Transformers Will Suck

Transformers is going to suck. There, I said it. I guess I should preface this by saying I certainly hope Transformers doesn't suck, but I have a feeling in my gut that it will. I am by no means a Transformers purest, or even a big mark for the robots in disguise. I'm just a realist. The entire internet is so excited about Transformers: The Movie that I expect there to be some backlash to this little piece. Still I stand by my prediction. It's going to suck.

One of the reasons that Transformers is going to be sub-par is the fact that the franchise itself really isn't that special. I grew up with the original Transformers. I had the toys back when they were made of metal. I suspect this movie will be a lot like the toys. Big, neat looking and not really worth crap. Most if not all the Transformers toys sucked because they couldn't move in one form. Usually the robot form, but sometimes it was their car/truck/whatever form. You ended up with one form that looked good and one form that was serviceable as a toy. Most kids didn't want a toy truck though. They wanted a bad ass robot. Either way the toys rarely worked out to be cool and even today they continue to make figures that really aren't very playable.

That's not to say some figures weren't cool. Soundwave and the subsequent cassette tape robots were awesome. A couple others were neat, most notably Megatron. But I digress...

The original cartoon wasn't that great. GI Joe > Transformers. Still the show had it's charm and it worked in that 80's cartoon kinda way. The original cartoon movie even had some pretty awesome perks. That said, there isn't much about the old cartoon that could translate into a movie. I had high hopes for Grimlock, but this movie won't have Grimlock. That's pretty much guaranteed suckage.

Hollywood in it's infinite wisdom always has to "Hollywood" up franchises. Batman can't wear tights, he has to wear latex body armor. The X-Men can't wear their regular suits, they have to wear lame black leather costumes. Everything has to be young, hip and edgy. It works on some franchises and it kills others. I can't say if it will work on Transformers or not, but they are making tons of changes to it. In order to sell it to a movie audience. IE: Probably screw everything up.

Take for example Godzilla in 1998. When this movie was announced, everyone got excited. Godzilla has a huge fanbase worldwide and the thought of Hollywood getting their hands on him, letting him tear up NYC with all the glam and special effects wizardry they could muster had most people salivating. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich were the Michael Bays of their time. Fresh off the success of Independence Day and the creating of a star in Will Smith, they were handed the Godzilla franchise on a silver platter and nearly an unlimited budget. What happened was one of the biggest movie failures of all time. The movie itself wasn't so putrid, as the fact that they took everything that was great about Godzilla and stripped it away. They Hollywoodized Godzilla to the point where he was NOTHING like what the people came to see. They wanted to see big, bad ass Godzilla crush NYC and breath fire all over the place. Instead they got a scared lizard who eats fish and has raptor babies. Godzilla made $500 MILLION worldwide, but it was considered such a bad movie that it didn't get sequels.

Lost in Space is another example. While this didn't have legions of built-in fans, it did have a pretty simple premise to build upon. So what did they do? They re-invented the entire thing. Robot was this big huge CGI mess, Dr. Smith was an evil alien thing and the movie made some money, but planned sequels were nixed because of such negative reviews. They destroyed it. Transformers looks to be going the same route. It's got the name, it's got some big robots, but is it really going to be anything remotely like Transformers?



My big concern with this movie comes from the most recent commercials I have seen. The previews show the 3 things that generally lead to a crappy movie: Random explosions, quick cuts of CGI and Tyrese. It looked like Independence Day only with worse actors. Tryese is no Will Smith. The other big problem is Michael Bay. Everything his name is attached to turns out to be standard action fare. His latest movies, The Island and The Amityville Horror were considered terrible. I can't say for sure that all these movies sucked, but a lot of them were critically panned. Especially his big "blockbuster" movies. He had some hits in there with stuff like Armageddon, but again it's just another typical blow a bunch of stuff up movie.

The previews to me look like Starship Troopers with robots. I know I'm not the only one upset that all the Decepticons look like Ivan Ooze's evil zords from the first Power Ranger's movie. I can't be the only one upset or puzzled as to why the Decepticons all look like big silver bugs. Beyond that though, is the fact that the commercials really hammer home the military. There is just too much human story in this. This SHOULD be a movie about big robots. I honestly can't remember a single human character from the original Transformers cartoon. Go-Bots had plenty of human characters, but it was Go-Bots. Maybe there were a bunch of humans, but they certainly didn't leave an impression on me because I have all but forgotten them. Some of the newer Transformers shows have TONS of human characters, but I've never been able to stomach any of the new Transformers shows.



That's another thing that will likely kill this movie. There have been like 50 Transformers shows. The original, then BeastWars (Which also made no sense, because they were ANIMALS turning into robots, but it was mildly entertaining) and then a bunch of other versions of Transformers that are generally standard anime fare. Each story is largely the same with an Optimus and a Megatron, but there in lay the problem. Fans of certain shows are going to be pissed off. OMG Amarda isn't in this! At least BumbleBee is... I think.



Overall it's just a handful of previews that make this movie look so bad. Maybe it won't be bad. Right now though this movie looks to me a lot like a crapfest. Tyrese is the only star attached to this and I think he was in one of those shitty car race movies. Which means he can't act. If this turns out to be some big epic craptacular with a bunch of stupid human subplots and military fighting the Decepticons with a couple of trucks helping out, don't say I didn't warn you.