Transformers / Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen
A lot of people forgave and enjoyed Michael Bay’s original Transformers movie but it went from the popcorn flick filled with robotic kicks that were enjoyable, to a poor attempt at humour and looked like a teenage boy’s wet dream.
It seems franchises don’t understand why people enjoy what they did. The parents had bit roles in the first which gave their comic moments actual pleasure but as the running time got longer, it seems it was given to characters that become annoying in a heavier dose. It became a lot more childish but not for the children in the audience; the comic relief was completely overwhelming to where the action – chaotic, badly edited pieces that spat at the idea of continuity – was begging for context or moments that mattered.
The stakes were so fraudulent and formulaic that it felt hard to even remotely expect anything different from a story plagued by gigantic robot testicles hanging in your face. Michael Bay is much lamented as a director but both Bad Boys films prove that he’s a director that knows how to make entertainment that many people shrug off as lowbrow awfulness. He does what he does and he knows how to do it well but in this, it’s like he listened far too much to out of touch producers.
He managed to make an inoffensive film about fighting robots racist, insultingly stupid, painfully inconsequential and completely illogical. When Sam Witwicky falls through that roof in the car, it’s hard not to want to scream at the screen. In fairness, it has one scene of redemption which is Optimus Prime ripping up the forest like a true hero.
