In 2007, Michael Bay was given the keys to the Transformers franchise and went on to make five live-action movies over the next decade. This has made a lot of people very angry and has since been widely regarded as a bad move.
I’m not going to beat around the bush here: There is absolutely, positively no space in which even the most shrewd commentator could parse the mostly stentorian mess of the Transformers film franchise with any degree of nuance worth exploring. You know what you signed up for by reading this; the first few are obvious, and all the rest are bashing their heads against one another in hopes of maybe getting onto a higher rung within the formless depths of of whatever trench is still bothering to dignify these movies with even the most meaningless gradation.
Let’s begin, shall we?
1. Bumblebee
Dearest readers, meet the movie responsible for my use of the word “mostly” up above, rather than “entirely.”
Indeed, Bumblebee is a great movie pretty much top to bottom, regardless of which lens you’re looking at it through; the sci-fi action roots—in addition to not dominating the runtime—are brought to life with plenty of engaging fight choreography, there’s loads of sweet little nuances that make the film’s personality pop (among the best of them being Bumblebee’s use of song lyrics via his built-in radio to communicate), the laughs that its humor does earn outweigh the otherwise more-frequent comedic misfires, and at the heart of it all is a genuinely thoughtful and touching story about connection and self-(re)discovery, even if that arc doesn’t quite finish as effectively as it could have.
Hold your head high, Bumblebee; you’re the golden child amongst some sour, sour brethren.
Honorary #1. The Transformers: The Movie
Save your allegations of contempt of this particular court; the 1986 Transformers movie is a movie about Transformers, so it totally counts on a list of “all Transformers movies.”
And for my money, this is the best Transformers movie out there, a claim that I’m not whipping out on the whims of pure nostalgia (although that’s absolutely in play here), but on the assertion that, as far as full-blown cartoon movies go, the deliciously animated 1986 Transformers film ticks every box and then some in its quest to fill that space.
Sure, it’s mostly a disjointed cheesefest where Point A is connected to Point B by way of laser guns and silly quips, but that’s absolutely something you can get away with in cartoon movies, and this one shores up that spine immaculately with some charmingly candid one-liners, a swath of characters each with their own entirely unique transformations (there’s a train Deception and a microscope Autobot, to say nothing of the Dinobots), a surprisingly tangible theme of conquest versus the passage of time, and of course, the use of Unicron as the main villain, voiced by none other than Orson Welles. That’s right; Orson bloody Welles voices Unicron in this movie.
Indeed, it’s all pure cartoon bliss; flashy without being incoherent, dark without being cynical, and quite simply committed to being a mercurial amalgam of animated fun. Thanks for the memories, Nelson Shin, even if some of them involved traumatically blinking away tears as I watched Optimus Prime die on a hospital table.
2. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Look, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts doesn’t even come close to being as bad as the bulk of its ilk, but is it a good movie? No, not really; it’s entirely passable spectacle-blockbuster cheese that had a pretty good, if underutilized, protagonist—and while it stands out within its own series, it hardly does so otherwise.
But, at least that aforementioned cheese tends to succeed as sugary fun here and there; love or hate Noah’s combat suit, it’s certainly one of the more creative and entertaining elements in the franchise, and the deliberate recklessness with which it barrels towards that G.I. Joe crossover tease at least communicates that it understands “go big or go home” in a way that can be admired in the way you might admire a schoolboy’s tenacity in a gym class dodgeball tournament.
3. Transformers
Okay, so maybe the Michael Bay era wasn’t a complete dumpster fire, but there’s a time and a place to slap the military-entertainment complex on your sleeve, and frankly, a supposedly fun, flashy gongshow led by Optimus Prime is neither of those things.
Let’s keep in mind—with respect to the perfectly fair take that Bay’s first Transformers movie wasn’t entirely soulless—that this is where the seed was planted for what was to come, and even if Bay came out of the gates swinging somewhat acceptably here, he’s nevertheless a director that isn’t exactly known for his tact, and is instead precisely known for directing films that, in my experience, have been the closest to an aneurysm I hope to ever come.
The result was a gambled passing grade, but the equation was just completely irresponsible; Transformers, then, just barely avoids the proverbial chopping block, which the remaining movies have arguably kept in business single-handedly.
Worst: Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Sorry, no more numerical ratings from here on out; everything else on this list swims at about the same level in the cinematic purgatory that they all punched their tickets to in swift succession, but we have to start somewhere.
It’s largely believed that our Moon was created when Earth, a few billion years ago, crashed into an ancient planet known as Theia, causing the resulting debris to eventually join together into what we know now as the the Moon. This is known as the “giant-impact hypothesis.”
To that point, I personally believe that by crashing a bunch of CGI robots together in Dark of the Moon, Michael Bay will be responsible for creating another moon out of the debris resulting from the many brain cells we’ve all collectively sacrificed in order to sit through this trainwreck in any capacity.
Indeed, Dark of the Moon was one small step for Bay, and one giant leap backwards for Hollywood—one giant leap of far too many.
Worst: Transformers: Age of Extinction
In Transformers: Age of Extinction, we’re introduced to giant, transforming, occasionally fire-breathing, robot dinosaurs known as the Dinobots. Read that again: giant, transforming, occasionally fire-breathing, robot dinosaurs.
Well, somehow, someway, it’s entirely, exhaustingly boring. And when you somehow manage to make giant, transforming, occasionally fire-breathing, robot dinosaurs exhaustingly boring, that’s when we should concede that it’s our turn to get wiped out by a meteorite, because there’s just no recovering from that as a species.
Worst: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
“A looming writers’ strike? No problem, let’s just lock our screenwriters in some hotel rooms for months on end and see what we can crank out prior to the strike’s commencement. What’s the worst that could happen?” – Michael Bay, probably, shortly before winning the 2010 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture.
Worst: Transformers: The Last Knight
Generally speaking, the weapon known as Excalibur is a symbol of proof of King Arthur’s right to the divine power of the British throne.
In Transformers: The Last Knight, that weapon is also considered by some to be the first sign of the apocalypse, and since this movie was the last we saw of the Bay era, perhaps they were on to something really important there. Indeed, those are end times that I and a lot of others can get behind.
In closing, good luck, upcoming prequel Transformers One; history may be against you, but that’s all the more reason to reach for the stars as sincerely as possible.
(featured image: Paramount Pictures)
