Well... I liked it better than I thought I would.

And I definitely think it's better than the first... though, not by design.

Oh, that had nothing to do with why I liked it at all.

I mentioned this in my review on my blog, but I'm raising it here, just to see what you guys think.

This is not a Transformers movie.

Remember Transformers? G1, or Beast Wars, or Armada, or any of the cartoons? Who were the characters? The robots. Who were the heroes? Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Ratchet, etc. Who were the villains? Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, etc.

Who's the hero of this movie? Shia LaBeouf. Who is Bumblebee? He's the hero's car. Who is Megatron? Second fiddle to another robot. Who is Starscream? A robot who has a little more screen time than the others. Who is Optimus Prime? A hunk of metal for LaBeouf to stick a Plot Device into.

The robots are not characters. They're MacGuffins.

So no, this is not a Transformers movie. This is a Shia-LaBeouf-Megan-Fox-and-some-giant-robots movie.

And because I realized this, I managed to enjoy it.

And in all of them, the robots are the main characters. Even Spike Witwicky, who was in the original '80s cartoon, was only a minor character. It was the robots whose stories we followed, who had personalities, who had character, and whom the audience cared about.

But Michael Bay doesn't think so. He did not give personalities to any of the robots. He barely allocated enough screen time to develop them. Bumblebee has no voice. Megatron is no longer the Decepticon leader. Ironhide gets barely 2 lines of dialogue. Every other robot is nothing more than a background special effect.

That's why there are so many dumb robots, like Frenzy from the first movie, or the Doctor from this one, or Wheelie, or the Pretender chick. They're not cool, nobody cares about them, nobody wanted to see them, and they don't even make good toys. And that's why Wheelie and the Twins disappear so suddenly. They may be annoying, but we've been following them for the entire second act - but Bay just doesn't care about them. On the other hand, he makes sure to show us that Leo is okay at the end of the movie.

Look at the robots' faces. Every one of them. They're incapable of displaying emotion. We can't tell if they're smiling, or angry, or scared, or worried. They're not characters. They're...

...well, a movie can have more than one MacGuffin. But perhaps MacGuffin isn't the right term to describe them. How about... they're plot devices.

Not characters.

LaBeef's annoying college roommate.

I didn't say they couldn't be characters. They certainly could, and probably should. I say they're not characters, because Michael Bay doesn't treat them like characters.

For the significant ones, plot devices. All the rest, special effects.



This post has been edited by n00b13: Jun 28 2009, 10:10 PM

Again, they have no personality, nor are they capable of expressing any emotion. They are not characters. What else could they be?

But that's literally the only thing they do - advance the plot.

There's certainly plenty of bad writing in the movie, but I don't think that's why the robots have no personality. Even that annoying Leo and the Tyrese Gibson character have more personality than the robots.

I think it's because Michael Bay deliberately made them that way. It's the basis for his entire approach to the franchise. He's purposely making Transformers movies in which the Transformers are not characters.

Everything about how the movies portray them fits this interpretation.

That's just what they say in the press junkets. Do you honestly think that came across in both movies?

I enjoyed the movie despite itself. I recognize the fact that most of what it aimed for simply didn't work.

Which brings me to the direction the movie could have gone, under the hands of a smarter director. We could still have had a human viewpoint character like Sam, only the Autobots and Decepticons would've been the bona fide stars of their own movie. Optimus Prime could've been a genuinely inspiring leader, Bumblebee could've been the weakest but bravest, and Starscream could've been an annoying git. None of this is impossible - it just wasn't even attempted.

You proved that the character was significant? You can't even get his name right.

I'm already feeling kinda ashamed for liking it.

You can't even remember what "values" he stands for. And no, "stands for values" does not a character make.

But was it an emotional scene? No, it was played for laughs. That wasn't an emotion, that was a special effect.

This post has been edited by n00b13: Jun 28 2009, 11:18 PM

What I meant was, a symbol is not a character. The Autobots do not have values, they...

...actually, they don't even symbolize them. They merely spout platitudes.

I'm a fan of Pixar, so I have no beef about special effects used to show emotion. Bumblebee crying is a gag, not an emotion. He cares about Sam so much that he can't bear to be left behind? Where was he when the kid died?

"Read the comics" is a really really lame justification for plot holes. Is it too much to ask for a movie to have a complete story in itself? We have to spend more money on other junk before it makes sense?

I leave you with this link. He says it better than I could.

But I had fun watching it!

...well, for a while.

Oh, I enjoy bashing, period.

Actually, my ratings scale goes to 4 stars max.

Hey, I'm a man of diverse tastes, baby.

But in 10 years time, they'll be seen exactly the same way Armageddon and Pearl Harbor are seen now.