Transformers (2007) Review

Time: 143 Minutes
Age Rating: contains medium level violence
Cast:
Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky
Tyrese Gibson as Sgt. Robert Epps
Josh Duhamel as Capt. William Lennox
Anthony Anderson as Glen Whitmann
Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes
Rachael Taylor as Maggie Madsen
John Turturro as Agt. Seymour Simmons
Jon Voight as John Keller
Director: Michael Bay

The fate of humanity is at stake when two races of robots, the good Autobots and the villainous Decepticons, bring their war to Earth. The robots have the ability to change into different mechanical objects as they seek the key to ultimate power. Only a human youth, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) can save the world from total destruction.

It’s been ages since I’ve seen the Transformers movies, I’ve only watched up to the third movie in addition to watching Bumblebee back in 2018. I remember enjoying Bay’s Transformers movies when I was younger, but I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about them now. They have a reputation of being mindless large scale action flicks, however the first movie is still somewhat well received, and so I decided to check it out again. It was pretty much what I expected it to be, overlong and full of flaws, but nonetheless pretty entertaining.

The writing of the first Transformers movies is a very mixed bag. The plot itself is passable, but the actual script has its issues. It takes a while for the movie to really pick up with the Transformers, it starts with Shia LaBeouf and him eventually realising that he has a car that’s not just a car. It doesn’t really do much to keep you genuinely interested. Even when Shia meets up with Optimus Prime it doesn’t really grab your interest. It certainly doesn’t help that Transformers is a very long movie at 2 hours and 20 minutes long. It’s really the third act where it excels, as Bay does what Bay does best with all the action. However the movie shouldn’t need to be just an action filled one to be good. For such a straight forward plot, there is just too much going on in the movie. The comedy is also very hit or miss but it at least works better than in the later movies (from what I remember). At least the racial stereotypes are kept to a minimum of 1 in this movie. I’ll say this much, if some of the plot elements in this movie bothers you, definitely don’t check out the other Bay Transformers movies.

The human characters are widely regarded as the worst aspect of these movies. While there are bits about the actual Transformers that don’t work well, the movies would’ve benefited with them being the focus instead. I know that Shia LaBeouf gets a bad rap in these 3 movies but he’s actually alright in this movie at least. Despite how you many feel about his performances in his 3 film appearances, he’s definitely putting everything he can into his role. Megan Fox is also given a bad rap in her Transformers appearances but she isn’t that bad, she’s really not given much to work with, so it’s not really on her either. The romance that LaBeouf and Fox feels really forced and no matter how hard the two of them try, you just don’t buy it. Some of the random comedic side characters don’t really have much point, most of them are meant for comedy. The parents of Shia’s character for one are among the more annoying. John Turturro is also in this movie and is alright. He’s perfectly fine in the movie but I really have no idea why Jon Voight is in this movie, they probably could’ve cast anyone in the role.

You can really feel that Michael Bay directed this movie, for better or for worse. The cinematography has a saturated look to it, there are many dramatic scenes of military giving some really important dialogue, slow motion shots of the American flag and helicopters flying, it’s all here. The action of this movie is generally good, the CGI effects do look a little iffy now, but given the movie is over a decade old, you can cut it some slack. Back in 2007, we hadn’t really seen anything like this before, with a bunch of action involving giant robots. Yes, a lot of the action is over the top, but it’s not necessarily overwhelming.

Yes, Transformers is a silly action movie, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with it. Even though I’m not a fan of the Transformers, I feel like they could be better than just an explosion filled action movie. Still, I had some enjoyment with it. Even if many of Bay’s more annoying clichés and style aspects make their appearance here, it is not as bad as it is in his other movies. If you haven’t seen any of the Transformers movies, it’s at least worth checking out the first one.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Review

Time: 101 Minutes
Age Rating: Medium Level Violence
Cast:
Johnny Knoxville as Leonardo (voice)
Pete Ploszek as Leonardo (motion capture)
Alan Ritchson as Raphael
Noel Fisher as Michelangelo
Jeremy Howard as Donatello
Megan Fox as April O’Neil
Malina Weissman as Young April
Will Arnett as Vern Fenwick
William Fichtner as Eric Sacks
Tony Shalhoub as Splinter (voice)
Danny Woodburn as Splinter (motion capture)
Tohoru Masamune as Shredder
Whoopi Goldberg as Bernadette Thompson
Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Spawned from a lab experiment gone awry, teenage terrapins Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael live in the sewers beneath New York. Although their rodent sensei, Splinter, advises against showing themselves above ground, the justice-loving, pizza-eating brothers can’t stand idly by while evil Shredder and his minions terrorize the city. With help from intrepid reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and her cameraman (Will Arnett), the Turtles set out to save New York.

I wasn’t excited for this film for a number of reasons, first of all I’m not a big TMNT fan and second of all, Michael Bay produced it and at this point it’s not even worth trying to expect good things coming out of him at this point (Though I heard 13 Hours was pretty good). However despite all that this movie really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There are some decent action scenes and I wasn’t really bored throughout this movie. However, it’s still not a good movie and has almost all the elements that made Transformers such a failure.

The film focuses more on April O’Neil, which I think is a pretty big mistake. It’s like how the Transformers movies focussed more on the human over the Transformers. I don’t know why Michael Bay keeps having movies focus on the humans instead of the titular characters, humans aren’t the most interesting characters when the movie has giant mutant turtles. Also the tone was a little too serious, it had the tone of a Transformers movie, that’s the vibe that I got throughout the movie. I don’t know much about TMNT but I do know that they usually have a lighter tone. Also I felt that the story wasn’t very strong, I didn’t particularly care about what was going on, I was just enjoying the action when it was happening.

Megan Fox isn’t a very good actress but she was fine in her role, she didn’t distract as much as I thought she would. The performance that surprisingly annoyed me more was Will Arnett, whose sole purpose was to be the comic relief. Shredder, the main villain of the movie is the most generic villain you could find, even Doctor Doom in the last act of Fant4stic wasn’t this roughly put together. The reason was that William Fichtner was going to be him before the casting backlash which resulted in some random faceless guy with no personality being Shredder. William Fichtner was pretty good in the movie but there was no real payoff of his character because of the production change.

Even though Michael Bay produced it, his fingerprints are all over it. The action scenes are fun to watch but they are very Transformers esque and are very over the top. A lot of people have talked about the designs of the turtles, and yes they do look a little badly designed. It’s not so much the body design I have a problem with, it’s that the heads looked a little messy. From the trailer of the sequel, the designs do look better so at least Bay and others are listening to the feedback.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it’s by no means a good movie. It does have some fun action scenes but at the same time it felt like a Michael Bay movie with it’s over the top action, annoying humour and a story that’s not very interesting. I don’t think you really need to see the whole movie, the main plus of the film is the action. Everything else is fine or straying into bad territory. The sequel, Out of the Shadows, actually looks pretty good and has potential to be the TMNT movie that fans want. It probably won’t have to try that hard to be better than this movie, this movie wasn’t bad but it felt quite mediocre overall.