With one of the best trailers for 2011, it seems redundant to say that I was hyped up for the second sequel in Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Unlike many, I found Revenge of the Fallen to be a great popcorn flick and its plotholes and flaws seemed to fade away upon recollection despite others bringing it up. After a pretty disappointing first half of the year, what better film to kickstart the second?
Yet, I leave the theatre not only disappointed but DOTM continues to plummet in my mind. From an original grade of a solid B, maybe even a B+, it's precipitously dropped lower and lower and I'm not sure it has hit bottom yet.
I am a Michael Bay fan and as such I don't go into his films expecting some witty script and Oscar-worthy acting. Explosions, jokes and a fun time is what I do expect and each criterion failed to be met. A quote picked from somewhere upon the interwebs described DOTM as "a never-ending climax" and that is a fantastic quality for a Bay film to be so you can imagine the look on my face once the credits rolled and the lights went up. Save the building surfing, there was hardly a memorable action scene throughout the entire movie. Now if you were to query me on my favourite action scenes, I probably can recollect a grand total of nil, however what I can recall is the feeling I had at the end of the movie and thus, DOTM in no way comes close to either entry in the Transformers series.
Transformers balanced itself really well with action and humour and whilst ROTF went slightly overboard with the parents and twins, I still found it mostly funny, this time however, the parents were grating and every Autobot or Decepticon that acted like they were characters in Looney Tunes had my eyes in rolling fits. Maybe I've forgotten their existence but I just don't seem to think that that kind of voices and actions are fit to be in a blockbuster as this especially when the world is supposedly ending. Many supposedly humorous scenes were ill-timed and badly edited and cut between the destruction of Chicago or other bits. I berated Cars 2 for its immature humour and yet Bay added some dumb fart dropping giant hammers whilst Turturro was having an interview? Ken Jeong and John Malkovich were also increasingly annoying and too much of caricatures for my liking and generally the whole plot seemed a bit lacking, yes, even in a Bay film.
Megan Fox was hardly missed as she never really had a big role in the first place, and whilst Rosie Huntington wasn't much better, she still managed to edge her predecessor out. Shia turns in another expected performance that I have no qualms with, but he, for one, sure will, whenever his next movie opens. Dude, if every movie you 'drop the ball' or have complains about, maybe you just aren't a good actor?
As the blockbusters fall one by one, it seems increasingly desperate for myself to find movies to match last year's heights and I'd be lying if I said I didn't care if that happened or not. Deathly Hallows should placate me for awhile but I do hope that at the very least Rise of the Apes, Crazy, Stupid, Love and One Day manage to something better than just average. This time last year, the box office started to ignite once more after kind of sputtering in May and June, and the quality of films also took off with Toy Story 3, Inception, Despicable Me, and the Other Guys all opening progressively, in addition to the year's great start with How to Train Your Dragon and Kick Ass. Winter doesn't look that much better at the moment but there is some hope with the trailers, if not the synopsi, firing on all cylinders from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol to the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
It does seem time to abandon ship for everyone involved.
