[Locke]

Rewatched the first Transformers on Bluray.

Spielberg was the executive producer throughout the franchise and injected huge amounts into the screenplay, with many key moments coming straight from him and honestly I see much more Spielberg in this film than I do Bay and the Spielbergian parts are where most of the problems lie. Namely in that it is ungodly long, and focuses much more on boring human characters than what we actually want to see, sound familiar? Yeah...

Transformers doesn't really go anywhere, honestly, dragging itself out for all it's worth until it just fizzles out all together, smothered by its own weight. I can't even really think what Spielberg thought he was gaining by cramming this film with so much...stuff. I mean I understand some good human drama is always necessary but the amount of human focus is pure overkill to the point where the film itself seems to be struggling to bring the sheer quantity of human characters together.

The human characters aren't even that good, probably the only human character really worth a mention is our protagonist, Sam. I've never much cared about LaBeouf but he seems to really enjoy this role and brings a lot of charm to Sam. He's usually the only character on screen who has any spark of life as he's surrounding by a cast of actors trying desperately to animate the cardboard cutouts of cardboard cutouts this movie calls characters.

Ironically, characterwise, the Transformers themselves fair the worst. Optimus is pretty cool and they do a pretty good job of making us care about Bumblebee but...who else was there again? The movie spends so long building up Megatron and when they finally unleash him it's like they don't have a single clue as to what to do with him, much like all the other Decepticons who come out of nowhere in the last twenty minutes to look cool and die without achieving anything.

Even the special effects, which are the true saving grace, are a double edged sword. I mean those effects, they are so good, so ahead of their time, it's like there's been no advancements in four movies. Maybe there hasn't. Special effects heavy films made in the last ten or so years usually age fast, and age horribly, so I'm very pleased that this still looks wonderful.

On the flip side though the camera can never seem to quite keep up with the Transformers themselves, the camera would have really benefited with being pulled much further out and the Transformers would have ironically benefited from simpler designs. Action sequences are usually so cluttered, so busy and cramped that it is almost impossible to tell what is happening in them.

This is a shame too, as these action sequences - at least on paper - are as fresh and varied as you'll probably ever get from "Bayhem". Most people criticise Bay's Military Fetishism but at least when it was soldiers fighting the robots I could actually tell what the fuck was happening!