The Transformers Franchise!

As a kid, I remember coming home and watching the animated Transformers series. I loved it. I was really excited when the new Transformers movie came out a few years ago.

My thoughts on the first installment...WOW!! I mean, sure, there were a few scenes that I thought were a bit ridiculous and made me uncomfortable. The mother's interaction with Sam was VERY inappropriate and Megan Fox was overly sexualized, but the movie itself was so great, I thought I could over look the rest.

Then the second installment came out and I wished I could not only take back the couple hours of my own life, but those hours in my kids life. It, too, was oversexualized and added to it were gangster robots who were annoying AND very inappropriate in their use of language. I found myself flinching throughout the movie and Sierra was made to feel very uncomfortable (Daniel saw only robots and action). It was just awful!!! We had been warned, but did not heed the warnings and came away feeling disturbed...not to mention how AWFUL the story and movie were.

So, it was a no-brainer to say we would be skipping the 3rd installment. I read article after article about how the director, Michael Bay, likes to cater to the overly-hormoned teenage boy by presenting sexy women for their fantasy pleasure, and lots of violence.

But, we also read lots of articles that said that the people who made the 2nd installment admitted that they made a mistake with the movie and were going to totally revamp the franchise. I was optimistic, though I became more and more concerned...especially to find out the new female lead was a Victoria's Secret model. The idea was to wait for reviews and than make our decision. The reviews have been read and the decision is clear....we are officially giving up on the franchise.

Here are some excerpts:

"Director Michael Bay may possess the sensibility of an over-caffeinated twelve-year-old, but he really shouldn't be making movies for kids - who, let's not forget, are the intended audience for the TRANSFORMERS films. While kids will obviously love every destructive second of the film, the film opens with the panty-clad butt of Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), the most punch-worthy protagonist in American cinema since Andrew McCarthy's oozed his way through the WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S films. The first punishing hour of setup nonsense would be fine if dispensed with quickly, but Director Bay has fiendishly decided that Sam's job woes are the hilariously surreal stuff of a Coen Bros. movie. So we get John Malkovich dishing out bizarro line readings as Sam's tyrannical boss, and Ken Jeong scurrying about as a nutjob coworker with wild conspiracy theories literally stuffed down his trousers - and you better believe there's a zany men's-room confrontation that results in Malkovich believing he's interrupting a rough bout of toilet-stall sex between LaBeouf and Jeong.

And then there's Bay's treatment of women, which is yet another reason to keep the young ones away. It's one thing for Bay to shoot the girlfriend as the lingerie model she is in real life, but quite another to have Sam's mom blurt out "What a nice box!" the minute her son lays eyes on his true love for the first time (this really happens). There's a nasty misogynistic streak running through all of Bay's films. Like those 80's-era films, Bay views women as either trophies or impediments. Sometimes they're both. Rarely are they useful. When I saw TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN theatrically two years ago, the audience roared with delight when Bumblebee slammed a woman's face into his dashboard (this was before they learned she was a Decepticon). At least in his R-rated efforts, Bay amplifies this hatred/fear to the point where you're laughing at him; when he smuggles it into a family movie, it's just flat-out repugnant.

As I walked out of TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, a friend asked me "Where does Michael Bay go from here?" Six years ago, I thought he was ready to become the next James Cameron. That didn't work. Then he tried to become the next Spielberg. That really didn't work. BAD BOYS 3....that's where he's headed."

And by Plugged In Online:

An early scene features lingering, exceedingly close-up shots of Carly's backside as she's clad in skimpy bikini underwear and one of Sam's shirts. We watch as she climbs on top of him and straddles him in bed. Though we never see the pair in bed together after that, a sexual relationship is clearly implied between the couple. And even though they're apparently living together, both agree that they're not yet ready to say "I love you."

Carly's physique, including her long legs and cleavage-baring outfits, get regular attention throughout the film, though never quite as obviously as in the scene described above. Dylan has eyes for her, and he compares her curvaceous figure to the sensual curves of a vintage automobile in his collection. Someone makes a joke about wanting to frisk Carly, and a scene with her involving licorice is played suggestively.

Sam's mother offers him an explicitly titled book about female orgasm and says he won't be able to land another beautiful girlfriend unless he's well endowed and knows how to pleasure a woman. A male colleague corners Sam in a restroom to give him secret information, but a scuffle breaks out between them instead. Their melee (played for laughs), ends up with the man straddling Sam with his pants down in a men's room stall—something that looks like a violent homosexual tryst to Sam's boss, who happens to walk in as they stumble out. (His boss later mentions the encounter again, stressing that he doesn't care about what his employees do with others in a bathroom stall.)

Women frequently wear revealing tops, while skirts and dresses display a lot of leg. An office worker dubs a colleague a "hoochie mama" because she wears a very skimpy outfit. Sam and Carly kiss twice, as do one other couple. One character fondly recalls a secret tryst with a woman and makes a suggestive comment about her backside.

The massive worldwide success of the Transformers franchise, despite the critical drubbing of the two previous installments, has apparently given director Michael Bay license to do whatever he wants. Because of that, Transformers: Dark of the Moon clocks in at a staggeringly indulgent 154 minutes—that's 2 hours and 34 minutes for those keeping score at home.

The last hour delivers a nonstop apocalyptic conflagration so unremittingly intense that my CGI-numbed mind struggled to process the chaotic carnage onscreen. And I'm not the only one who felt that way. Bill Goodykoontz, of the Arizona Republic, wrote, "As if realizing he's spent all this money on such spectacular effects, Bay pulls out all the stops in the last act in an orgy of cacophony, pitting shrieking, grinding metal against metal in one incoherent battle after another. By the time it's over you'll be beaten down, pummeled into submission."

Precisely. And let's place extra emphasis on the word "incoherent." When cars speedily morph into clashing robots, for example, it's often difficult to differentiate between the scrapping metal personalities enough to tell who's who.

Just as Plugged In reviewer Paul Asay mused after viewing Revenge of the Fallen in 2009, it dawned on me as I sat through this installment's unceasing explosions (not to mention Bay's shameless objectification of Carly, played plastically by newcomer and former Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) that this is what Hollywood believes people want to watch.

And given the billion-and-a-half dollar box office tally of the first two films, this probably won't be the last Transformers film to assault our senses and sensibilities. As Goodykoontz concluded, "Bay's hammering technique works, in a commercial sense. Executive producer Steven Spielberg is the richer for it."

Unfortunately, audiences won't be.

So, that is that. I will not support a movie like this.