I fucking hate Michael Bay movies. Every last one of 'em. Seriously, what the fuck would this guy do without diabetic shock inducing soundtracks and slow motion? You ever notice how the sun is permanantly setting in his movies? How bout the big speeches about how important the impending action is about to be? My personal fave is how he only casts black people in his movies to do black things. Every time he needs a cheap laugh or some macho posturing, cue the black guy! If you can find a Michael Bay film where there is a black character that is anything but cock diesel and militant or just there for comic relief, I'll give you five dollars. Pearl Harbor, and Armageddon, rank as two of my all time shittiest movies ever to have laid eyes on. So, when I heard that he was directing a movie based on a cartoon series based on a savvy toy company's cross marketing, lets just say I expected the perfect shitstorm.
To my surprise, it was pretty cool.
Seriously, Bay should only be allowed to direct movies about cartoons from now on out. That way he doesn't ever have to worry about historical content, physics, or anything that is usually pertinent to a film's believability.
The back story on Transformers is pretty simple. Autobots = good. Decepticons = bad. Humans caught in middle. There you have it. There's some other shit about an "allspark" and a secret government group called sector 7, but to be honest no one really gives a London fuck. This movie needed two things: 1) Big fucking robots that change into shit. 2) Lots of explosions. Check and mate.
The surprise was how entertaining the surrounding story was. It was an hour before you see any meaningful bot on bot violence, but I hardly noticed. Shia LeBoeuf plays the main character Sam Whitwiki. He's your basic dork who wants to touch the naughty bits of a hottie named Mikala (Megan Fox, who just might be the hottest piece of ass in Hollywood today), To get the girl he needs a car. The car that picks him, ends up being a big robot. The scene where he finds that out is particularly entertaining. While all that is going on, the US military comes under attack from some bad ass Decepticons including one that looks like a scorpion and the one that changes into a helicopter. Some pretty predictable things fall into place, Optimus Prime shows up (To a STANDING FUCKING OVATION in the theater I saw it in, and you wonder why America is hated.) introduces the Autobots, gives the bask story, and the final 45 minutes is nothing but some sweet ass battle scenes.
The thing that puts this project in Bay's wheelhouse is that the Transformers were created by Hasbro as a simple way to sell toys. Kids like robots. Kids like cars, planes, and guns. Ergo, kids will like robots that turn into cars, planes, and guns. The cartoon that came out about the Transformers was only meant to sell more of the toys, so there was about as much thought put into the original Transformers storyline as there was in the plot of "Jiz Coated Snatchpiles 13".
And that's the beauty. Bay can just pick right up where the series left it. I mean it's not like he was given Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns to direct. It was the cartoon we watched because it had cool robots. No one who liked the Transformers liked it for its dark undertones. Thus all he had to do was what he does best. Blow shit up. And blow it up he does! You got give the guy credit. Aside from the CGI robots, none of the stunts are computer animated, that bus really does get sliced in half. That car gets tossed onto a boat. That tank gets thrown into a plane. If it wasn't for the absolutely godawful dialogue in the late scenes (you're a soldier now, Sam!) and the fact that Bay had to force a horribly stereotypical black character on us (Anthony Anderson. I mean Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, the movie casts eight other people as hackers, but they have to bring in Anderson's hacker character to say things like "Dat's what I'm talking bout!" and "Aww Hell Naw!") I would give this movie five stars. As it is, Bay has made a pretty good popcorn flick that I would actually buy a DVD of. It's almost good enough to make me forget the "Leaving on a jet plane" scene from Armageddon. Almost, but not quite.
The surprise was how entertaining the surrounding story was. It was an hour before you see any meaningful bot on bot violence, but I hardly noticed. Shia LeBoeuf plays the main character Sam Whitwiki. He's your basic dork who wants to touch the naughty bits of a hottie named Mikala (Megan Fox, who just might be the hottest piece of ass in Hollywood today), To get the girl he needs a car. The car that picks him, ends up being a big robot. The scene where he finds that out is particularly entertaining. While all that is going on, the US military comes under attack from some bad ass Decepticons including one that looks like a scorpion and the one that changes into a helicopter. Some pretty predictable things fall into place, Optimus Prime shows up (To a STANDING FUCKING OVATION in the theater I saw it in, and you wonder why America is hated.) introduces the Autobots, gives the bask story, and the final 45 minutes is nothing but some sweet ass battle scenes.
The thing that puts this project in Bay's wheelhouse is that the Transformers were created by Hasbro as a simple way to sell toys. Kids like robots. Kids like cars, planes, and guns. Ergo, kids will like robots that turn into cars, planes, and guns. The cartoon that came out about the Transformers was only meant to sell more of the toys, so there was about as much thought put into the original Transformers storyline as there was in the plot of "Jiz Coated Snatchpiles 13".
And that's the beauty. Bay can just pick right up where the series left it. I mean it's not like he was given Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns to direct. It was the cartoon we watched because it had cool robots. No one who liked the Transformers liked it for its dark undertones. Thus all he had to do was what he does best. Blow shit up. And blow it up he does! You got give the guy credit. Aside from the CGI robots, none of the stunts are computer animated, that bus really does get sliced in half. That car gets tossed onto a boat. That tank gets thrown into a plane. If it wasn't for the absolutely godawful dialogue in the late scenes (you're a soldier now, Sam!) and the fact that Bay had to force a horribly stereotypical black character on us (Anthony Anderson. I mean Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, the movie casts eight other people as hackers, but they have to bring in Anderson's hacker character to say things like "Dat's what I'm talking bout!" and "Aww Hell Naw!") I would give this movie five stars. As it is, Bay has made a pretty good popcorn flick that I would actually buy a DVD of. It's almost good enough to make me forget the "Leaving on a jet plane" scene from Armageddon. Almost, but not quite.
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