When I was 9-years old I saw Michael Bay’s The Rock. I reacted in such a way that a 9-year old would react in that it floored me. It was an intense trip and it was a movie that I couldn’t forget. Actually it was Hans Zimmer’s score I couldn’t forget, and Zimmer’s score for that movie is what inspired me to become a filmmaker. I own every single film Michael Bay has done and after every movie he does I usually read the onslaught of hatred directed at his movies. Critics hate Michael Bay for one reason and that is because he is one dimensional. Is that so bad though? The man can do action and will always do action. From an action movie perspective he does pretty entertaining work. Armageddon is probably his weakest movie in the small handful of flicks that he has done. He tried to be epic in Pearl Harbor but he leaned too much on action. The result was a long wannabe war film. The Bad Boys films are pure adrenaline fun in the tradition of Lethal Weapon with The Island being his first film that had a message. The Rock is just a simply amazing action film with strong characters. With Transformers we get Bay’s biggest piece of eye candy yet.
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To be honest, when I first heard of this movie I immediately dismissed it. When Bay was named the director I thought what could he do with a movie about toys? I never liked Transformers; I wasn’t into that when I was a kid. Luckily Michael Bay made this movie for fans and non-fans. The story revolves around Sam Witwicky; an awkward teenager who gets his first car. Little does he know that his first car is actually an Autobot sent to Earth to retrieve a possession of his. His great grandfather was an explorer who discovered Megatron frozen in the Arctic Circle. Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons who are at war with the Autobots. Both sides are after a talisman called the Allspark which grants unlimited power to the one who possesses it. The Allspark landed on Earth so now the war continues.
The first third of the film basically sets up our characters, and we get Michael Bay’s trademark way of starting things off lightly. The first scene is usually an indication of the main conflict of the film and then we jump to our characters that are unaware of the situation. Trust me; all his movies usually start that way. What follows is 2.5 hours of trademark Michael Bay. Things go boom, places get destroyed and people run all the while being shot with 9 different cameras running at high frame rates. There are two kinds of Michael Bay movies, and those are non-CGI heavy action movies and CGI heavy action movies. Transformers is the latter and here we see some of the most impressive visual effects ever seen in an action movie. The amount of detail that was put into the robots is amazing. You truly feel their weight and presence in the environment. Their interaction with the environment around them is what makes them so believable. Something that George Lucas didn’t do in his newest Star Wars films which led everything to look cartoonish and awkward. The film brings CGI into the real world and not the other way around, so there is limited use of green-screen. The action is shot in pure Michael Bay style. There will be some scenes in slow motion that have human characters running away with the massive robots battling in the background. Those scenes impressively show off the CG work. Another Bay trademark is the “low-angle swoosh” in where the camera is placed low and does usually circles or passes by a character. Then you have the score.
Steve Jablonsky had been a long time collaborator with Hans Zimmer. Every single Michael Bay movie has been scored by one of Zimmer’s collaborators or Zimmer himself. Bad Boys was done by Mark Mancina, Bad Boys 2 was Trevor Rabin, Armageddon was Trevor Rabin also, The Rock was by Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith with some help from Harry Gregson-Williams, Pearl Harbor was Hans Zimmer, and he found Steve Jablonsky with The Island. Jablonksy had never done a high profile movie by himself, but Hans Zimmer stood as score producer and Jablonsky delivered an amazing electronic/synth based score. Jablonsky was my main reason for wanting to see Transformers and again he delivers a high profile action movie score that would make Hans Zimmer proud. He borrows heavily from Zimmer’s Batman Begins, in that the score is not that complex. It does its job and makes the action so much more intense and awe inspiring.
We get a great performance from Shia LaBeouf who carries the film easily. After this and Indiana Jones 4 coming up it will only be a matter of time until we start seeing him in serious dramatic roles. There is a bright future for this rising star. The voice acting for the Transformers was done to be as close to the original movie as possible. Peter Cullen reprises his role as Optimus Prime. When casting for Megatron Michael Bay decided the original voice actor’s voice aged too much so he was replaced by Hugo Weaving from The Matrix Trilogy. We get supporting performances from Jon Voight, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and Anthony Anderson.
Transformers is great summer fare. Michael Bay will never win an Academy Award but he is the best at what he does, which is directing action. The only problem with the film is that at times it falls into melodrama, and melodrama with robots can make your eyes roll. It also becomes a big commercial for GM since it profiles about every brand of car they produce. Other than that the film will entertain immensely and you will not feel like you wasted money on another summer dud.
