Transformers

Well, since Hollywood's ruined Batman, Spiderman, Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters from my childhood, i guess it's only fair that they ruin this for me, too. But given that they ruined the former movies in sequels mostly, it's unforgivable that they ruin this one with the first installment (with promise for FUTURE installments. Joy!).

How does this movie suck? Let me count the ways!

First off, the plot is horrible. Not bad, not average, HORRIBLE! It's basically the same as the overall concept of the damned television show! Bad robots show up and good robots have to stop them. This is ok for a TV show to have as an overall basis, but to make this the entire plot of a movie is just LAZY!

Compounding this is the craptacular character development. It's already pretty sad that the most likable character in the movie is a robot, but do the actual human characters have to be as interesting on a personal level as a toaster? The main character's sole purpose in life, it seems, is to get together with the local hot chick who's so deficient of personality, you just know the only reason he wants to get with her is to nail her for bragging rights.

"Yeah, i banged her... and then i never called her back!"
"Nice, man. Nice!"
*high fives all around*

But whatever, he's the main character, so you root for him none the less. You don't care enough to remember his name (i think it's billy, but i can't be bothered to be sure of this) but you do root for him. What the hell, he's the main character right? Gotta root for somebody.

Now, i might be being too hard on the main couple, but that's only because they aren't the worst characters in the movie ("worst", here, meaning "most unnecessary"). The film actually starts by introducing us to a half dozen US soldiers operating in the middle east who we're instantly supposed to respect and admire since they are given back stories, personalities and even hints at their future hopes and aspirations. In short, characters more fully developed than the main characters. However, just as you think these characters are supposed to be integral to the plot, the drop out of existence for the duration of the film, appearing once more at the end to provide meaningless supporting roles that could've been filled by Joe Everyman.

Things turn from bad to worse in the character department when (in practically the next scene) we're introduced to three MORE characters. This time, the super-attractive, impossibly young code breakers that've been summoned by the US government to help crack the codes of the evil robots. They're easy to spot, even before the film singles them out. They're the only ones under 60 in the room and the movie makes a special point of noting that they're geniuses. Again, we as the audience are misled to believe that these characters (particularly the girl) are important and play integral roles in the film. Then, the movie forgets about them to focus on more important things. However, all is not lost as they return to these brilliant teenage code-crackers later on in the movie, but only to show that they're less brilliant than we were previously lead to believe. In fact, while they (indeed all of the code breakers) are finding it impossible to break this alien code of the bad guys, the hot female code breaker admits that she knows someone who CAN break it! So she steals the information and sneaks out to find this mysterious person. Sweet! Just what this movie needs: more unneeded characters!

Anyways, our sexy code breaker finds her friend and nobody is surprised to learn that it's the token black guy of the film. Naturally, he's also a computer genius because that's what the film requires him to be. Of course, we never get to see him BEING a computer genius since shortly after arriving at his place, the girl and her friend are promptly arrested for stealing US government property and we never see them again.

Blah, so whatever! The characters suck. This is supposed to be an action film, right? Last i checked, action films don't seem to require good character development (mostly because relying on Arnold Schwarzenegger to flesh out a character is asking for trouble). So what about the action bits? Well, you'd think they'd be AMAZING, right? I mean, it's transformers! How can they lose? Well, somehow they found a way.

First of all, understand this about action flicks: they typically consist of "busy" action sequences. The camera's all over the place, shaking and barely catching glimpses of the action as the actors engage in the struggle. This was done because, as actors, they weren't supposed to be really hitting each other. So, how does one make it LOOK like your hitting someone when in fact you're not? By making the action sequence busy. You dance around the actors with the camera, never really getting a good shot, because you CAN'T have the actors actually punching, kicking, stabbing and shooting each other. However, when you're dealing with larger than life, fully computer animated robots like the transformers, there is no such restrictions. Yet, whenever there's an action sequence in the film, it's so busy that you, as the viewer, are totally lost as to what's going on.

There were a number of sequences where i was on the edge of my seat... trying to figure out what the hell was going on:

"Wow, look at Optimis Prime hit that guy!
...
No, wait, he's just rolling around on the ground trying to put out that fire."

Seriously, if you're going to go as far as to pay millions for a kick-ass graphics team, USE THEM! There is NO EXCUSE for such busy action sequences when the combatants are entirely computer generated.

I guess on the plus side, Hollywood's being consistent. It's just too bad it's "consistently bad".