About As Bad As The Rest Of The Franchise: Transformers: The Last Knight

The Good: Great cast, Most of the special effects
The Bad: Banal plot, Lack of real character development, Terrible lines delivered unconvincingly by great actors.
The Basics: Transformers: The Last Knight is not great, but it is more par for the course than being truly terrible.


Transformers: The Last Knight is out and the press for it has been pretty bad in general. I'm feeling like bucking that trend to argue that the cinematic Transformers has been pretty lousy in general and Transformers: The Last Knight is pretty much what one expects as opposed to being an all-out terrible film. Transformers: The Last Knight is bad, but lately I've seen far worse films.

Michael Bay has not been recreating Casablanca for the past ten years with the Transformers franchise. He makes films for Summer Blockbuster Season filled with explosions, computer-generated special effects, and direction that lasciviously passes the camera slowly over whatever female lead the film possesses. To be fair to Transformers: The Last Knight, there is far less of the camera exploiting women than in the four prior installments of the franchise. Unfortunately, there are more retcons that place Transformers and alien technology on Earth in the past and make the movie fit very poorly into any continuity with the others, despite the fact that more of the cast from the first three movies recurs in Transformers: The Last Knight.

Opening in Briton during Camelot, Merlin and Arthur enlist Transformers to thwart their enemies. Flashing forward to the present, some Transformers have taken refuge in other countries, while in America the teenager Izabella uncovers a downed Transformer in the ruins of a baseball stadium. Izabella is a homeless girl who is rescued by Cade Yeager. The pair are hunted back to Cade's junkyard by the American military. Colonel Lennox has become aware that the Decepticons under the newly resurfaced Megatron are hunting something that they believe Cade has.

Off Earth, Optimus Prime crashes into Cybertron, which is headed toward Earth with the planet's creator, Quintessa. Quintessa reprograms Optimus Prime to wipe out humanity and remake Earth into a new homeworld for the Transformers. The chase of Cade Yeager takes him to England where Sir Edmund Burton has been part of the line of humans working with Transformers to protect the Earth. Burton brings in Vivian Wembley, the last surviving descendant of Merlin, who has access to technology and information that sends her and Cade under the sea to recover an artifact that will allow them to thwart the Decepticons, Quintessa, and the ensorceled Optimus Prime.

Transformers: The Last Knight is exactly what one expects of a Transformers movie. The human characters are mundane, poorly characterized and deliver far more expository dialogue than anything that is clever and defines the characters in unique and interesting ways. Transformers: The Last Knight picks up after Transformers: The Age Of Extinction (reviewed here!), so it begins with the Transformers abandoned by Optimus Prime who flew off Earth at the end of that film.

Blending the main characters from the early Transformers films - Lennox, General Morshower, and Agent Simmons - with Cade Yeager and newer Transformers like Hound, Transformers: The Last Knight just continues the banal franchise with more explosions, more robot on robot fights and an absurd predicament that absolutely defies rational physics. Transformers: The Last Knight asks viewers to accept as credible that there is a scientist who denies the existence of magic and fantasy in a world with Transformers who fails to point out that a planet-sized object rushing toward Earth would completely destroy the Earth long before that object starts ripping apart the surface and extracting massive chunks of technology. Only the least-sophisticated viewer could believe that the Earth could survive in any recognizable way after the events of Transformers: The Last Knight.

Arguably the most disappointing aspect of Transformers: The Last Knight is that Jeff Bridges does not appear in the movie in any form. Astute fans will note that in Transformers: The Age Of Extinction one of the sound clips used as Bumblebee's dialogue was from The Big Lebowski. Transformers: The Last Knight is like a mini-reunion for The Big Lebowski (reviewed here!) with the return of John Turturro and John Goodman (albeit as a voice-only actor in the film) and the introduction of Steve Buscemi as the Autobot Daytrader. And that was the most exciting aspect of Transformers: The Last Knight.

Sir Anthony Hopkins is wasted as Sir Edmund Burton and it seems like the only reason he is in the film to get the venerable actor to call someone a dick and make other remarks that are well-below his usual level of diction. Stanley Tucci's cameo in the film is virtually unrecognizable and newcomers Laura Haddock and Isabela Moner add nothing significant to the mix. Marc Wahlberg is fine as Cade, but it seems like outside his physical performance, the main reason to have him in Transformers: The Last Knight is to pull off a scene where characters act amazed that Cade has been celibate for years.

The Transformers themselves are hapless robots in Transformers: The Last Knight with no clear sense of boundaries or sensibility. Optimus Prime is reprogrammed by his creator . . . but Bumblebee being willing to sacrifice himself and deliver lines in his own voice is enough to change his programming?! And Prime leaps back up to Cybertron with other Transformers not worrying that he'll simply be reprogrammed again and come back murderous again?!

So, Transformers: The Last Knight is just a pretty bad action adventure film that does the usual Summer Blockbuster Season thing that has been done by the franchise four other times and by far better movies many, many more times.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Rough Night
The Mummy
Wonder Woman
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Baywatch
Alien: Covenant
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Michael Bay’s Latest Popcorn Blockbuster Is Everything One Expects . . . Except That It’s Not Terrible! Transformers: Age Of Extinction!

The Good: Decent new characters, Good special effects, Decent continuity and plot concept
The Bad: Formulaic plot, Ridiculous plot/character/directing conceits.
The Basics: More a predictable and unambitious continuation of the Transformers franchise, Transformers: Age Of Extinction is a mildly creative popcorn flick that undermines itself by playing to the worst conceits of the existing franchise.


Were it not for my place as a film reviewer, I never would have watched Transformers, much less all of the films in the recent cinematic empire that has made an obscene amount of cash in remarkably few years. Over the course of the past seven years, Michael Bay’s live-action, CG-effects loaded Transformers franchise has become one of the highest grossing cinematic franchises of all time and a staple of Summer Blockbuster Season. Regardless of my antipathy toward the franchise, Michael Bay’s latest endeavor into the Transformers Saga suffers more from an unimaginative script and a pathetic dependence on the more lascivious elements of the popcorn film than being actually, genuinely terrible.

In fact, outside the way Michael Bay uses the camera to virtually molest yet another female model – in this case one who is playing a minor child – and lamely recreates the familiar shots of convoys of hot, trendy cars that stick out wherever they go. Transformers: Age Of Extinction is actually the best of the franchise (so far), but the dependence on playing toward the lowest common denominator in terms of humor and style (are the only people who would appreciate a Transformers film really those who find a “whoo hoo girl” to be the ideal?!) undermine the quality elements that Transformers: Age Of Extinction possesses. And Transformers: Age Of Extinction actually has some worthwhile elements, most notably in the cast – which replaces Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese with higher caliber actors like Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, Titus Welliver, and Mark Wahlbrg (replacing Megan Fox and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley with Nicola Peltz and Sophia Myles is more an even swap-out than an upgrade of any sort) – and the overall plot concept that put it above the prior incarnations of Transformers.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction does what very few popcorn movies do: it is steeped in the consequences of the prior film(s) in a way that makes the continuation/reboot of the franchise surprisingly compelling. Transformers: Age Of Extinction is a direct sequel to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (reviewed here!) and the wholesale destruction in Chicago and the robotic carnage that happened as a result forces a complete redirection of the franchise. The first half of Transformers: Age Of Extinction is spent introducing new characters and wrestling with the problems left over from Transformers: Dark Of The Moon before the second half progresses the story with how irresponsible humans have led to an unholy alliance and a military/industrial complex that has made a bad decision which “the market” pushes into action before adequate testing. While Transformers: Age Of Extinction predictably lacks compelling character development on the front of the virtual characters, the human characters in the film are more than catch phrase-spewing tools; they have motivations that are more well-rounded and realistic than in the prior movies.

In ancient times, a massive space ship floats over Earth and releases technology that obliterates the dinosaurs. Then, five years after the attack on Chicago (which was the subject of the climax of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon), an archaeology team discovers wreckage of an ancient Dinobot (dinosaur Transformer). In Texas, Cade Yeager and his lackey employee, Lucas, go on a salvage mission where they find wreckage from a failed operation in New Mexico in the middle of a defunct movie theater they are considering purchasing (but cannot possibly afford). Yeager’s daughter, Tessa, is embarrassed by her father as the family struggles to afford her imminent college bills (not to mention the mortgage). But in the wake of a U.S. government team flushing out and destroying the Autobot medic, Ratchet, the head of the task force hunting down Transformers in the U.S., the CIA’s special task force director Attinger, steps up his hunt for Optimus Prime.

Optimus Prime, unsurprisingly, is the truck Cade has stashed at Yeager Robotics. Attinger is working with a Transformer bounty hunter who is affiliated with neither the Autobots or the (now completely eliminated) Decepticons and after a disastrous raid on Yeager Robotics, Cade and his family (and Tessa’s boyfriend) are rescued by Optimus Prime. The Yeagers work with Optimus to find what has happened to the remaining Autobots on Earth and their search takes them to KSI, where Joshua Joyce is using the metal from which the Transformers are constructed and the frame of the deceased Megatron to build a whole new race of Transformers. Joyce’s Galvatron manages to hold Optimus Prime in check long enough for Attinger’s Lockdown to enter the fray. But when Lockdown abducts Tessa along with Optimus Prime (fulfilling the deal he had with Attinger), Cade and Tessa’s boyfriend – along with the remaining Autobots – infiltrate Lockdown’s ship on a rescue mission to try to save her and stop the Autobots from ending up as slaves for their original creators.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction is truly an example of “better ingredients, better product” in a lot of ways. For sure, the prior incarnations of Transformers featured acting and vocal talents from some respectable individuals – like John Turturro, Leonard Nimoy, Jon and John Malkovich – but the way Wahlberg, Grammer and Tucci are used in Transformers: Age Of Extinction illustrates a far better use of acting talent than the prior films.

For a film that deals with consequences of the prior movies, there is a strange disconnect between reason and the reality of the Transformers universe in Transformers: Age Of Extinction. Joyce is greedy and motivated by a desire to push ahead human technology using technology scrapped from downed Transformers. Oddly, Joyce is resource poor in Transformers: Age Of Extinction, which makes no reasonable sense. Devastator’s “corpse” alone should have given Joyce enough “Transformium” to build his new Transformers without ever having to hunt Cybertronian fugitives left on Earth.

The Transformers franchise is a film franchise built on the popularity of a toy line intended for boys from the early 1980s and the movies are generally considered “guy movies.” Unlike dramas that focus on deep emotions or romantic movies geared more toward women, “guy movies” tend to trade almost solely on spectacle. The men are manly (Wahlberg certainly fits the bill in Transformers: Age Of Extinction) and the ones who are not traditionally hot are traditionally powerful, which Grammer’s Attinger and Tucci’s Joyce easily embody. But the weakness of the “guy movie” paradigm continues in Transformers: Age Of Extinction with the role of Tessa Yeager.

Tessa is a generic damsel in distress and is something of a hot, idiotic “whoo hoo girl” who fills the requisite T&A component of the Transformers film. This is somewhat creepily executed in Transformers: Age Of Extinction because she is a minor, not particularly talented or smart in any useful way and spends her time in the film with older men, one of whom is her father. Tessa’s relationship with Shane Dyson is a generic plot point: Peltz (Tessa) and Reynor (Dyson) have no on-screen chemistry and their relationship is not presented with any sort or realistic passion or plot-based basis for a relationship. Attinger and Joyce have more on-screen chemistry and character-based reasons for their relationship than the film’s supposed romantic couple.

Before Transformers: Age Of Extinction degenerates into yet another “Optimus Prime and his CG-robots must stop Megatron” film, Michael Bay’s latest entry into the Transformers mythos is intriguing enough to be entertaining and is hardly as misogynistic or slapstick as the prior three films. The result is a popcorn film that is more predictable than disappointing and is hardly as frustrating to admit one has watched than the prior movies in the franchise.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
The Expendables 3
Guardians Of The Galaxy
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes
Behaving Badly
Some Velvet Morning
Happy Christmas
Snowpiercer
22 Jump Street
How To Train Your Dragon 2
Edge Of Tomorrow
Maleficent
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Echo Dr.
The Double
Bad Neighbors
Making The Rules

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Funny Until It’s Not, Pain & Gain Is An Entertaining Mix Of Humor And Violence!

The Good: Funny, Darkly funny, Decent acting, Interesting characters
The Bad: After a lot of absurdity, it turns very dark and prioritizes action over the humor it started with, Stupidly homophobic
The Basics: A pretty ridiculous caper, Pain & Gain is verbally humorous and a ridiculous situational comedy before turns unsettling and somewhat oppressively dark.


At this point, it takes quite a bit for a preview (trailer) to sell me on a movie. I have seen so many and I’ve seen so many films that it is a rare thing where a trailer intrigues me enough to believe it and convince me that the movie it advertises is actually worth watching. So, I was surprised recently when a Michael Bay film’s trailer actually got me wanting to see it. The movie was Pain & Gain and while it took me a few extra weeks to see it, I was actually excited to see it.

The thing about previews is that they can, at their worst, completely mischaracterize a film. Such is what happened with Pain & Gain, at least from the first trailer. Pain & Gain is presented in its trailers as a somewhat violent, near-action film. As it is, it is far more comedic, though it is darkly comic for most of the film. That is not to say that the movie is not funny, but the humor in it is delivered in wry lines as opposed to more overt slapstick and consistent ridiculousness. What humor there is comes between pretty violent moments and occasionally boring monologues. It only becomes something gruesome and not terribly funny around the hour mark when the humor is replaced with a pretty gruesome near-murder. Still, Pain & Gain is a black comedy, an abduction caper that is entertaining, even if it has characters so stupid, they could only have come from reality. Pain & Gain is loosely based upon a true story.

Opening on June 17, 1995 with the arrest of Daniel Lugo, Daniel espouses his personal philosophy of fitness and self-improvement. Though he is found guilty of his crimes, he is able to secure a job at a local fitness club where he guarantees the owner he can triple the gym’s membership. There he meets Victor Kershaw, an investor who is incredibly proud of his sandwich shop above his other investments and who has had a far easier time of it than Daniel. After attending a seminar by self-help guru Johnny Wu, Daniel decides that he is going to make his American dream come true by robbing Victor blind. He recruits his friend Adrian and soon they recruit Paul Doyle, an ex-con, ex-junkie, to kidnap and rob Victor.

As such things go, their attempt to abduct Victor goes poorly. After a false start and a botched attempt where Paul mixes up the BMW he needs to block in, the guys tazer Victor in broad daylight and manage to abduct him. After weeks of torture, Daniel and his team work Victor over to the point where he signs over all he owns to Daniel. Following that, the guys take Victor out to kill him, but they botch that job and Victor begins to hunt Daniel (with the aid of a retired private eye) for revenge. As Adrian moves on and marries the specialist who diagnosed him as a steroid user, Daniel settles into his new neighborhood and tries to become a good influence. Paul, however, falls back into cocaine and alcohol and tries to lure the guys into a second get-rich caper. Daniel is surprised when Adrian seems like he might be down with a second job.

Pain & Gain is funny mostly because it is a seriously-delivered crime caper populated by the stupidest criminals to hit the big screen in years. Utilizing frequent voiceovers, Pain & Gain has a series of ridiculous circumstances that spin out of control because Daniel is a man who adapts more than he thinks ahead. Daniel is a parody of a businessman for half the movie and a stupid fitness guru the rest of the time. As the events spin out of control, though, Daniel’s strength is in the way he adapts and presents himself with a supreme level of confidence. Still, even as things go bad, he says some of the most ridiculous things. Fortunately, many of the lines are actually funny: “If I learned anything this last year, other than what a notary was . . .”

As one might expect, the characters in Pain & Gain are largely unlikable. This is not a caper with a charismatic protagonist like I Love You, Phillip Morris (reviewed here!). Instead, Pain & Gain illustrates well how enough is never enough and one bad idea often leads to another. Daniel’s plan is ridiculous, but it is complicated by the fact that he enlists a man who falls easily back into his addictions and another who idolizes him and is willing to go along with any bad idea Daniel comes up with.

What makes Pain & Gain worth watching – outside some choice lines that are actually hilarious – is the acting. Dwayne Johnson proves once and for all that he is not just a giant with physical presence and muscles that are scary huge. Instead, he has the ability to be hilarious through deadpan deliveries and the ability to undermine expectations by looking like a terrified little boy when the circumstances call for it. Johnson is very funny as the coked up Paul. He is even funnier as the earnest Jesus freak who struggles with doing the right thing even as he consistently goes in the wrong direction.

Tony Shaloub and Anthony Mackie give great supporting performances as Victor and Adrian. Shaloub trades in his goofy reputation from Monk for a cold and dangerous façade that he pulls off completely. Mackie does the sidekick thing well as Adrian Doorbal opposite Mark Wahlberg’s Daniel Ludo, but he really shines when he is opposite Rebel Wilson, who plays his character’s love interest. Mackie holds himself with dignity most of the film and he is credibly powerful in the scenes where he is physical and hilariously cold in one of the film’s later scenes at a Home Depot.

Mark Wahlberg manages to blend the earnestness of his usual dramatic performance with the goofiness of his usual comedic role. As a result, Daniel Ludo comes across as a weird mix of Dirk Diggler from Boogie Nights (reviewed here!) and his absurd cop from The Other Guys (reviewed here!). Daniel Ludo might not be a likable character, but Mark Wahlberg makes him a watchable one who solidly entertains for the two hours of Pain & Gain.

Ironically, Pain & Gain manages to deliver what Identity Thief (reviewed here!) only promised. It is a solidly entertaining crime caper that has moments that are laugh-out-loud funny and, outside a gruesome middle, is very enjoyable overall.

For other works with Anthony Mackie, please check out my reviews of:
Man On A Ledge
The Adjustment Bureau
The Hurt Locker
Half Nelson
Million Dollar Baby

6/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Legs, Special Effects Robots And Strong "Guy Appeal," Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Is Fine For What It Appears To Be, But Not What It Is.

The Good: Special effects, Elimination of ridiculous ethnic pandering, Generally consistent acting, Moments of plot.
The Bad: Subversive nature of the movie, Ridiculous treatment of women, Obvious reversals, Disgusting abrogation of philosophical high ground.
The Basics: Initially engaging, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon quickly degenerates from a fairly clever science fiction work into an invasion story into a military advertisement.


I have not, traditionally, been a fan of the Transformers movie franchise.  I did not particularly enjoy Transformers (reviewed here!) and I think I liked the sequel Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (reviewed here!) even less. So, it might seem odd that I was the first in my local theater last night for the nine o’clock showing of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Despite her gasping and “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing each time we saw a preview for the movie, my wife begged off attending with me. Ultimately, I think she was glad she didn’t attend; I came to the point where I was not glad I had gone.

Explaining what is wrong with Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is initially difficult because the film is almost subtle in what it does, but not so subtle that if the viewer is engaged while watching the movie it doesn’t stand right out for them. I went into the movie engaged. I was initially excited because some of the elements that had been very, very wrong with the earlier two installments had been fixed. As my wife pointed out when we watched the other two recently, it’s hard to imagine a super-intelligent mechanical race that still speaks like a bunch of teenage street gang members. In other words, to appeal to the young, hip (and black) audience(s), some of the Transformers in earlier installments spoke more with ebonics and that was pretty ridiculous. That’s gone from this adventure, as is Megan Fox and her unsupported bosom.

Unfortunately, what the movie puts in their place goes from bad to worse on two very important fronts. While Megan Fox’s character in the first two installments had obvious t&a appeal, there was at least a passing attempt to give her character character. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly isn’t even given the passing attempt. She is a pawn and her entire function in the movie is to present a pair of legs that will leave boys, men and many women salivating for weeks, eager to return to the theater just to see them again larger than real life. Unfortunately, this completely mortgages the one strong female character, played by Frances McDormand. McDormand, a universally respected actress of great quality and caliber, appears in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon as Mearing, the Director Of National Intelligence. She starts the movie as a powerhouse and in the last third of the film, I cannot recall any lines she had, save the punchline to her arc with John Turturro’s Simmons. This is because she is lost in a sea of masculine characters and by that point in the movie, it’s appealing to a very different audience, one where respecting women is not a primary concern. But, alas, I get ahead of myself.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon opens, engagingly enough, with new information on the long-ago war on Cybertron. As the Decepticons moved toward complete defeat of the Autobots, Sentinel Prime created a technology that would definitively end the war with an Autobot victory. Unfortunately, before he could activate this ultimate weapon, the Decepticons shot down his ship and their valuable cargo. Somehow, the escape craft for it made its way to the moon, where it crashed in 1961, sparking the space race. And during the blackout during Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk, two American astronauts uncovered the crashed ship and brought back Cybertronian technology to Earth.

In the present day, Sam Witwicky, hero of two incursions on Earth by the Decepticons, is desperately searching for a job. He is a kept man, living with his new girlfriend, Carly, in Washington, D.C. and striking out at virtually every job interview he has. When his parents come to visit, he redoubles his efforts and manages to score a job in the mailroom of Bruce Brazo’s company. While Sam tries not to be too jealous of Carly and her boss, Dylan, Lennox and the Autobot-allied NEST team work a couple of clean-up operations in the Middle East and one in the Ukraine (at Chernobyl) that goes horribly wrong and exposes a powerful Decepticon, Shockwave.

As the Decepticons start killing off their human collaborators, Optimus Prime reveals that the Ukraine mission has uncovered a piece of technology from Sentinel Prime’s downed ship. Using the ship that brought the second wave of Autobots to Earth, Prime and another Autobot recover Sentinel Prime and five pieces of the ultimate technology from the Ark. Reunited with his former mentor, Prime is thrilled, but his elation is short-lived. Laserbeak, a Decepticon assassin, attacks Sam’s workplace as part of the Decepticon endgame. Sam tries to get Carly to safety, but the pair discovers that Dylan is a powerful collaborator who uses Sam to get information on Optimus Prime’s next move. That next move is one of utter defeat when Sentinel Prime reveals his true intentions and a full-scale invasion of Earth by the Decepticons begins.

Recapping the plot of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon might make the movie sound impressive or engaging (and for those worried about spoilers, Dylan and Sentinel Prime’s betrayals are pretty obvious from the outset because it’s That Kind Of Movie) and it could have been, but that it changes in tone and tenor for the last third. The first portion of the movie is pure science fiction. It’s not always good science fiction, whatwith the announcement that the world is in peril followed immediately by a scene where the viewer is taken to a car museum to look at shiny restored cars and the camera virtually molests Carly, and an appearance by Bill O’Riley. But for the most part, the movie starts well and it gets better. In the middle portion, the betrayals we know are coming arrive; Dylan is too smarmy to be good and the lack of Megatron for the bulk of the film tells anyone with more than a tenth of a brain that Sentinel Prime is not all Optimus hopes he will be. And in that section, the movie becomes a heart-pounding alien invasion flick. It’s a good one, but don’t expect the philosophy of something as smart as V (reviewed here!). No, any sense of what could have been even Autobot philosophy disintegrates when Optimus Prime tells everyone that the plan is to kill every Decepticon.

And then the movie goes to hell for the final third. The last third of the movie is complete, cinematic trash. Indeed, the best possible recommendation I can give in regard to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is to walk out after the deportation scene. After that, the movie is over. What follows for the final third of the almost-three hour movie is what made me absolutely come to loathe Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. The movie stops being a story and it becomes the job advertisement for the U.S. Armed Forces that the movie was set-up (unbeknownst to the audience in the first third) to be. The last portion of the movie has Epps, Lennox and their teams moving through the besieged Chicago where the Decepticon forces have taken up, picking up different units of military forces and showing off what their talents can do. Sam Witwicky and the audience are exposed to a virtual job fair wherein the paratroopers, Navy SEALS, sharpshooters and ground troops all illustrate their special talents.

It’s dumb. Flat out. People might not want to read such precise criticism, but it’s dumb and it’s exploitative. Readers might want to believe they are watching an epic of science fiction, but they start watching one of the most absurd infomercials of all time. In the final third, Mearing gets all of her information from people who are not even assets and all of the men around her define what is important and essentially make the decisions that she ruled in the first third of the film. This is even more absurd than Carly being dragged through rubble, falling through and out buildings and being proximate to explosions without getting a single stain on her white outfit. And if one wishes to make the argument that I’m reading too much into this obvious candy for Summer Blockbuster Season, I’d ask who is shooting the firearm when the movie suddenly turns into a first-person shooter perspective for a scene?

Who knows? We don’t. We don’t know because that’s not the point. The point of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon at this point in the movie is not anything reasonable, rational or even entertaining. The point of the movie at this point is “You’re looking for a job, these are your options: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Pick whichever you want, your life will be exciting like a first-person shooter game and your prize is this dripping chick who wants you, who cares that she can’t string together a coherent sentence? You don’t; you get to be her protector!”

It’s cheap. It’s almost as cheap as the way Leonard Nimoy uses his line as Spock (it’s actually Dickens, not Spock, but Nimoy made it famous for a whole new generation) in the mouth of Sentinel Prime. I had decided to watch Transformers: Dark Of The Moon because I enjoyed Star Trek (reviewed here!) and I thought that this movie might provide some hint as to the quality of the forthcoming sequel. We can only hope it does not go in this direction.

Usually, I spend some time discussing the character development and acting, but I’m done. Sam Witwicky doesn’t develop, he gets tossed around and goes to a job fair. The female characters get put in their places by men who act smarter and more powerful than they are and the acting is entirely familiar. Blowing up Abraham Lincoln was pointless and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has such a pointless role as Carly that it’s no surprise in the last half that she struts more than acts.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon might be the best of the franchise, but it’s still a lousy movie, despite the potentials from the beginning.

For other works with Alan Tudyk, please check out my reviews of:
V - Season 1
Serenity
Firefly
28 Days

4.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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More CG Robots And Megan Fox's Jiggling Breasts Cannot Save Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen!

The Good: Moments of special effect, Moments of story/character
The Bad: Predictable plot, Jumbled effects, Terrible acting
The Basics: With the second attempt to make Transformers an interesting live-action film, Michael Bay and his team give us nothing more than we've already seen before.


As a creative person, it always disappoints me to see things I know I have seen before coming out of supposedly talented individuals. Sadly, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is probably a flick that should have remained a film trailer only. Yes, I'd say it would not be wrong to make the movie trailer and have that be the entire cinematic experience in this case. This might not seem like a surprise, considering how my recent viewing of Transformers (reviewed here!) was enough to convince me not to drive down to a screening in IMAX that the director himself was at. Still, I went into Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen with an open mind and even preparation emotionally for some big, nonsensical action that pretty much defines Summer Blockbuster Season. Unfortunately, this sequel does not even insult the intelligence of the viewer by attempting to be surprising, original or even good.

Building on Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen has the inevitable return to power of Megatron and the Decepticons and while the viewing experience for the mysticism introduced in the first film might make one think seeing Transformers was essential, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen stands well-enough on its own to not truly need the first installment. The story of what happens between the two films is told in the graphic novels Defiance and Alliances in more depth. As a result, that's a few hours of one's life one may save by not wasting on the first film, though by the end of the two and a half hour sequel, one might wish they simply took my recommendation and passed on this film. It is worth noting, as well, that my critique of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is biased by the fact that I saw the movie on the big screen. The larger-than-life and often confused special effects are more fun on the big screen, yet will probably be less-overwhelming on the small screen when this arrives on DVD. I'm not sure if that made me rate it higher for the big-screen presentation, but I suspect it might.

Filling in the backstory of the denizens of Cyberton (a robotic race that later split into the Autobots and Decepticons), it is revealed that there was an older society of robots, known as the Primes. The Primes created an energy source, Energon, from stars, but their society fractured over capturing energy from stars with planets where life existed. The Primes thwarted The Fallen's ancient plan to destroy Earth's star by sacrificing themselves. Now, as Sam Witwicky leaves his girlfriend Mikaela behind, Sam heads to college while the Autobots search out and eliminate Decepticon forces on Earth that are still active. Sam, though, soon begins to suffer mysterious visions of symbols written in Cybertron glyphs.

As the Decepticons reanimate Megatron, Sam undergoes a nervous breakdown. On orders from The Fallen, Megatron and his forces regroup with a hunt for Sam as the remaining Prime understands that Sam's visions have to do with the location to the Sun Harvester, the weapon which will destroy Earth's sun. The U.S. military, Sam, the Autobots and former Section Seven agent Simmons converge in Egypt, but the Decepticons meet them there. After baiting a trap with Sam's captured parents, the Decepticons wage a battle which threatens to destroy the entire world.

The sense of scope in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is decent, but writers Alexander Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, teamed for this with Ehren Kruger, have certainly lost their spark on this one. While fans of science fiction will enjoy their tongue-in-cheek references to The Matrix, this is no The Matrix. While the authors rewrote the Star Trek universe quite effectively earlier the same Summer Blockbuster Season, they fail to convince the viewers of the jeopardy to Earth in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. While the idea of the Sun Harvester is not a bad one, there is never a single moment in the film where the viewer honestly believes that Sam, Mikaela, Major Lennox (and sidekick Epps!), and Simmons might fail. To be sure, the guys make a good stab at making the situation seem dire, but they borrow from the animated Transformers film that hit the big screen when I was a kid for their big sense of surprise (or at least the significant death) and that's just sad.

Yes, we've seen it all before. Even as I try to think of what I enjoyed about the movie, it is tough to consider objectively. While Devastator is a pretty wicked Decepticon revealed in the Egypt scenes, it was also in every preview I remember seeing. Yes, you get the best of the film from the trailer as this is probably the coolest, most innovative robot monster introduced in the film. And, without ruining anything, Devastator's exit from the film makes little sense. Simmons, working to save his birthland, calls in a secret weapon (amid some of the dumbest gonad-related humor seen on the screen in some time) which seems to hit Devastator in the shoulder. While this would certainly blow off an arm, it doesn't exactly explain how the evil robot is stopped, other than that it is knocked out of frame.

But this, then, comes back to the fundamental problem with the special effects; the effects are big and ballsy. This is a turn-off-your-brain summer blockbuster with lots of explosions and people running and a final forty-five minutes that have only about ten pages of actual dialogue. But the special effects are often too big and special effects are only special if they are rendered in such a way that the viewer can tell what is going on at any given time. Bay fills his screen with long shots of massive battles with robots and humans shooting everywhere, smoke blowing and giant columns being torn apart and he alternates them with close-ups of robot parts that lack a strong sense of identifiability. And some of the effects work only if one shuts their brain off; the robotic junkyard dog is very cool, but why its spine is covered in gore when it is torn out (even if it is lubricants) makes no real sense.

What also fails to make sense are the characters. Mikaela is little more than Sam's obvious love interest/sexy sidekick, but the writers and Bay give up on even trying to make their relationship make sense. In the midst of the huge battle, Sam orders Bumblebee to take his parents out of the war zone (they pop back up before the battle is actually over with no explanation, so Bumblebee pretty much stinks as a protector), turns to Mikaela and orders her to go, too. She says no and that's the end of it. Call me a romantic softy, but I think if I were trying to save the woman I loved from being crushed to death by psychotic robots with heavy artillery, I might not simply accept her "no" an let it go!

The relationship between Sam and Mikaela and Simmons' sudden desire to explore his heritage are all the character viewers get this round. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is dreadful on the character front and it devotes its time and energy to being plot-intensive (though there are not huge dissimilarities between the chase for the All Spark in Transformers and the search for the key matrix in this sequel) and special effects-filled. At least actor John Turturro as Agent Simmons illustrates that the actor wasn't about to waste all his time on screen. Turturro might not be terribly funny in the role as Simmons, but he works with the recognizable bits of a character arc well-enough that the viewer actually cares what happens to his character. Sadly, his is the only one viewers are likely to care about.

Personally, I feel sorry for Megan Fox as Mikaela in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Outside Transformers, I've only seen Fox in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People where she played the over-the-top sex symbol and her role was to glide through her scenes looking beautiful. Michael Bay rides the camera over Fox's curves like a car magazine soft-core photographer and seems content to not have her speak much. Instead, Fox is put in a top with minimal support and run through the desert jiggling. Sure, with all of the explosions going on, there is plenty to draw the eye outside Fox's flopping breasts, but given the target audience, Bay knows where most eyes will be.

And those eyes certainly wouldn't be on Shia LaBeouf, whose acting is so wooden I continue to wonder how he gets work. Granted, LaBeouf is not being asked to recite Shakespeare or even make us care too much about his character, Sam, but when Kevin Dunn outshines LaBeouf as Sam's father constantly (and in the big scene of emotional resonance after Sam rescues him), one wonders how he keeps getting top billing.

On DVD, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen arrives with a commentary track and an additional disc loaded with featuerettes. Many of the bonus features focus on the special effects, rather than the storytelling elements and those who watched the bonus features to the first Transformers are likely to feel a little cheated; there is not much different in the effects in this film. As well, there is the theatrical trailer to the movie.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen sets up for a sequel and while we can hope it might be better, it seems a vain hope. Given the chance to explore the characters of the Transformers universe, the writers returned to that franchise with more absurd plots (we never believe Earth's sun will be obliterated by The Fallen), more complicated special effects and more obvious exploitations of the franchise's most recognizable asset.

For other works by Alex Kurtzmen and Roberto Orci, please check out my reviews of:
Fringe - Season Two
Fringe - Season One
Star Trek
The Proposal
Lost

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Before The Next Sequel Bombs, Why Transformers Is So Very Bad.

The Good: Special effects, General attempt to create a larger sense of the world.
The Bad: Terrible acting, No real character development, Direction, Light on plot
The Basics: In an often-ridiculous special effects film, Transformers shows the appearance of giant robots who camouflage themselves as vehicles bringing their war to Earth.


As I entered the last few hours between when I have to "fish or cut bait," as it were, on an opportunity to journey down to see Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen at the Smithsonian IMAX with director Michael Bay (it was a VERY cool offer and given I had a free ticket to the event, it was very tempting), I found myself considering the original film Michael Bay released for Summer Blockbuster Season two years prior and that I saw for the very first time the night before the special event in order to prepare myself for the sequel. I was surprised to realize that I had never actually watched a Michael Bay film before seeing Transformers, so that might have been cool. In fact, it turns out the only film I had seen where Michael Bay had a big role was Friday The Thirteenth, which Bay produced. So, with one strike against Bay, I sat down and watched Transformers on DVD in my home theater. This, though, made the decision to drive six hours to see the director and the newer film in IMAX very easy. Arguably the best deterrent to wasting my time and money (and possibly just asking "Really?! Are you serious? This is the best you've got?" to the director), is seeing the film upon which the sequel was based. And, before any potential trips arise for Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, I think it’s good for me to be thinking of this film.

That might seem like a cruel assessment for a film based upon an animated series which was built around a popular toy line, especially when one considers that films like Masters Of The Universe were nowhere near as successful as Transformers, what made my stomach sink after this boring, overbearing special effects flick was seeing who wrote it. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who are responsible for the reboot of Star Trek (reviewed here!) also have the indistinction of writing this trainwreck. Where they were creative and clever for the Star Trek reimagining, here they are a strange mix of overly ambitious as storytellers and cliche in the dumbest possible ways with their few attempts at making character. All of this is eventually for naught, though, as the final act is devoid of even the pretense of character and instead devotes itself to huge special effects battles that soon become repetitive and unimpressive. And the easy bottomline here is this: this is very much a "guy's movie" with utterly unrealistic women, a boy living out pretty much the male fantasy for a seventeen year-old, cars (where the very act of driving is supposed to be impressive or cool) and big explosions.

In the desert of Qatar, a United States military installation is attacked and the target of the attack seems to be a classified database. The mechanical assailant, cut off by a hard-line cut, appears to be searching for an object in U.S. custody. In the wake of the attack, Defense Secretary John Keller mobilizes every possible resource to determine who the attacker is and how to disable the new weapon system that seems invincible. Meanwhile, in the United States, Sam Witwicky is a high school junior who is trying to sell his grandfather's relics on eBay to afford a car for himself. His father takes him to purchase a car and he leaves the lot with a little yellow jalopy that he is not truly wild about. The car soon begins to cause problems for Sam, communicating through the radio and doing its best to hook Sam up with an attractive, but snooty popular girl named Mikaela.

The storylines rapidly converge as Sam is hunted by giant robots who realize that his grandfather's glasses contain an imprint with the coordinates to the mysterious object that is being sought by two mechanical armies. As the military forces flee the active Decepticons who are searching for an object known as the All Spark, Sam - and his car, a robot named Bumblebee - is rescued by the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime. The Autobots are seeking the All Spark to try to save Earth from the war they inadvertently brought here. The problems multiply, though, when the special teams that converge at the Hoover Dam - where the Decepticon leader, Megatron, has been kept cryogenically suspended for decades - and Megatron is reanimated and the All Spark is left in the hands of a boy.

I feel like I have been running low on synonyms lately, so perhaps simplicity is what Transformers truly demands, given the way the film degenerates into a simple shoot-em-up popcorn flick; Transformers is bad. Transformers is so bad that the only reason theaters are currently packed with people checking out the sequel is that it made so much money. And by the end of Transformers, there is only truly one character who is "franchise" who actually has to be returned for the sequel. Seeing as though that character is played by Shia LaBeouf - whose acting career as the star of summer blockbusters seems to prove that miracles can happen and talent is not necessary for Hollywood success - one suspects that the relative expenses of the sequel were fairly low. In other words, no one is tuning into Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon for the storyline or characters, they want to see a big special effects film and to be dazzled without having to think about much of what is going on.

Sadly, that is where Orci, Kurtzman and Bay put the viewers of Transformers as well. The film is remarkably busy and stupidly simple before it becomes a fairly lame special effects flick. I say "fairly lame special effects" even though the special effects are arguably the best thing this movie has going for it in the end because while director Michael Bay employs some ridiculously talented people for the special effects, he has little in the way of eye for making it interesting. As I watched Transformers, there was a shot in the film where missiles are being fired and giant robots are running that looked ridiculously familiar. I realized that it was because I had seen the exact same shot - framing, movement, explosions, etc. - in the trailer for the new G.I. Joe film (reviewed here!). This is not Bay's fault, but then I realized the shot was pretty much the archetypal running gunfight shots, just with bigger guns.

Where does Transformers go right? The movie starts fairly well, with the idea that there is something of international consequence going on and that no single group can figure it out. The Secretary Of Defense reasonably calls in all possible analysts in order to try to evaluate the weapon's system that attacked the U.S. in Qatar. But by the time "Sector Seven" emerges, though, the sense of reality has already been mortgaged by too much time spent with Sam Witwicky.

Sam is a pretty dull high school student who is interested in girls and cars and that's about all. He slides by doing the least possible work and that his teacher bumps his grade from a botched oral report up because of "What Would Jesus Do?" would be decent farce if only the rest of the movie were nearly as smart. Instead, though, Bay's Transformers quickly becomes less about character and any sense of how real agencies would react to an attack from giant robots to a ridiculous chase around the world with little sense of consequence or character.

In the special effects, Bay and his people get the film very wrong by an almost complete neglect of basic physics. One Autobot, Jazz, does a few funky dance moves before sliding onto the hood of a car. The last time I saw one car or car-weight/car-material object strike another car the result was not a robot leaning back looking the robot equivalent of urban funky. It was a mess. Okay, Bay wants viewers to turn their brains off. But there is turning one's brain off and there's lobotomizing oneself. Sam and Mikaela get bumped around quite a bit, falling great distances only to be caught by giant metal hands. Yet, they never react like they are in pain or that there is any consequence to the dives they take.

This brings us back to the acting in Transformers. When the cast is led by actors like Shia LaBeouf, whose acting differed very little from the virtual version of LaBeouf used in special effect sequences in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (reviewed here!), one has to cringe. Megan Fox and Rachael Taylor are cast for the obvious salivation factor that the average viewer of this PG-13 will bring to the theater. Taylor is asked to play an analyst and while that might be plausible, the fact that she picks up an accent halfway through the film is just terrible. Josh Duhamel is plausible as Captain Lennox, though he had more dramatic gravitas back when he was on All My Children. Lennox's cliche "soldier waiting to meet his baby girl back home" is so canned that one suspects Duhamel was cast for the role because he was the only actor who could pull off the lines with a straight face, whatwith his background on soaps.

But the mystery here is how Bay managed to snag John Turturro and Jon Voight for Transformers. Turturro, more than any other performer in this film, is used in a way that completely mortgages his credibility as a great actor. Turturro performs well with the virtual characters, but arrives in the film long after most viewers will care and will be looking for anything remotely about performance.

On DVD, Transformers is accompanied by Transformers: Beginnings, which is a seventeen minute, poorly animated feature that spells out the complete backstory of Transformers. Illustrated - where the film merely tells - the program shows Bumblebee sending the All Spark away from Cybertron (the planet of the Transformers) and the pursuit by Megatron. After Megatron arrives in the primordial soup and is sucked under the surface, ages go by until Captain Witwicky finds him and sets off the events in the feature film. This is all covered in the actual film, so it is pretty much a waste of time.

Then again, I suspect that for most film buffs, watching the Transformers Beginnings disc and then the trailer for the film will be more than enough to entertain them. The trailer contains many of the big special effect battles, a few shots of Megan Fox and the shots of the Transformer as ordinary cars and trucks driving along a desert road. That's about the substance of the film in a nutshell. Life is too short for more.

For other big budget special effect-driven films, please check out my reviews of:
Battle Los Angeles
2012
Tron Legacy

3/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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