It’s 2007 - Barack Obama has just become the presumptive nominee for the Democrats. Gordon Brown, former boyfriend of Princess Margarita of Romania, has just become prime minister, continuing a proud tradition of unelected leaders. The iPhone has just debuted, propelling the stock of black turtlenecks to new heights, and giving your disgusting nephew child something to smear his grubby little hands on at family events.
Linkin Park had recently released “What I’ve Done,” a track immortalised by Transformers’ closing credits. And even further immortalised by a recent trend of laying the track over the end of various films, captioned with ‘[Insert film] but it came out in 2007.’ The Batman (2022), Jurassic World (2015) and The Seinfeld Finale (1998). But Transformers really was 2007 and it’s important to remember that films used to come out then.
It’s 2007 and the Transformers are back on the big screen for the first time since the franchise caused the death of Orson Welles in 1986.
“The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys. I play a planet.”
But things have changed since then. We’re serious now. Megatron does not turn into a pistol anymore - one of the coolest things a toy could possibly do. Imagine if one day your little plastic fellas became a gun instead. But no, guns are silly and in a post-Columbine America, we wouldn’t want them anywhere near the Transformers franchise.
“Losing is really not an option for these guys.”
Except for all the elaborate firearms employed by our military heroes. They’re just hanging out in the desert like if 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) had an extra-terrestrial monster. The opening plays itself straighter than the ensuing absurdity of its core concept. Bay flashes threatening silhouettes of helicopters over the baking sand amongst the military chaos of the US occupation in Qatar.
The squad discusses what they’re most looking forward to about getting back to real life, from the trivial pleasures of barbecues (including alligator meat, which apparently “tastes like quail, with a mildly fishy flavor, and is often chewy, depending on preparation”) to the emotional weight of seeing a newborn daughter for the first time. If it weren’t for the large talking robots that are about to enter the ring, you could definitely follow this crew for a pulpy Bush-era war movie. But we’re not settling for that sincerity, and because the WMDs in this case are in fact large talking robots, we must leave the military behind and switch focus instead to the dumbest boy alive.
Sam Witwicky is a loser - he says “seamen” in his class presentation, tries to sell off family heirlooms like a high school history lesson is his own private yard sale, and all he wants in life is a car and a girl. He’s a road-head guy.
He also wears a Strokes t-shirt. I’m unsure if in the mind of Michael Bay this makes him cool and alternative amongst the surrounding jocks, or if he sucks and should listen to Linkin Park only. Or Korn. Possibly even Limp Bizkit.
His ancestor Captain Archibald Witwicky, whose name rocks, discovered Megatron (non-pistol mode) frozen in ice hundreds of years ago, and as his descendant, Sam therefore has an inexplicable responsibility to befriend this alien race and help them no matter what. You have to question the Autobots’ taste in humans when they’re choosing Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) and Cade Yaeger (Mark Wahlberg) to be their best buddies and intergalactic representatives.
“Don’t ask me questions! My father’s the head of the neighbourhood watch!”
There’s no way of avoiding the fact that Sam Witwicky is, unfortunately, Shia Labeouf.
As a person, he has done monstrous things, things which feel entirely out of my jurisdiction to discuss. So his public facing persona is all I feel qualified to explore.
He’s flirted with both oscar-bait turns like Honey Boy, which felt manufactured to drive critics to say “you know that Shia guy? He can act without a robot there too,” and in equal measure meme provider. He puts a paper bag over his head, he watches a marathon of his own films, Shia Surprise, et al.
I have watched a good chunk of his recent Jon Bernthal redemption interview, which is a bizarre media artefact. His therapised language captures the strange nature of denouncing previous redemptive arcs to emphasise how genuine this go round will be. Retroactively retconning your rehab as not really real, replaced by your re-redemption. How many times can you claim to have actually found Jesus, as though your previous Jesus discoveries were a false alarm?
His presence is at least somewhat mitigated by the surrounding cast.
“I’m cool with females working on my car, I prefer it actually.”
Megan Fox is doing so much here for hot girls. More importantly hot girls with clubbed thumbs. Have you seen her thumbs? They’re quite small. Clubbed thumb representation is consistently underserved in action franchises.
She’s got a criminal father, she knows how to fix cars, she hates her boyfriend. All the necessary elements to be the lead of a Transformers movie surely. And yet, the unavoidable thumb issue. Much better to have a horny little boy who likes to turn up to parties and start climbing the nearest tree with his friend.
“Bumblebee, stop lubricating the man.”
Elsewhere there’s John Turturro getting excessively lubricated by robot piss. There’s Rachael Taylor, the hacker, unashamedly committing to her Australianness. Anthony Anderson’s smugness at his immense doughnut-eating ability. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson getting greased up and shouting at each other in various deserts. Tyrese hasn’t had the Fast Five (2011) transformation to action-movie resident comic relief. He’s in a strange limbo - he’s not the funny one, or the lead, or the tough guy; he’s just a rapper who keeps getting paired with similar looking white men, first Paul Walker, now Duhamel.
The robots themselves are a marvel. The blend of CG and practical, not only between the Transformers and humans, but between the Transformers and the stunts of their car counterparts, is seamless. More than future instalments, their bodies feel weighty and impactful. Their industrial movements have detailed internal mechanics. In later sequels, this is stripped away by nano-bot transformation effects. The first transformation of Optimus Prime in particular engages hundreds of micro-movements as the camera spins around his infinitely complex anatomy. The sound design is tactile and intricate - each shift of his plates and hinges lands intentionally.
This first Transformers outing is the only time that Bay brings his larger-than-life robots into actual human spaces. They are generally dwarfed by skyscrapers, with humans left even further below like ants, but here they’re thrown into the unfamiliar suburbs. Creeping around the Witwickys’ manicured garden and causing destruction like a stray dog; threatening to murder their pet chihuahua to rid the vermin problem; turning back into cars scattered on the lawn as if that would be more inconspicuous. Bay emphasises their comical nature, as if they could really hide round corners and under awnings.
It’s as dumb as it gets, except inside the house it’s getting dumber. Sam, on the lookout for a key item to track down the magic Transformers cube, is caught by his suspicious parents. His perpetual sweatiness and frantic panic lead them to question what he’s been doing. There are a lot of different terms for masturBaytion, really any word said with the right inflection and context could work. Those offered by Sam’s mother: ‘Sam’s Happy Time,’ ‘My Special Alone Time with Myself.’
She is dismissed however, by Sam’s father, who says she should stay out of it because that’s a “father and son thing.” Only men masturbate, and only men are allowed to talk about it, and if those men are related, even better.
“Why are you so sweaty and filthy?”
In other obligatory 2007 movie staples, the Decepticons hijack a plane, and the movie ends with buildings in a metropolis collapsing. One of the Transformers should have chosen the Porsche 911 just to tie together these threads.
The final action sequence is where Bay finds his feet for the following four films, carving out a comfortable space of chaos and fragments.
He shoots from below, capturing the buildings and bodies of metal as the disastrous spectacle they are. Much of the handheld work would feel at home in a Roland Emmerich movie, and only a year later, Cloverfield would utilise a similar mode for found footage. Sam sprints through the collapsing streets, now graduated from mindless horndog to Autobot Jesus. Keeping pace, obstructions interrupt and complicate our view, their frenetic presence complemented by background pops of fire and sparks. Bay breaks briefly from the grounded bustle to slow-motion wides, capturing cars toppling and and concrete breaking like fleeting moments of lucidity amongst chaos. Logic and lines are useless to his kinetic brand of action. Coherence is out the window, a thing of the 20th century, we’re on to something bigger now.
For now, the reclamation of Bay, and specifically his work on Transformers, is limited largely to post-cinema theorists who recognise his brutality of motion as a bold step away from the cleanliness of action montage’s legibility and towards an experimental mode of image-making that prioritises immersing viewers in a sensory experience.
Transformers (2007) gestures towards some of this liquid imagery, but feels trapped by its four-quadrant crowd-pleasing incongruity of Spielberg-style boy-and-his-alien-buddy / American Pie-style horny teen / 13 Hours-style military chaos / Emmerich-style government scrambling disaster. There’s a lot going on here - more than meets the eye.
Next up: Jumping 15 years ahead to a movie in which Jake Gyllenhaal admits he has herpes, Ambulance.