Like lots of folks who grew up in the 80s, I enjoyed watching the Transformers weekly commercials animated series and of course playing with those awesome toys.
And like lots of folks who grew up enjoying them, I was pretty excited when the first live-action Transformers movie came out. And thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. But unfortunately, as they often do, the studio saw dollar signs after that movie became a smash hit, and so they kept coming out with new movies. I watched all of them over the years as they came out, but recently decided to binge the entire series to see if the sequels were indeed as bad as I remembered. Spoiler: they are.
Transformers (2007). As I said above, the first movie is actually pretty good. Yes, it has some ridiculous moments (“Hey! We need to do battle with giant deadly robots! Let’s go to the nearest big city rather than doing that out here in the desert!”) and the beginning of the franchise’s very big problem with the way it treats its female characters, but overall it is a fun special effects romp that still manages to keep things reasonably grounded in a human story. There’s no question that there was a lot of promise shown here. Transformers can be streamed on HBO Max. (Rotten Tomatoes: 58%. My rating: 3 out of 5.)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). The first movie set up the idea that Megatron accidentally crashed in the Arctic thousands of years ago and the Transformers kind of didn’t know where he was but they came to Earth because the Allspark (the first of the series’ many stupidly named MacGuffins) was here. In the first sequel, we learn that no, actually, they’ve been here a lot longer than that, and really, they came here because … you know what? The series comes up with a new “why they come here” so many times that even though I watched all of the movies in a single week, I still couldn’t keep track. Anyway, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and John Turturro all reprise their roles from the first movie. We learn fun things like the fact that right outside of the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. is a large desert airplane graveyard with mountains on the horizon, because by this, only the second film, they’d already given up caring. Of course there’s plenty of the misogyny here that is a trademark of almost all of the movies, but Revenge of the Fallen doubles down by also being built around the racist theory that the Egyptians didn’t build the pyramids. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen can be rented from Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and other services. (Rotten Tomatoes: 20%. My rating: 2 out of 5.)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). At least Megan Fox was smart enough to jump off this sinking ship, so the male gaze component of the series had to get picked up by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Otherwise, the third movie again follows Sam Witwicky as he gets jealous that his girlfriend might be looked at by other men, tries to get a job from Steve Buschemi, and fights Decepticons led by Leonard Nimoy and an inexplicably resurrected Megatron. (In some ways, it’s almost good that they didn’t bother to explain this. The movie was already too long as it is, and whatever reason they gave would have assuredly be very dumb.) The stupid plot device here is that the entire Apollo program was actually because we found a Transformers ship on the moon that crashed with a MacGuffin on board (because it turns out that’s why they keep coming to Earth), and they even got the real Buzz Aldrin to show up in a scene and explain that Apollo 11 landed right next to the crashed ship (which, for the record, is definitely not on the dark side of the moon). Transformers: Dark of the Moon can be streamed on Paramount+. (Rotten Tomatoes: 35%. My rating: 2 out of 5.)
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). Even LaBeouf had enough, so a few years after the Big Battle in Chicago from the last movie, Mark Walhberg, a crazy “inventor” and very sexist father of Nicola Peltz, discovers Optimus Prime, but only after an introductory scene in which we learn that no, the Transformers have actually been here since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, because by now muttering the word “continuity” on set was grounds for immediate firing. There are about 10,000 characters, both human and robot, we’re supposed to keep track of in this absolute mess of a film that somehow ends up with dinosaur Transformers (because of course) fighting human-made Transformers that have the ability to break into component nano-bot parts whenever they need to (except whenever it’s convenient for that to not work because at some point the good guys have to win). Oh, and this movie is 2 hours, 45 freaking minutes long, although it manages to feel much, much longer than that. It does, however, contain the most laughably un-self-aware line of the franchise, when Optimus tells one of the dinobots that he’s there to give them freedom, but immediately follows that with, “you will fight for me, or DIE!”. I’m pretty sure Optimus has a very different concept of freedom than you or I. Transformers: Age of Extinction can be streamed on Paramount+. (Rotten Tomatoes: 17%. My rating: 2 out of 5.)
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017). What do you do when you ran out of ideas three movies ago but people keep buying tickets so the studio keeps wanting you to make movies? How about basing a Transformers movie on the Arthurian legend, because at this point, nothing makes sense anymore anyway so why the hell not? Amazingly, constantly referring to the period of time when knights wore full plate armor as “the Dark Ages” is one of the least offensive things in the movie. Walhberg returns, along with Josh Duhamel (whose character has now made it all the way up to the rank of colonel, so that’s nice) and Age of Extinction’s Stanley Tucci, but they’re joined this time by Sir Anthony Hopkins (yes, really) and a blantant C-3P0 rip-off. There isn’t nearly as much male gaze here, but they still make Laura Haddock into a stereotypical bumbling British librarian until she takes off the glasses and is actually a brave, strong, woman who of course almost has to be beautiful. This entry’s MacGuffin is a sword or staff or something similarly dumb that was actually Merlin’s and is the only thing that can stop Optimus Prime, now talking into being evil (because, remember, they long since ran out of ideas), from slamming Cybertron into the Earth. Or something. Honestly at this point I was just trying to get through this series, where every movie so far has been close to, if not over, two and a half hours long. Transformers: The Last Knight can be streamed on Paramount+. (Rotten Tomatoes: 16%. My rating: 1 out of 5.)
Bumblebee (2019). I don’t know who had the two ideas to 1) not let Michael Bay direct and 2) return to the human-level stories that made the first movie work, but in Bumblebee we get an idea of what the franchise might have been. It does begin with “why they’re here, incompatible reason 10,454,867”, but this prequel, set for no particular reason in 1987, sees the titular character sent to Earth as a sort of advance scout after being told by Optimus that he had to make sure that the Decepticons don’t find out about Earth (which is nice, except for everything that happened in all of the other movies), so he crash lands right in the middle of a military training exercise, where he promptly does battle with both the military (led by John Cena) and a Decepticon (because his mission failed before it began?) He barely escapes, and quickly befriends the first fully formed female character of the entire franchise, played by an at-all-times completely clothed Hailee Steinfeld (it’s amazing what a difference not having Bay behind the camera makes.) Despite its early stumbles, the movie really does show that it’s possible to still make a good film in this series. Yes, there are plenty of explosions and action figures punching each other, but there’s also the first hint at real emotional depth in any of the films, and it’s under 2 hours. Bumblebee can be streamed on Paramount+. (Rotten Tomatoes: 90%. My rating: 4 out of 5.)
The series isn’t done yet–Transfomers: Rise of the Beasts is due out next year. But it appears that Bay will have a limited role, and it’s another prequel, so maybe there’s hope? We’ll have to wait and see.
