Did you see the first Transformers? Congratulations, because you just saw the second Transformers. There isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between the two, and all of the faults I had in the first one remained basically unchanged in the second one. Still, that does mean that if you liked the first one, you’ll probably like this movie for all the same reasons.
I don’t mean to come off like some sort of jerk or elitist, but there are a few things I have to get off my chest about this movie, and most of them aren’t good. I always feel bad trashing a movie, because I’m sure that there were hundreds of people that worked really hard in making it, and I don’t like coming in and trying to trash that. So, instead of saying that this is a “bad” movie, I’ll just say that I didn’t like it. Now we’re just talking about a matter of opinion, rather than of fact.
To begin with, my biggest grievance with this movie is that there are no characters. Rather than develop the characters we met in the first movie, the real “stars” of this movie are the Transformers. I suppose that makes sense, as that’s the title of the movie (and they were the stars of the cartoon), but I still find it difficult to watch a movie that is largely comprised of CGI characters. Technology has continued to advance and make these digital effects look more lifelike, but as humans I think we have difficulty relating to non-human characters appearing in life-like settings. The rule doesn’t apply to animated films where everything is animated, but grafting these things into real life is still jarring. It didn’t work with Jar-Jar (see the pun I just set up there?), and it still doesn’t work here. The rule is not exclusive, and there are exceptions. Gollum from Lord of the Rings is a great example of a CGI character that actually worked, but those are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Even then, I’m of the opinion that Gollum only worked because it was a digital interpretation of Andy Serkis. Through Serkis, we were able to see Gollum interact with the other actors on the screen. In Transformers however, they’re all robots. We’re simply stuck watching one CGI character interact with other CGI characters. This left me feeling a little flat, as I didn’t feel connected to any of them. Additionally, as all these characters are undeveloped and built almost exclusively in the gray color palette, you will never have any idea what is going on in fight scenes. You never know if the good guy is winning or not, because you just keep seeing a gray robot getting punched by another gray robot and you have no idea who that is. Also, I realize they were trying to give the robots a sense of larger-than-life scale, but pull the freaking camera back. Please. These things aren’t real and you can frame the shot however you want, so give them a bit more room to work in the frame. That would have gone a long way to helping me at least try and keep track of who’s winning and who’s losing. When I give up even trying to follow the fights in a movie that is basically nothing but one large fight, you really limit my ability to enjoy the movie.
The few humans that do populate the film do a mixed job. I personally like Shia LaBeouf quite a bit, and he was in typical Shia-form here. Megan Fox is no Meryl Streep, but she isn’t as bad an actress as everyone makes her out to be (also, she’s easy on the eyes). She definitely gets the short end of the stick here, as her character didn’t really feel integral to the plot. They clearly kept her character in the movie solely because Megan Fox is hot, and they know that will sell tickets. My least favorite character in the flick was the “roommate” character that was supposed to live with LaBeouf’s character. While the actor playing the roommate didn’t do a bad job, this character was pretty distracting because he keeps dropping in and out of the movie with no rhyme or reason, whenever they need a third person in the scene. It happens so often that I guarantee you that at least twice in this movie you will forget the character exists and then exclaim “He’s still here?” when he pops up mid-battle to find himself in need of saving.
From a plot perspective, some of the things that take place are downright ridiculous. First of all, the Transformers are supposed to be “secret” and the people of Earth don’t know about them, yet they enter the movie by skydiving from a plane into downtown Shanghai? Yeah, pretty sure someone is going to see that. The movie also suffers from allowing the locations to drive the plot. These cool locales never feel like we arrived there organically. Instead it felt written backwards like “What has to happen to get the Transformers to the Pyramids?” On top of this we had some comedic moments that left me feeling so awkward that I almost had to turn away from the screen. These moments were so awkward, that I checked the writing credits to see if Ricky Gervais was involved in the project. The problem here is that when Gervias creates these awkward moments, he is legitimately trying to create something that is funny. Unfortunately, it seems like this movie was legitimately trying to elicit laughs. These moments stood out in stark contrast to how seriously the movie wants itself to be taken, and largely fell flat. Very flat. Case in point: The ridiculous “ghetto” robots that talked in ethnic slang. I realize they were meant to be the comic relief. However they were such a ridiculous stereotype, and so stunningly racist, that I could not believe these characters were written seriously.
I think my biggest problem with this movie is that it screamed laziness. They didn’t even bother to try and make this movie seem coherent. The plot just jumped from point to point with very little explanation, and I constantly kept forgetting where we were and how we got there. My favorite example comes about half-way through when the main characters head to Washington DC to visit the Air and Space Museum. Without giving anything away, let’s just suffice it to say that at some point, they demolish a wall of this building, and walk outside. By itself, that’s not too terrible, however my problem with the scene is that when they walk outside, they are suddenly in New Mexico! The film makes absolutely no mention of this. Perhaps I am hyper-sensitive to this scene as a DC resident, but I don’t think it takes a degree in geography to realize that walking out the back door of a building in the DC suburbs does not put you smack dab in the middle of a mountainous desert. To add insult to injury, once they are in New Mexico, the camera does one of those “spin around the main character” moves and you can see that there is not a single building in sight. Not only did they try and play off a cross-country filming location swap, but they then have the audacity to clearly show you that there are no buildings anywhere near where the characters are now standing. In a movie that is 90% CGI, couldn’t we have thrown a building in there somewhere? It’s just that kind of half-assed attitude towards trying to make this movie flow that drove me nuts as I watched it. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and dig for plot holes and continuity errors in a Transformers movie, but when they are so blatant and ridiculous that you can’t help but trip over them, it seems unfair to pretend like I didn’t notice.
Wow. That probably came out a little hate-filled. I don’t mean to be so hard on a mindless action flick, but you could almost feel parts of this movie going “Oh, who cares. Just do whatever and these idiots will pay to see it anyway.” You want to know the sad part? They’re right. No matter how bad Transformers 2 was, when Transformers 3 finally does come out (as we all know it will) people are still going to see it, and it’s still going to make money hand-over-fist. That noise you hear is the sound of a million different independent actors and directors re-evaluating their life goals.
I’d probably only buy this movie one drink, and even then it’s just going to be an excuse to hang out with Shia LaBeouf. If he wanted to bring the robots along, I’d definitely be ordering drinks on their tab.
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