Transformers
Michael Bay, the king of the summer loud blockbuster and mastermind behind such noisy hits as Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, is the director behind one of this summer’s biggest and noisiest blockbusters, Transformers. The film is also executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Word around the campfire is that Bay was far from a fan of the Transformers, but Spielberg tapped him and convinced him to direct this summer blockbuster.
The film fills out with an ensemble cast and story arcs that make use of the variety of characters, bringing them all together in the typical final showdown sequence. In that respect, Transformers feels an awful lot like most films of its type. The film stars Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight (not kidding), John Turturro (not kidding), and Hugo Weaving’s voice (he gets to provide the voice for Megatron). With such a broad ensemble cast, everyone from Tad Hamilton to Agent Smith, Transformers seems hellbent on providing an ample character drama to back its special effects.
The film is simple enough, really, as Earth is caught in the struggle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. The various human characters end up getting caught in the middle and getting personally involved with the alien robots, creating various facets to the plot that appear to extend out of nowhere or out of complete necessity to have human involvement in this tale come down to some sort of grand fluke. Bay directs it all like a maestro of chaos, not really having a firm grip on it or a solid nose for storytelling, but rather pumping the most out of the loudest instruments all at once without any cohesiveness.
Michael Bay had a lot of support from both General Motors (it shows) and the United States military (it shows) during filming, so that helped to keep the budget down to around $150 million. The designs of the Transformers themselves were mostly done by Bay, too, creating an intricate design pattern for the computer generated action figures.
The swirling storylines actually served as a distraction, as Bay didn’t seem to know when to let up. He introduces us to several characters and places far more depth to them than is necessary, creating endless unnecessary scenes and probably adding an extra half hour to the film that really could have been better used with more development of the Autobots and Decepticons, which I’m assuming is what everyone came to see. I know it’s probably a little weird for me to say that I didn’t feel Transformers had enough action, but looking back on the film I can actually say I agree with that statement. The Decepticons, for example, seem to all of a sudden spring forth without any real meat to their existence. Instead of one more scene between Sam and Mikaela, I could have used more intense robot smackdown action.
It really does fall on the directorial choice, here, as Bay has a tendency to fluff up a scene and then blow it off. The quick battle cutaways and the rolling film work is really distracting from what could have been a really stunning action flick. The real shame here is that everything looks great and I actually found that the human characters were rich enough, if not overly developed for the tone of the film. Bay’s direction made some interesting choices, in my opinion, and a lot of what could have been in Transformers simply never was.
What we’re left with, then, is a summer blockbuster that is merely average. Some scenes are fun, but most scenes left me with the desire to see more. I realize that Transformers functions as a development picture and it wasn’t that it failed to deliver on its promise. It’s just that Bay’s direction turned out to be so distracting and so masturbatory (one long sweeping shot spliced with another after another) that he was a distraction without even appearing on screen. The predictability and normative plot can be overlooked, of course, but it’s Bay that really sinks this ship.
4/10
Trailer:
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