Listen, we weren’t expecting Transformers 3 to be… good, exactly. It’s just that Transformers 2 was a ludicrously expensive flop that was roundly panned, called “…a horrible experience of unbearable length,” and was acknowledged as having “a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.” I mean, a Michael Bay movie has to be really, really bad, when Michael Bay himself apologizes for having made it.
So I guess you could say that we were expecting Transformers 3 to be better than Transformers 2 for purely statistical reasons. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, and all that, and we were hoping to at least get a little enjoyment out of some promos and Shia LeBeouf saying “no” many times. But lets just pretend that never happened, because despite Michael Bay’s statements to the contrary, it looks like the cars representing the vehicle modes for Mudflap and Skids arrived on the set of Transformers 3 this week.
Mudflap and Skids were the most easily described example of the poorly thought out decisions that resulted in Transformers 2, with words like “minstrelsy,” and phrases like “To say that these two are the most astonishingly racist caricatures that I’ve ever seen in a mainstream motion picture would be an understatement.” The Transformers Wiki notes that the decision to have them speak in exaggerated Ebonics was made by their voice actors, whose intention was to have them come off as posers. Needless to say, this was not how audiences took it.
The movie’s screenwriters attempted to distance themselves from their own characters as best they could “It’s really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie.” Bay’s reaction was that “We’re just putting more personality in.”
It’s hard to imagine a way that Bay would include Mudflap and Skids in the movie in a way that would improve upon their original appearance. So basically now the only question is, now that this is what we know about Transformers: Dark of the Moon, in what ways will it manage to surprise us with its fail?
(via Topless Robot. All quotes from Wikipedia.)
