I couldn't find a recent Transformers thread, so I'm just posting this instead, because I wrote a review for shits and giggles.
A Transformers review, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Watching Giant Robots Beat the Living Shit Out Of Each Other, Holy Nun Punching Christ.
I'd just like to start by saying that this movie is quite possibly the best piece of Hollywood cinema ever created. Michael Bay is a schlock merchant. Michael Bay is overblown action sequences. Michael Bay is appalling dialogue. Michael Bay is entirely superfluous subplots. This movie is his The Winter of Our Discontent. It is the single most Micheal Bay movie that could possibly be made. There is no doubt in my mind that after this movie, any disaster on a particularly epic scale will be referred to as "Bay-tacular". Hollywood might as well abandon the mindless action flick forever, because Michael Bay has made a movie with the most awful, hilariously tacky dialogue, the most fist pumping action sequences, the most superfluous subplot, and the most gapingly obvious plot holes. Oh good lord the plot holes. Everytime something blatently disregarded the laws of physics, everytime something made absolutely no sense, I had a massive grin on my face. At first I thought it might have been a satire of his previous movies, but god I hope not. Satire is for pretentious wankers. I don't think I could have enjoyed this movie if it was attempting to be satirical instead of merely extraordinarily bad. Your average action movie has crazy-awesome action scenes, and a thinly drawn out subplot with some of the worst lines ever spoken to a camera in film history. Instead of a subplot, Transformers had a kind of anti-subplot, a black hole of creativity if you will. I pray to god that this movie does "the bidness" as they say, so that we will see a kind of nuclear arms race in Hollywood, that they will try to outdo each other in just how ridiculously awful they can make the scenes between action in their movies. For years, they've been merely content to settle at the peaceful level of "pretty fucking terrible", but this movie has brought new vigour and fire into the game.
The writing was so bad that throughout the movie I was constantly debating with myself how intentionally bad it was. I don't know dick or fuck about scriptwriting, so I couldn't tell if they had to get a team of Harvard graduates in to create this beautiful piece of work, or if they just opened the doors and got whatever cheap hacks they could get to literally write for peanuts. (Insert a thousand monkeys joke here). The dialogue was akin to a Merzbow album in that it seemed designed to be as offensively bad as possible, by a highly skilled hand. No mere hack could have penned something as cheesy as one of the final lines in the movie. The hero, who I will refer to as "Igon", and his white trash girlfriend who I will refer to as "Tits n' Lips" exchange teary sentiments as the sky casts a brilliant orange behind them, as we wait for the expected line of "I love you" dialogue and a big ol' kiss. The music swells and she says "No matter what happens.... I'm glad I got in that car with you"
I need to see this movie multiple times with a notepad to record all my favorite bits of dialogue. I want them as soundbytes on my computer whenever I close a window or get an instant message. There are so many I can't even remember any of them anymore.
[Maybe Spoilers?]Oh god, and Starscream. FUCKING STAR SCREAM. I don't think I've ever been so pleased as when he just punched the living shit out of that fighter jet in mid air, transformed back, flew onto another jet and repeated the process. Honestly, he was only in the movie for five minutes and he stole the show. I am highly anticipating the sequel "Starscream the Musical"[/Maybe Spoilers?]
God, I have so many more thoughts on this movie. However, since at the moment, most of them are just "HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT GIANT FUCKING ROBOT DO THE THING?!?!?!" I'm going to leave it at this.
And as a postscript, I would like to say I know it kind of sounds like I am ironically trashing this movie. I'm not. I enjoyed this movie. I enjoyed this movie more than any other movie I have seen this year so far. In fact, I'm honestly a little concerned that this movie was so good, that I am not going to be able to see another action movie ever again for fear of how poorly it will stack up against this movie. This movie has made me think that maybe Die Hard 4 is not going to be particularly fantastic. That is how fucking amazing this movie was.