Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

When Transformers: Dark of the Moon came out in 2011, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had somehow convinced myself that it was the conclusion of the series, that I'd never have to see another Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay. But it's never that easy, is it? Because now, three years after I'd let myself believe in a little sliver of cinematic hope, it's been dashed away by the return of the franchise under Bay's watch. I haven't been looking forward to seeing Transformers: Age of Extinction in the slightest, to the point that I've actually been dreading it. But I might as well bite the bullet and see if all my fears are justified, because I'll never really know otherwise.

Five years have passed since what's come to be known as "the Battle of Chicago." Almost all of the surviving Transformers ― both Autobot and Decepticon ― have been systematically hunted down and eliminated by an elite CIA black ops team captained by paranoid, anti-alien government official Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and assisted by the amoral Transformer bounty hunter Lockdown (the voice of Mark Ryan).

But that's not of any concern to Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a Texas junk dealer and wannabe inventor who is struggling to make ends meet. He brings home an old, wrecked big rig intending to strip it for parts, but discovers that the truck is in truth a comatose Optimus Prime (the voice of Peter Weller). Cade revives Optimus and tries repairing him, but his efforts are cut short when Attinger's squad arrives at the Yeager farm after being alerted to Optimus's location.

Cade and the injured Optimus just barely manage to escape, with Cade's teenage daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) and her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor) in tow. As Optimus gathers the few remaining Autobots, they discover that Attinger has ties to technology tycoon Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci). Joyce has successfully reverse engineered the shapeshifting metal that Transformers are comprised of, and has been drafted by Attinger into creating his own breed of programmable Transformers. Of them all, his prized creation is one named Galvatron (the voice of Frank Welker), built from the remnants of the defeated and dismantled villain Megatron. But as trace elements of Megatron's personality begins to take over and override Joyce's programming, the Autobots contend with Lockdown and his Cybertronian weapon of mass destruction known as "the Seed."

I must admit that I thought Age of Extinction was most definitely an improvement, certainly nowhere near the worst entry into this godforsaken franchise, and at the very least, a real step up from Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon. The problem with it, however, is that its mediocrity is so overbearing that by the end of its three-hour runtime, you'll feel like one of the trucks from the movie has run you over. Had the movie been shorter, it might not have been quite so bad, but it grows so unbearably monotonous that you'll be glad it's over once the credits finally roll.

And the person you have to thank for the large part of that is Michael Bay. It's another stereotypical Bay action movie, with dumb characters doing dumb things and so much soulless, empty action that you feel stupider for having watched it. The movie is like watching a child play with his toys, slamming action figures against each other to pantomime fighting while coming up with scenarios that increasingly become so ridiculous that there's absolutely no way you can take it seriously. At this point, I fully expect Bay to finish the Transformers franchise by stealing from St. Elsewhere's last episode, the last few minutes of the final movie featuring him staring at a snow globe with Optimus Prime inside it.

And just why did this movie need to be three hours long? One could easily trim thirty to forty-five minutes of footage and nothing would have been missed. Much like with Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, I got the feeling that Bay was so in love with his own movie that he couldn't possibly bear to edit anything out. And when you realize that the movie is basically repeating itself, with pretty much the same scenes and dialogue over and over but with different backdrops every time, that just makes it even more frustrating to watch. I mean, the only really good thing I can say about Bay's direction is that the special effects are really good and look fantastic in 3D. And when the best compliments I can come up with is "the CGI is pretty and I liked the 3D," you're really struggling.

At least the movie had a slightly better script this time around, but that isn't really saying much. Writer Ehren Kruger has seemingly made an attempt to fix some of the complaints people had with the first three movies, primarily by doing away with the Witwicky family altogether and killing off the annoying comic relief in the first act. But when all is said and done, the script is still kinda weak, only really there to give the actors something to do between action sequences. There isn't enough story to sustain a three-hour movie, and the attempts at character development, specifically the scenes where it's evident that Cade does not initially approve of Tessa and Shane's relationship but grows to like him, are clichéd and trite. You know as soon as Cade and Shane meet that Cade won't like him, but Shane will prove himself to be a decent guy and earns his trust. It's one of those things that's appeared in a ton of movies and is predictable almost every time.

I also felt that the introduction of the Dinobots felt tacked on and almost unnecessary. Their appearance in the climax isn't quite as fun as it could or should have been, and one suspects that they were only in the movie at all because 1.) the fans had been demanding it, and 2.) Hasbro wanted to add them to the toy line. They don't add much to the movie, outside of the very awesome shot of Optimus Prime riding Grimlock like he was a cowboy trying to control a bucking bronco.

But at least the acting has gotten better now that Shia LaBeouf and the rest are gone. Hell, things improved immensely simply by keeping Kevin Dunn and Julie White away from the movie. The Age of Extinction cast may not be any great shakes either, but I'll take this movie's cast over the same old crap we were given in the first three. Jack Reynor is serviceable but forgettable, while Nicola Peltz might not be much (her character is pretty much worthless, and it shows), but she's still a damn sight better than Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Mark Wahlberg does whatever he's asked and performs with the suitable amount of emotion, but he's likable and charismatic enough that he can get away with a bare-bones performance in a movie like this. But the real stars of the movie are Kelsey Grammer and Stanley Tucci. Grammer plays his role with a certain sinister edge, a far better villain than these movies have given us in the past, while Tucci is great as always. Tucci is appropriately sleazy in his role, even as he starts to sway towards the side of the heroes. If somebody could edit the movie down to be just Grammer and Tucci's scenes, that's really all you'd need to see.

There are those who'd tell you that Age of Extinction is the worst of these movies, like it's some kind of horrible travesty that somehow leaves the art of cinema worse than it had been before. But those people are over-exaggerating. It's not as bad as they're making it out to be. It's a dull, plodding, often boring movie, but there are a few positives there that keep it from being a total waste. Maybe one of these days we'll have a live-action Transformers movie that's actually good, but until then, we're stuck with these. Hopefully, Michael Bay will get the hint when it comes time to make Transformers 5 and cut it down to a more reasonable running time. Oh, and try rising above mediocrity while he's at it. That'd be nice.

Final Rating: **½

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

People seem to really enjoy bashing Michael Bay. His movies make boatloads of cash at the box office, yet every review I read treats him like he's the Antichrist. They hate the movies he directs, they hate the movies he produces, and they hate him for his involvement with Platinum Dunes, the production house that specializes in remaking classic '70s and '80s horror movies. But I can't say I have the same amount of vitriol towards Bay that others do. I'm cool with Platinum Dunes, and I can't rage against his directorial efforts, since I've only seen three of them, those three being his Transformers trilogy.

People have been especially savage when critiquing the Transformers movies. While it was justified in the case of Revenge of the Fallen, I don't think the other two deserve it. In particular, I thought the newly-released Dark of the Moon deserved a lot better. It's got more than a few flaws, I'll admit, but it's not as bad a movie as the critics would have you think.

As the movie begins, the Autobots are still allied with the United States military, yet largely acting independently in eliminating threats to humanity's existence. After a mission in Ukraine, Optimus Prime (the voice of Peter Cullen) discovers in the Chernobyl facility's rubble a Cybertronian artifact that had the Soviet Union had attempted to harness as a power source. Their attempt was obviously a failure, since the Chernobyl disaster happened and all.

It turns out that this artifact is a fuel cell from the Ark, an Autobot spaceship that had escaped from Cybertron at the end of the planet's civil war. Piloted by Sentinel Prime (the voice of Leonard Nimoy), the Ark carried "the Pillars," technology that could have ended the war and saved Cybertron. The Ark crashed on the moon in 1961, where it was detected by NASA and ended up sparking the space race between America and the Soviet Union. While history records that America and Apollo 11 won that race and got to the moon first, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's exploration of the Ark has been top secret ever since. Not even the Autobots were told the Ark was there until finding that fuel cell.

Upset by the fact that the Ark had been kept hidden from him, Optimus Prime embarks on a mission to the moon so he can retrieve Sentinel Prime and the five Pillars that remain on board, describing them as being able to create a bridge between two points in space for transportation. This absolutely terrifies the bureaucratic National Intelligence Director (Francis McDormand), who distrusts all Transformers and thinks the Pillars could be used to summon an invading army.

Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is fresh out of college, living in Washington DC with his new girlfriend Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). And despite having received a medal from President Obama for twice helping save the world, Sam is having a hard time finding employment. He ends up landing a job as a mail room clerk, where a co-worker (Ken Jeong) takes a bizarre interest in him. It turns out that the co-worker knows about Sam's secret role in the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, passing along information about something on the dark side of the moon before he is killed by a Decepticon.

Sam passes along the information to Seymour Simmons (John Turturro); the duo start putting together clues and realize that the Decepticons are killing various people connected to the American and Russian space programs. Through their investigations, Sam and Simmons discover that there were actually more Pillars aboard the Ark that what the Autobots found, that the whole thing was a trap set up by the Decepticons... and Sentinel Prime is at the center of this trap.

If you read my review, you'll know that the last Transformers movie left a very bad taste in my mouth. But Dark of the Moon definitely makes up for it. It's not quite up to the level of the first movie, but it's definitely leaps and bounds ahead of Revenge of the Fallen. Dark of the Moon is a fun flick, having excised a lot of the flotsam that plagued that crappy sequel that came before it. Watch Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon back to back, and it's like you've seen two completely different attempts at approaching the Transformers franchise. And the approach taken with Dark of the Moon is probably the approach that should have been taken in the first place.

The movie's only true drawback is that it's too damn long. It's over two and a half hours long, despite only having enough story for an hour and 45 minutes. Roughly the last hour of the movie is all one long fight scene, feeling like so much padding to bloat the movie's running time. It's overbearing, to say the least. There's a ton of stuff that could have been cut out of the last hour, and it wouldn't have made the movie any better or worse.

But leave it to Michael Bay to make an action movie that comes dangerously close to wearing out its welcome. Believe it or not, though, he actually shows some restraint here. It's shocking, I know, but Bay actually holds back a little from his usual "jittery camerawork and super-fast editing" style. You can still definitely tell that it's his kind of movie, but it's not as frenetic as you'd expect. I suspect that it may be in part due to the movie's 3D aspect, since you'd want to linger on things in order for the 3D effects to actually work. But you know what? I liked Bay's approach. It's makes things a hell of a lot more bearable to watch. Yeah, it's 90% action and metal clanging and things blowing up, but it's a fun ride.

And I thought the 3D was phenomenal, to boot. Bay chose to forgo doing a 2D-to-3D conversion in post-production, apparently hiring the crew that helped James Cameron make Avatar to shoot the movie natively in 3D. And the fact that it wasn't some crummy conversion is immediately apparent, as the effects look really, really good. I've always preferred the cheesy "throw stuff at the audience" 3D over the Avatar-style atmospheric 3D as a matter of personal preference, but Dark of the Moon finds a nice balance between both styles.

I did, however, find the script written by Ehren Kruger to be a little weak, though it was mostly due the amount of padding in the last hour. Like I said, any sort of plot or story ends after about 90 to 100 minutes so Bay can stage his huge Transformer war. But it's actually pretty solid, for the most part. I'm not calling it good, but it holds up for the most part. The story doesn't come off as frustratingly convoluted as it was in the first two movies, and the characters are also written stronger. I'm also very happy that Kruger eliminated those annoying twin Autobots from Revenge of the Fallen and reduced Sam's parents down to two or three scenes. That alone already makes Dark of the Moon at least moderately successful.

And last but not least is the acting, which I thought was give or take. I liked Shia LaBeouf, though I got the impression that he's getting kinda burned out on all these Transformers movies. But I will confess that I feel he's got a certain charisma that makes him an amusing watch even in his less-than-stellar moments. And unfortunately, I didn't particularly care for Patrick Dempsey. Dempsey's character, a romantic rival for Sam, is kinda lame, and I thought it affected his performance. I was also unimpressed Francis McDormand and Ken Jeong's performances and I thought John Malkovich was absolutely wasted in his small, utterly pointless cameo.

But there are other performances that I enjoyed a lot. One was John Turturro, who I'll confess to liking in pretty much every movie I see him in. He's really entertaining, really funny, and he's amusing in pretty much all of his scenes. And I also thought Peter Cullen and Leonard Nimoy were fantastic as Optimus Prime and Sentinel Prime. I can't go too in depth about Nimoy's performance without spoiling some of the plot, but I will say that his voice work is perfect for what the role requires. I can say the same for Cullen, but the weird thing about it is that Optimus has become a lot more violent in his fight scenes. He's almost sociopathic. But Cullen still brings a lot of intensity to the role and I enjoyed him a lot.

And this brings us to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a Victoria's Secret model making her acting debut. Hired as a replacement for Megan Fox (who was fired by Steven Spielberg, the trilogy's executive producer, after she likened Bay to Adolf Hitler), Huntington-Whiteley was brought on solely for her looks. If you don't believe me, then her first appearance in the movie should be proof. The first time we see her in the movie, the camera is pointing right at her butt as she walks around in just her underwear. Yeah.

But Huntington-Whiteley isn't all that bad. She's roughly equal to Fox in terms of acting talent, which means she's still a pretty awful actress all around. But she at least puts forth more effort than Fox ever has. There's a scene where she needles Megatron into picking a fight with Sentinel Prime, and she's actually pretty good in the scene. The only bad part about the whole thing is that Huntington-Whiteley's character isn't an action girl like Fox's was. Fox's character was more than willing to jump into a fight, as evidenced in the first movie when she steals a tow truck and helps Bumblebee get back into the climactic fight scene. But Huntington-Whiteley's character actually tells Sam not to try saving Bumblebee lest he be killed too. Yeah, it means that her character cares for Sam, but this is an action movie. If she'd actually told Sam to go save him and got involved to boot, I think it would have made the character (and Huntington-Whiteley's performance) more likable. But still, for a model with absolutely zero acting experience, she shows at least a little promise, which is more than I can say for Fox.

I know this review puts me in the minority, but I enjoyed Dark of the Moon. It's dumb, mindless entertainment, but that's not always a bad thing. I enjoy a little dumb fun once in a while. And even though it's too damn long, the movie was an entertaining ride from start to finish. Screw the negative reviews, I enjoyed Dark of the Moon. I'd have probably liked it more had Bay used "The Touch" by Stan Bush on the soundtrack. The fact that somebody's made three Transformers movies without it is a damn shame.

Final Rating: **½

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

While there are some who will lump sequels in with remakes and reboots as evidence of Hollywood's lack of originality, I don't have a problem with them. Me and sequels are cool. What I don't like, though, are bad sequels. You know what I mean, those sequels that are so awful that they make you resent the original movie.

Take, for example, the sequel to Michael Bay's live-action adaptation of the Transformers toy line. The first movie wasn't too bad; it was actually a pretty entertaining ride. But the sequel — Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — is a total piece of flaming dog crap. It's a terrible movie from start to finish, and I'm gonna tell you why.

We pick things up two years after the events of the previous movie. Optimus Prime (the voice of Peter Cullen) and the Autobots have teamed with an elite squad of soldiers from around the world to create "NEST," a group dedicated to hunting down and eliminating the Decepticons that are still in hiding. But this is of little concern to Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) as he prepares to head for college. While he is initially only worried about maintaining a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), things will soon get much worse for him. Sam stumbles upon a fragment of the AllSpark, which fills his mind with alien symbols to the point that he begins having a series of mental breakdowns.

It turns out these symbols contain clues to finding an energy source hidden on Earth by a cabal of Transformers thousands of years ago. If the Decepticons were to discover its location, it would bring ultimate power to an ancient Decepticon known as "The Fallen" (the voice of Tony Todd) and destroy the planet in the process. Aware of the threat, the Autobots and their soldier teammates travel to Egypt's pyramids to wage war on the Decepticons.

I've seen bad sequels before, but holy cow. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is without a doubt not only one of the worst sequels I've ever seen, but one of the most irritating movies I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. Watching it, I got the impression that it has nothing but absolute contempt for its audience. This movie hates every single person who watches it and thus chooses to be as unpleasant as possible as a means of torturing us. And what gets me is that in spite of the overwhelmingly negative reviews, this piece of crap still brought in a worldwide box office gross of over 800 million dollars. I can't even begin to fathom that. Are moviegoers so stupid that they're willing to give a horrible movie nearly a billion dollars just because it has the Transformers name on it? That can't be true, can it?

While I felt his work on the first movie helped make it an entertaining watch, Michael Bay's direction on Revenge of the Fallen is terrible. It's like Bay compiled a checklist of all the clichés he's known for and put them together into one movie. It's full of explosions and overbearing action sequences, jittery camerawork that's more annoying than anything else, soldiers kicking ass, and visual effects that are admittedly pretty damn good. But watching even five minutes of the movie was enough to give me a headache. It's an all-out assault on the senses, appearing as if Bay has made a movie that practically beats you over the head with itself.

Bay's direction is unbearable, but it doesn't help that he's backed up by a terrible script too. Credited to Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, the script is absolutely atrocious. For starters, they spend way too much time focusing on the human characters when I wanted to see more of the Transformers. I thought the movie was called Transformers, not Shia LaBeouf's Wacky Egyptian Adventure. I just wanna see some alien robots fighting and not have a bunch of crappy people crammed down my throat. Is that too much to ask?

It really wouldn't be so bad if the human characters hadn't been so dreadfully written. Sam's mother was annoying enough in the first movie, but Kruger, Orci, and Kurtzman decided to crank it up by having her run around like a moron after eating a bunch of pot brownies. A combination of the awful writing and Julie White's terrible acting make this a character that I honestly wanted to strangle. And the fact that Sam's parents turn up during the climax despite having outlived what little usefulness they had within the first twenty minutes of the movie makes their presence practically unbearable.

But they're not the only useless characters, oh no. There's Sam's roommate, a one-joke character who gets old really quickly. There's some useless bureaucrat who keeps bugging NEST about random crap. And let's not forget those two Autobots who pretty much everyone everyone hated. You know the ones: the ones that are pretty much every negative stereotype of modern African-American culture all rolled into a pair of CGI robots. The two characters are frustratingly irritating, every second they're on screen feeling like torture. There is no humor in their attempts at comic relief, no amusement in their antics. They're to Revenge of the Fallen what Jar Jar Binks was to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

And then there's the cast, who are okay at best. Some of the actors are terrible, particularly Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam's parents and Ramón Rodriguez as his roommate. And Megan Fox isn't particularly thrilling either, but considering that she's only here for her looks and not whatever acting talent she may have, that's to be expected. I will say, though, that there were a few performances that I did like. One came from John Turturro, who I thought was a lot of fun. He's better at providing the comic relief than any other factor in the movie, mainly because he's actually amusing (unlike all the other crap in this movie). And I'll confess to enjoying Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf isn't quite as good as I thought he was in the first movie, mainly because not as much is asked of him. But he's still likable and charming in the role, and as poorly written as the human characters are, LaBeouf still manages to bring a little substance to the table.

I also enjoyed the voice work contributed Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Hugo Weaving as Megatron, and Tony Todd as The Fallen. Cullen once again plays Optimus with the heroic presence he needs. But he's played Optimus for so long that I'm pretty sure it's old hat for him by now. Weaving always plays great villains no matter what, so it's no surprise his voice acting here is great. And as for Tony Todd, the guy was pretty much created to play characters with awesome voices. He can be incredibly intimidating when he wants to be, so Todd plays The Fallen perfectly.

Unfortunately, Revenge of the Fallen is still really bad. It's more disappointing than anything else, considering that I did enjoy the first movie. The fact that they actually put time and effort into making this thing and at least didn't try to keep it from sucking is just sad. And I still have yet to figure out how it made so much money despite being so awful, but I guess there are some questions that will never be answered. One hopes that the third movie in the trilogy learns from the second one's mistakes. The reviews aren't great, but I'm hoping that when I get around to seeing Dark of the Moon will at least be slightly better than this piece of crap.

Final Rating: *½

Transformers (2007)

I've never made my affection for the 1980s a secret. I'm still a sucker for the cartoons and toy lines of the decade, but one I never particularly got into as a kid was Hasbro's Transformers. Based on two separate Japanese toylines, the Transformers were a huge success, thanks to the Marvel comic book and the immensely popular animated cartoon. Although the Transformers have been around in some form or fashion since their creation in 1984, their popularity cooled significantly as the '80s ended. But they were brought headlong into the new millennium by Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay with a live-action motion picture. And while the diehard Transformers fans seemed to find any tiny little thing to complain about when the movie was released in 2007, it wasn't that bad.

The star of the show is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a dorky teenager who's looking to buy his first car. Though he'd wanted something newer, all he's able to afford is a beat-up '76 Camaro. But Sam still tries making the most of it, offering rides to resident hottie Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and trying to win her over. But when the car starts behaving erratically, Sam learns that it actually isn't a car at all, but really a robot from another planet.

The robot, named Bumblebee, is in truth an advance scout for the Autobots, a small army of similar robots who are able to disguise themselves as human vehicles. The Autobots arrive on Earth soon after Sam discovers Bumblebee's true nature, and reveal just who they are to him. They have come to the planet to protect Sam from the malevolent Decepticons, another army of robots who have been warring with the Autobots for centuries.

Optimus Prime (the voice of Peter Cullen), the leader of the Autobots, reveals to Sam that he unknowingly holds the key to finding a powerful energy source known as the AllSpark. If the Autobots can obtain it, they will be able to revive their war-ravaged planet. But if it were to fall into the hands of the Decepticons, there would be dire consequences. Sam and Mikaela find themselves stuck in the crossfire of this new iteration of the war, which has drawn the attention of Sector Seven, a secret government agency that views Transformers both good and evil as a threat to national security.

Transformers fans were quick to proclaim that the franchise had been ruined forever with the release of the movie. But really, it's just that they were upset because Michael Bay played with his toys differently than they did. I mean, how dare Bay make a feature-length toy commercial that didn't live up to their unreachable standards? The way they talked, you'd think that Transformers was the worst movie ever made. But it's not as bad as they'd lead you to believe. It's not going to be considered an all-time classic, but it's one of those summer blockbusters that are way more fun that they should be.

Look up "style over substance" in the dictionary, and you'll see a list of Michael Bay's movies. Transformers is no different. But you don't really need a lot of substance in a movie about giant robots from outer space that come to Earth and fight each other. And that's what makes Bay perfect to direct this movie. The movie is basically a 143-minute toy commercial, so why not get a director known more for flash and pizzazz than anything else? I mean, if you want a guy to make a movie with emphasis on action, explosions, special effects, and not much else, Bay definitely the guy for you.

Bay isn't exactly known for making good movies. But the guy's got style in spades, and because of that, Transformers at least looks cool. The special effects are amazing, and frankly, I thought the cinematography was fantastic. The movie looks gorgeous at the very least. And the action scenes are actually really cool, really exciting. It's nothing revolutionary, nothing we haven't seen a bazillion times from Bay, but for Transformers, it works.

It's a shame that the script, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, is kinda lackluster, though. There are so many scenes and elements that could have been excised from the script — or removed by Bay during the editing process — that wouldn't have been missed. Did we really need every single one those scenes with the soldiers? Did we really need the subplot with the hackers trying to decode some Decepticon transmission? (Considering that none of the characters from that subplot not only disappear with no payoff near the end of the movie but aren't in the sequels, I'm gonna say no.) They could have established the government's awareness of the Transformers a lot more smoothly than that. If they'd kept it to just the "Sector Seven" thing, they'd have been alright. And did we absolutely have to have that scene where Sam locks his parents out of his bedroom as he looks for a clue for the AllSpark's location and his parents ask if he as diddling himself. The scene was protracted for way too friggin' long and accomplished absolutely nothing. If all the unnecessary fluff had been removed either by Orci and Kurtzman or by Bay, then the movie wouldn't have been two and a half hours long. They could have reined it in at a more tolerable two hours.

Last on my list is the cast, who are okay. Not great, not awful, but okay. I did like Shia LaBeouf, who turns in as good a performance as he can despite the character being written with too many silly, over-the-top moments. The guy is a lot of fun with the right material, and in the instances where Orci and Kurtzman didn't run off the rails with the character, LaBeouf is pretty good. I also really liked John Turturro, who plays the leader of Sector Seven. I usually enjoy Turturro's work anyway, but here, he's particularly funny.

I just wish that I could say that Megan Fox was as good as LaBeouf and Turturro. This was her first big role, and in retrospect, it probably should have been her only big role. We'd have been saved from Jennifer's Body if she hadn't been so overexposed following the success of Transformers. And I don't know why people made such a big deal out of her anyway, considering she's an absolutely dreadful actress. Outside of being pretty, Fox brings nothing to the table. I know that the only reason she's even in the movie at all is because of her looks, but aren't there any good-looking actresses out there with actual talent? There has to be, right? I know it's about four years too late to change it, but geez, there had to have been someone who auditioned for the role of Mikaela who was better than Fox.

At least they made up for it by bringing in Peter Cullen to once again voice Optimus Prime. I was never a fan of the Transformers cartoon, but Cullen's work as Optimus was something that I always thought was awesome. He makes the character sound authoritative yet heroic, just like you'd imagine Optimus should sound. Outside of the distinctive transforming sound effect, Cullen's voice is probably the most famous part of the Transformers franchise, and it's easy to understand why.

Transformers isn't a great movie, but it's most certainly a fun one. And really, being entertaining is all you need sometimes. I'm not going to be one of those guys who cries foul because the movie wasn't what I wanted. I don't have those nostalgic "warm fuzzies" for the Transformers that other people do, so I'm gonna say yeah, I liked the movie. Now if only they hadn't made Revenge of the Fallen...

Final Rating: ***

The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

I was born in that awkward grey area where I could be labelled as among the youngest members of "Generation X," or among the oldest members of "Generation Y." Because of that, I like to refer to myself as belonging to "Generation X½." And I could be a little biased, but the Gen X½'ers around my age had the coolest childhoods ever. The toys were cooler, the TV shows were cooler, the movies were cooler, and the cartoons were cooler. And thanks to Ronald Reagan, we were the first to see a new way products were marketed to kids.

Prior to the '80s, the Federal Communications Commission strictly regulated how things were advertised to youngsters. But in 1984, the FCC decided to open the floodgates and do away with most of their restrictions. Thanks to this, toy manufacturers started making their own cartoons based on their products. Soon we were seeing cartoon versions of G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, M.A.S.K., the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, and countless others. And let's not forget one of the more memorable ones, the Transformers.

The creation of Hasbro, the Transformers began as a series of action figures before transitioning to their own popular syndicated cartoon not long after the FCC dropped their restrictions. The cartoon even inspired a movie, appropriately titled The Transformers: The Movie. It was the second animated movie released in the summer of 1986 that was based on Hasbro toys, following My Little Pony: The Movie. Both underperformed so badly that Hasbro's yet-to-be-released G.I. Joe animated movie had its theatrical release cancelled and was sent direct to video.

And although the movie was a critical and financial failure, long-time Transformers fans continue to hold it in high regard. I wasn't really into the Transformers when I was a kid, and I thus have no sort of nostalgic feelings for it. So let's see if the movie holds up for an outsider looking in.

It is the distant year 2005, and the villainous Decepticons have conquered the Transformer homeworld, Cybertron. Forced to retreat to Cyberton's moons, the heroic Autobots aren't willing to take this sitting down, and make plans for an attack. They launch a supply shuttle to their base on Earth, but the Decepticons catch wind of this and launch a full-scale assault on Earth.

The Autobots manage to repel their enemies, but not before their commander, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), is mortally wounded by the Decepticon leader, Megatron (Frank Welker). Before he dies, Optimus Prime chooses Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) to succeed him as leader of the Autobots, bestowing upon him a powerful talisman known as the "Autobot Matrix of Leadership." With his dying words, he states that the Matrix of Leadership will shine a light when the Autobots are in their darkest hour.

Meanwhile, a fuel shortage in their spaceship prompts the fleeing Decepticons to lighten the load by throwing their wounded out the airlock, including the injured Megatron. As the remaining Decepticon lieutenants argue over who will be the new leader, the castoffs are left to drift through space. They ultimately encounter Unicron (Orson Welles), a planet-sized machine that consumes other planets for fuel. Unicron retrieves them and offers to rebuild them on the condition that they destroy the Matrix, the only thing that could possibly destroy him. Megatron reluctantly agrees, and is reborn as Galvatron (Leonard Nimoy).

Galvatron's first order of business is to destroy his treacherous underling Starscream (Chris Latta), taking command of the Decepticons as he did when he was Megatron. He then finds Ultra Magnus and defeats him long enough to steal the Matrix. With Ultra Magnus out of commission, Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) steps in to lead the Autobots on a mission to reclaim the Matrix, defeat Unicron, and take out the Decepticons once and for all.

If you don't eat, sleep, and breathe Transformers, you probably aren't going to like The Transformers: The Movie that much. In fact, I'll guarantee you won't. The whole thing is utter nonsense from start to finish, thanks to ugly animation and terrible writing. But I'd be stupid to expect anything more out of it. The movie was produced with the sole purpose of selling toys, so if Hasbro's stock went up after this, good for them. But since I've always been relatively indifferent to the Transformers, I can't really see why the movie is so beloved. Yeah, there are the stories of kids losing their minds because Optimus Prime died, but I couldn't get over how bad the movie is. Maybe it's one of those cases where I'd appreciate it more if I were a kid in 1986 instead of as an adult in 2009.

Let's start this critique with the animation, courtesy of Toei Animation. It might have worked for a Saturday morning TV show, but for a motion picture to be released theatrically, it sucks. It looks cheap, to be blunt. Half the time, I wasn't quite sure what was supposed to be going on, since the animation didn't strike me as being very detailed. The scaling is inconsistent as well, because some characters appear larger or smaller depending on what was needed for the shot. And let's not forget the handful of sequences where I would swear that the animators were just repeating a few frames over and over in order to get the necessary shots.

At least it was counterbalanced by the movie's awesome music. From the great synth-oriented score composed by Vince DiCola to the rockin' soundtrack, the music is nothing short of spectacular. Okay, I'll admit that twenty years of musical evolution have made the songs kinda cheesy in retrospect. But don't tell me you can't listen to Lion's version of the Transformers theme song or "The Touch" by Stan Bush and not get a little excited. And even though the use of Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare to Be Stupid" at one point seems really out of nowhere considering the rest of the songs, the music is totally awesome.

Unfortunately, Ron Friedman's script isn't so fantastic. It's actually the exact opposite of fantastic. The plot is insane and disjointed, the dialogue is forgettable, and it moves from one scene to another seemingly at random. There's pretty much zero character development, so unless you've seen every single episode of the cartoon, you're not going to know anything about anyone in the movie.

And oddly, the movie actually has a pretty huge body count, while a lot of brand new Transformers appear for the very first time with barely an introduction. Turns out it's because Hasbro wanted to kill off as many of the original Transformers as they could so they could roll out their newest product line. Classic characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron don't even appear on the poster, because they've been replaced by all these new Transformers. Just as the show was a commercial for toys, the movie is a commercial for new toys. Maybe that's why Friedman's writing is so sloppy. Why bother coming up with anything substantial when all you're really supposed to do is make sure a bunch of new toys get face time while pushing the old ones out of the way?

Last on my list is the voice acting, done by a combination of big-time actors and the usual people from the TV show. The most talked-about member of the cast is Orson Welles, who died just five days after recording his dialogue. They supposedly had to run his voice through all kinds of computer filters to make it sound presentable, though you still get the feeling that Welles just didn't care at all. (And if I'd gone from making Citizen Kane to doing voice-over work as a planet-eating giant robot in an 84-minute toy commercial, I probably wouldn't care about too many things anymore.)

The rest of the cast, though, aren't too bad. Among the famous names who contributed, the only negative part came from John Moschitta, who you may or may not remember as the fast-talking guy from the FedEx and Micro Machines commercials back in the '80s. The whole fast-taking thing is okay for commercials, but having him play a character that talks at super-speed every time he shows up is annoying. But as a whole, the celebrity voices — which include Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, Monty Python member Eric Idle, Casey Kasem, Judd Nelson, and Scatman Crothers in his final movie — aren't bad, even if they're only really there to collect a paycheck.

As for the usual Transformer voice actors, it's just business as usual for them. Among them, the only really memorable work comes from Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. He's simply fantastic. Cullen makes Optimus Prime sound like the proud, inspiring hero he should be, and if there's one positive thing I can say about the Transformers property as a whole, it's that Cullen rules.

But honestly, I can't say that I'd recommend The Transformers: The Movie to anyone that isn't already a huge Transformers fan to begin with. If you aren't already a fan, I doubt this flick will convert you. I'm convinced that only the truly die-hard Transformers aficionados, the ones who absolutely cannot get enough of it, will love this movie.

Me, on the other hand... I didn't care too much for it. I'm sorry, Transformers fans, but it just wasn't for me. There are some really cool parts, granted. But for me, those cool parts are ultimately few and far between. So while I'd give it a higher rating if I were a fan, I can't justify giving The Transformers: The Movie more than two stars on the Sutton Scale. I keep saying it, but if I were more into the franchise, I'd have probably been able to appreciate it more.

Final Rating: **