The Movies

I was born in the year 2000, so I was seven years old when the first live action Transformers movie came out. It wasn't my first introduction to the franchise like it was to a large group of fans, but I enjoyed it as much as a seven year old can enjoy a loud bombastic action movie with the added benefit of already knowing the characters. I have quite a lot of nostalgia for the first transformers movie since it was a large part of my childhood.

The first movie is a pretty good and fun action comedy, the stronger focus on the alien aspect of the transformers is an interesting angle to take, though I'm not particularly fond of the designs, the Autobots and Decepticons look like 2 different Cybertronian subspecies making the war aspect seem more about race rather than ideals, like if you're built as a decepticon you're automatically evil and also you look like an inhuman beast while the autobots are more humanoid and automatically good, it's not entirely relevant but it has always bugged me. The first movie sets up a lot for potential sequels...

Too bad Revenge of the Fallen didn't have a script when they started filming.

Okay, ROTF has a lot of interesting concepts and ideas in it, it's just the execution of those ideas that falls flat.

For instance ROTF features 3 different types of combiners; the Ice-cream Twins shearing an alt mode Micromaster combiner style, Devastator obviously, and Jet Optimus a la Armada. I also quite liked the introduction of more Autobots, though other than Sideswipe and the Twins they were barely in it which sucked. Leo was pointless and annoying. Prime dying was fine I guess, but it didn't really add much tension since everyone knew he wasn't going to stay dead, but removing him from the story was the only way to allow the plot to happen (Something Bay struggles with in the future).

The Fallen was fine, Devastator could've been handled better, Jetfire was fun, The Twins (while annoying) were tolerable, and the only major problem is the writing.

The plot is way too convoluted, it meanders a lot, and there's a very litteral use of Deus Ex Machina.

Dark of the Moon is better than Revenge of the Fallen, the plot is still overly convoluted and there's still too much focus on the humans but the alien invasion narrative is good and it's surprisingly absent from a lot of transformers media other than AHM. They didn't need to cover the whole space race to explain the moon landing, the movie could've started with Apollo 11 landing on the moon and nothing narratively would've been lost.

The whole Megan fox drama hurt this film a little, Carly is a fine character but her introduction is a little rushed and it feels like she stole Michaela's character arc. (Also, slightly unrelated, if Michaela broke up with Sam, why does he still have her dog? surely she would want to keep her own pet.)

Anyway, Megatron being a truck is cool, Soundwave is awesome, Laserbeak being able to turn into anything is an interesting ability.

basically everything before the Decepticons invade (apart from the highway chase with the dreads) isn't very interesting, the movie.

The alien invasion aspect s the most interesting part of the film, the fact that it shares many plot elements with the G1 episodes 'The Ultimate Doom' and 'Megatron's Master Plan' is quite interesting.

When Age of Extinction came out I was an angsty 14 year old who thought he knew everything. I'd watched a lot of reviews about the other 3 movies and like a sheep I convinced myself I agreed with all of them, so I had soured slightly on the live action transformers movies when Trans4mers crashed into cinemas. I enjoyed it, the new robot designs and the semi soft reboot approach which introduced a whole new cast meant that AOE felt a lot fresher than dark of the moon did, it felt like the start of a cool new trilogy that would explore the deep lore of the franchise, it set up so much for an expansive transformers universe, much like the first movie it created a lot of sequel potential with the mystery of the creators and Galvatron...

But, much like revenge of the fallen, The Last Knight didn't cash in on any of the build up of the previous film. I consider TLK to be the worst in the whole series. It effectively retconned most of Age of Extinction by reverting Galvatron back to Megatron with no explanation at all, the introduction of Quintessa makes no sense with the previous introduction of the creators. the reappearance of Cybertron now contradicts the ending of Dark of the moon, the Knights of Iacon storyline contradicts Revenge of the Fallen and Quintessa contradicts the allspark from the first movie. The Last Knight is a continuity Nightmare.

Overall I quite enjoy the Micheal Bay transformers movies, though I'm not as enamoured with them as a lot of fans seem to be. They aren't great but I appreciate what they did for the franchise. They made Transformers relevant to a wider audience, however the downside of that is the very same wider audience sees transformers as nothing more than a loud, dumb summer blockbuster. Not to say that transformers was ever high art, it is a toy brand at the end of the day, but it's still worthy of more respect than the movies give it credit for.

Bumblebee was a breath of fresh air after the decade of overall negative energy surrounding the transformers' place in pop culture. I love Bumblebee, it is by far the best transformers movie, not to say the Micheal Bay films are all terrible but they all failed to capture the spirit of transformers as a whole like Bumblebee did. It's not the best Transformers Movie, but it is the best Transformers movie. The Micheal Bay films were action summer blockbusters first and transformers movies second, this can be seen in the most common complaint about them, not enough focus on the supposed main characters. Bumblebee is the main character of the film, sure Charlie is the human protagonist and Hailee Steinfeld is the star, but she isn't introduced into the film until 10 minutes in.

However, public opinion wasn't unanimous on this one. Because there were 11 years between Bumblebee and the first film there were some fans who had become transformers fans through the movies who were displeased by the fact that the Bayverse didn't have a satisfying conclusion and that Bumblebee is a reboot rather than a prequel. I personally had grown very tired of watching the same big dumb action movie every two years and having all of my favourite characters sidelined for a human cast I don't care about. I can see where the movie fans were coming from in that TLK ended on a cliffhanger and alluded to Unicron waking up in the next movie, but that was never going to happen or at least it would've been terribly executed and he would've died immediately.

I respect the movie fans for working so hard to get any enjoyment out of these movies other than the base level adrenaline rush of watching an action movie. Most of the tfmovie fandom on youtube seems to be focused around fan theories and ancillary media, there's very little focus on the movies themselves, I would've thought that a fresh start that actually focused on the transformers rather than the humans would appeal to them since it would mean they wouldn't need to work so hard to enjoy things.

Bumblebee is more fulfilling at face value than any of the other films, it has much more emphasis on character than the other films, Bumblebee himself is more than just a car and a killing machine, he genuinely has a personality.

Knight reinvigorated the transformers movies, and the tie in song by Hailee Steinfeld is very apt.