The Hollywood blockbuster was a very different beast back in 2007. Comic book movies existed, but they weren’t the industry titans they are today. There was a certain kind of PG-13 movie that ruled the box office, and Michael Bay was its patron saint.
But Bay and Paramount Pictures didn’t want anything to do with that. “Transformers” isn’t a fun sci-fi story that plays in the epic fantasy space. It’s a regular old government conspiracy action movie with a lot of green screens. Blend that with an obnoxious brand of comedy that never, ever knows when to shut up, and you’ve got the blueprint that guided every “Transformers” movie for years. In essence, Bay created a whole new brand that had little in common tonally with the rest of the franchise. More often than not, his movies take on an almost antagonistic tone toward the source material — a kind of jock writing that makes fun of the very things fans love about “Transformers.” The last two entries are much better on those last two fronts, but they still don’t solve the core problem.
Think about what the “Transformers” movies might have been like if they had begun in 2015, rather than 2007. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was out by then. So was “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” A much larger percentage of moviegoers were open to both wacky cosmic sci-fi stories and CGI characters taking the lead. We live in an era when time travel and the multiverse are key ingredients to the biggest movies on the market. “Transformers” should thrive today, but the film series is still hindered by its past.
Maybe the problem is that the brand hasn’t been terribly relevant outside of the movies in many years. The days when cartoons dominated pop culture are over, and the toy market certainly isn’t what it used to be in the modern digital age. There have been moments of relevance — a few well-liked video games and animated series — but for the most part, “Transformers” is the movie franchise at this point. People have come to expect them to fall somewhere between “National Treasure” and “Independence Day,” and that’s a shame.
The problem is that these movies exist in the wrong genre. They shouldn’t be fish-out-of-water stories with secret government agencies and human hackers taking center stage. What they should be — and still can be — are wacky, sincere sci-fi epics that embrace all of the dorkiness and deep lore of the cartoons.
This content was originally published here.
