When Travis Knight’s “Bumblebee” was launched in 2018, it was nearly unanimously hailed as a breath of contemporary air, a kind of watershed second for the “Transformers motion pictures (a blockbuster franchise that had begun to expire of steam). It’s uncommon for the sixth installment in a property to elicit such reactions, however “Bumblebee” proved {that a} basically foolish franchise like “Transformers” might lower the cake and eat it too, with significant, grounded allure going hand in hand with the flashy thrills that the “Transformers” motion pictures are recognized for. The primary Michael Bay-directed “Transformers” movies that got here earlier than this had set a really totally different precedent when it got here to high quality, but all of them have just a few issues in widespread: they’re pulpy, tonally inconsistent, characteristic jokes that have not aged effectively, and elicit divisive responses amongst longtime followers of the property.
No matter how you are feeling about Bay’s first “Transformers” movie, nonetheless, Stephen King doesn’t prefer it, not even a bit of. In a response to a tweet by crime novelist Linwood Barclay — who said that “Jurassic World Dominion” was the primary film he ever walked out of — King tweeted the next about Bay’s 2007 “Transformers:”
“I’ve walked out of just one film as an grownup: TRANSFORMERS. Want to know what different motion pictures folks have walked out on.”
Though King didn’t supply any clarifications concerning his assertion, it isn’t robust to gauge why somebody would stroll out of “Transformers,” regardless of the movie being comparatively well-liked (a minimum of when in comparison with the opposite Bay-helmed entries within the franchise). There’s an argument to be made in favor of this specific movie, too, a bit of which is invariably tied to nostalgia and its spectacular use of digital VFX on the large display screen. In fact, there are different elements of “Transformers” which have decidedly not gotten higher over time, and by no means will.
2007’s Transformers unashamedly embraces pulpy Bayhem
“Transformers” has its excessive factors, most of which might be attributed to the central battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons (when you’ve got an affinity for long-winded CGI battles) and the rocky relationship shared between human leads Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox). A lot of the surprise inherent to the movie, if any, stems from the robots-in-disguise themselves, be it Bumblebee or Optimus Prime, and a haphazard combination of nonsense, senseless enjoyable, and split-second tender moments that nearly work even because the film continues to prioritize sweeping model over any form of substance. This isn’t a foul factor in any respect, particularly in terms of a Michael Bay joint — a working example being the delightfully gonzo Bayhem in “Ambulance,” the place the un-seriousness is a part of the explanation why it is so good.
Nevertheless, “Transformers” isn’t any “Ambulance,” and a few of its flaws are so evident that they are tough to gloss over, even while you’re having enjoyable with the remainder of the movie. The misogynistic framing of Mikaela — insistent and ever-present, and not possible to divorce from how she’s fleshed out — haunts each scene she is in, and a few of the humor within the movie comes at the price of her integrity as a lead. You can divert your consideration to a few of the higher features, resembling John Turturro’s Agent Simmons or Josh Duhamel’s (reasonably flavorless) character Captain Lennox, however is that sufficient? Effectively, that boils down purely to non-public opinion and the way prepared you’re to deal with the genuine simplicity of a great versus evil storyline that retains its allure on some degree.
I consider that “Transformers,” though inconsistent and flawed, is finally a way more coherent and fulfilling expertise than, say, Bay’s first sequel, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which is pure cacophonous nonsense. The much less we converse concerning the latter, the higher.
