the cube was NOT at Hoover Dam. Yet when the Autobots later retrieve these glasses, the map leads them to the Hoover Dam! What the hell!
Instead of imprinting a map of a pair of eye glasses, why not, I dunno, signal for the other Decepticons to come and get you?
I know why! Because they needed a totally convoluted new reason for the Transformers to have ended up on Earth. They should have just gone with, “The war depleted our planet of its natural resources. We gathered a few troops and headed out across the galaxy in search of new sources of energy. The Decepticons attacked us and we both crash landed on Earth 4 million years ago.”
But no! A search for energy would draw too many parallels to real-life possibilities and make some viewers uncomfortable.
Nevermind making actual Transformers fans uncomfortable. Now I’m going to have to field, “What did you think of the Transformers movie?” questions for the next few months and I’ll have to repress the urge to scream.
If you want to see a real movie about a boy and his robot, check out The Iron Giant instead. I still haven’t covered all the things about this movie that were absolute garbage. For that, I’m afraid I’ll have to re-watch it. And the only way that will happen is if I have Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo watching it with me.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Awesome post. You cut to the heart of the wrongnesses of the film.
The point of giant robots is that they’re mechanical; it took skill to create their bodies, and design their transformations. No, these Cybertronians are magic-mechanical. Their life comes from a cube that can make any electronic device come to life and kill, even cell phones. Urk.
And that “gotta find the glasses” scene was right out of ET: “Don’t let my mom see you! She’ll freak!”
October 27th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
ok so I FINALLY saw the transformers film
why did I wait? why didn’t I see it in theatres?
because deep, deep, down I kind of knew it was going to be a bit sucky
but MAN OH MAN I had NO IDEA it was going to SUCK THIS MUCH
it SUCKS
i fell asleep half way through, and then in the morning just returned it without finishing it, half out of protest, but mainly out of apathy
April 8th, 2008 at 4:50 am
“But WAIT! At that moment in time, the cube was NOT at Hoover Dam. Yet when the Autobots later retrieve these glasses, the map leads them to the Hoover Dam! What the hell!”
This is incorrect, the dam was built AROUND the cube you nitwit, it has never been moved from it’s original position on Earth, which is why the map leads the Autobots to the dam. Banacek even says in the film “President Hoover had the dam built around the cube, four football fields thick of concrete to hide the cube’s energy”.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:28 am
@TFGeek. I’ll concede that. All right, the cube was already there. Thanks for pointing that out.
But the movie is still a total piece of typical Hollywood summer blockbuster shit and didn’t need to be titled “Transformers.”
Oh but you’re not arguing that the movie isn’t shit (though you’re quoting it, so I’ll assume you love it). You’re just clarifying that little oversight on my part. I hope you’ll forgive me for that, one huge Transformers fan to another. I mean, it’s not like I made Jazz say “Bitches!” or like I made Bumblebee take a piss on someone, right? I mean, who the fuck would do that?
On the other hand, if you really did enjoy the movie and care to pick apart the rest of my reaction to the movie, you can start here if you’d like.
Thanks for visiting!