A TRANSFORMERS Retrospective
For whatever reason, my recent post-concussive flare got me to reflect on Transformers, the defining franchise of my adolescence, especially Michael Bay’s 2007 live-action film that both got me into and out of the franchise—aka Transformers ‘07. (And I’d already pushed on my brain too much writing this article before I realized it’s more critical than I like to write for this blog.)
Growing up, I was put off by the toys. I bought one or two Star Wars transformers, but I felt meh about them. So when I saw an announcement trailer for a live-action Transformers movie before Monster House in 2006, I thought, “Really? A movie based on those weird toys?” Then later that same year was a full teaser trailer that was more intriguing but still left me wondering… but why?
It wasn't until the full theatrical trailer released months later where it finally looked like a must-see to me. I also knew that the toys had a cartoon from the '80s, so I started watching that online because my twelve-year-old brain thought the upcoming movie would be a direct continuation of it. Then I started buying the toys now that I got what the franchise was about, and I was hooked on it!
Then came time for the movie I had been so hyped up for!
…And it turned out a couple parts were so raunchy that I wasn't allowed to see it until they could be fast-forwarded on DVD… So until then, I, ahem, watched bootlegged clips of most of the robot scenes on YouTube… (Which makes me realize what a Wild West the year 2007 was for YouTube when a major film studio wouldn't instantly take down bootlegged clips of their movies.)
When I did finally get to see the movie, I loved it, in spite of its obnoxious human element that most of the movie focused on. I spent the next few years on Transformers news site / forum TFW2005 reading about all the leaks and rumors for the next three sequels and their toy lines before they came out.
That includes the first sequel Revenge of the Fallen (2009)’s misinformation campaign, where Bay tried his damnedest to convince us for months that Megatron won't be resurrected in it, only for the final trailer to make a big deal of his return. I sure wish rumors of that movie’s degenerate “humor” turned out to be internet hearsay; I can only imagine how much the poor VFX artist who had to animate a small humanoid robot “coupling” with Megan Fox's leg was questioning his life decisions.
Speaking of misinformation, Dark of the Moon (2011)'s marketing wanted us to think so badly that Shockwave would be the big bad to cover up who the real big bad would be that they gave him more of a fight scene in a Burger King commercial than the actual movie!
And, yet, as an explosion-hungry teenager, I still loved Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon in spite of all their crass humor and male gaze shots of women that make me wish executives actually meddled to keep them out of a movie based on kids toys. Executives like, I don't know, STEVEN SPIELBERG, who surely should’ve had better judgment than to let Bay loose on his worst tendencies. Then again, around this same time, he let George Lucas have his way with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull even as Spielberg himself was directing it.
But, I was willing to overlook the degenerate parts to enjoy the cool robot parts. Plus, I really began bonding with one of my best friends because of these movies.
Amid all of this, I also ate up the series Transformers: Animated (2007-2009), Transformers: Prime (2010-2013), Beast Wars (1996-1999)… And I got a sizable following making stop-motion parodies of the franchise on YouTube!
Then came 2014. I was hyped for the fourth film, Age of Extinction… I was in the middle of creating my most ambitious Transformers series yet… and one evening I thought, “I’ll rewatch the first movie. It was the only outright good one.” And after that viewing, it was like my brain flipped a switch, not only on the movie that got me into Transformers but on the whole franchise itself:
It may be the fundamentally dumbest mass-marketed franchise.
Sure, a lot of superhero stuff I take seriously is fundamentally silly, even the original Star Wars trilogy. But, there's something about sentient robots from another planet having the ability to mimic Earth technology that now stretches my suspension of disbelief. And whenever a continuity explains how the robots reproduce, I still have so many questions.
Unfortunately, photorealistic CGI is so expensive that humans have to be in the forefront of the live-action films. But they could have had a compelling human lead if they had made the instantly likable Captain Lennox the protagonist of 07, with his sympathetic motivation of trying to get back home to his wife and infant daughter. Plus, he has the skills and means to fight the Decepticons himself!
But, Spielberg really wanted its heart to be a “boy and his car” story, and so we got stuck with the hormonal Sam Witwicky, his blatantly sexualized crush, and his dimwitted parents. The film’s most redeeming elements are Optimus Prime’s noble character, John Turturro’s riotous performance, and, of course, the visual effects and sound design.
I do like how alien the robots look, but their over-design treats them more as spectacle than actual characters, and makes them too expensive to give the title characters the screen time they’re due. They’d also work even better as spectacle if their action scenes weren’t filmed so jittery.
The last time I rewatched the first two sequels, my brain even flipped a switch on the brutal robot action, especially because of how often Optimus, the once-noble leader, murders his enemies in cold blood (which, again, was one of the appeals as a teenager)! Heck, they even play up John Turturro so much that he gets annoying!
Nonetheless, I have seen every live-action Transformers movie since:
Age of Extinction (2014) made most of the robots feel like actual characters for once, but boy was there still a lot of crap to sit through between their moments. I’ve always felt tempted to revisit it, but that nearly three-hour runtime intimidates me even though I’ve already sat through it. The Imagine Dragons song has been the back of my mind since, though.
The Last Knight (2017) is such a disasterpiece—throwing so many stupid ideas at the wall, including changing the aspect ratio from shot to shot—that it's my favorite of the Michael Bay movies for all the wrong reasons. Anthony Hopkins looks like he's having such a blast making a complete fool of himself that it's a rare case where I wish we got even more of a Bayverse human character!
Bumblebee (2018) is the first non-Michael Bay entry, and while the human element is still goofier and the robot element still more violent than I’d like, it is the only outright good Transformers movie, and I didn't even feel that way on first viewing! It pulls off endearingly what 07 tried to do with the “boy and his car” dynamic, this time with “a girl and her car”.
Rise of the Beasts (2023) was almost everything I wanted in a Transformers movie; even the one sexual joke I can remember from it was a clever play on words. But then they had to make Optimus bloodthirsty again and end with a setup for a crossover with another Hasbro franchise that made me laugh so hard that I almost had an aneurysm.
As for the animated films…
The 1986 Transformers: The Movie, a bridge between seasons of the original cartoon, is a fun enough slice of cheese with genuinely impressive hand-drawn spectacle, even if it cynically, and quite infamously, kills off many a child’s favorite toys to make way for new ones.
I didn't even finish the recent Transformers One (2024), an Optimus Prime and Megatron origin story, because its world building made no sense to me. Although it would have kept my attention were it animated Spider-Verse style; that may be the ideal format for this franchise.
While the franchise’s very premise is ludicrous, it is still cool, and I do still enjoy it when it's pulled off competently like in the last couple films (or so bad it's good ala The Last Knight). But, it’s a franchise I now barely follow, and given the live-action branch’s often tone-deaf start, I wouldn't mind if that branch got a ground-up reboot with none of its current creatives behind it, and that found a way to make the robots the focus. I vote budget-friendlier—and family-friendlier—stories with smaller casts and shorter lengths.
I'd wonder how the first three movies consecutively made more money than the last—and even how Age of Extinction cracked a billion dollars—given how angry their degeneracy made both fans and parents. But once again, as that explosion-hungry teenager, I was part of the problem. Heck, Dark of the Moon was the first movie I saw four times in theaters, and now I regret every movie I saw in theaters that many times (tied with Man of Steel and The Force Awakens)! Though audiences finally came to their senses when The Last Knight underperformed.
I'm also really glad I no longer collect the toys when a smaller figure size that was ten dollars twenty years ago is now almost thirty dollars!
But now, I want to end on a positive note by sharing some of my favorite robot designs from throughout the movies, including ones that were barely onscreen:
Autobots: Optimus Prime (07 version), Ratchet, Dino, Jolt
Villains: Megatron (The Last Knight version), Lockdown, Scrapper, Bonecrusher
On another positive note, Michael Bay’s proven he has at least two good movies in him with 13 Hours (2016) and Ambulance (2022). The former especially had me thinking (when things weren’t exploding), “Wait, this is a Michael Bay movie?”
I’m also on Letterboxd, Backloggd, and Buy Me a Coffee