I see people dismissing negative reviews based on a few certain factors so let me just state at the beginning here and for the record; I'm a pretty big transformers fan. I've seen the entirety of the original series, all the movies (I even like the original Bayformers), and this movie holds the honor of being the first one that I had no intention to see, but as you can tell by this review's existence, I've seen it anyways.
From the trailers alone I could tell this was going to be a dumpster fire; the photo-realistic cgi was gone in place of these grey sludge monsters. I've seen better renders in video game cutscenes. It comes as no surprise to me that ILM had nothing to do with this movie and instead had its vfx made by the company that did Sonic (2020). Can't imagine why they made that decision or how this movie still cost 200 million dollars, but it's going to cost them as its the first Transformers movie to lose money...
Sure enough, even after some touch-up (you can see trailer comparisons on the internet), the movie still looks atrocious. That final fight scene where grey is the only color on the screen, made me miss the bayformers fights quite a bit. I, as well as everyone I was seeing it with, just made fun of the movie the entire time and we were completely unengaged. They talk about this stupid mcguffin dorito key for an hour and act like the only way to stop it from teleporting Unicron to the earth is to put in this code to turn it off, but it doesn't work, and then Optimus just smashes it and it DOES THE SAME EXACT THING THEY WERE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH. I guess the writers weren't aware that they just made the entire battle irrelevant, why did they not just shoot it?
The music in this 'movie' was also horrible, who's idea was it to have a rap song playing over a giant robot monkey smashing these stupid grey spider-goblins? This kind of music does not fit in with transformers at all, to be honest I don't understand why hollywood keeps trying to do this trend, it almost never works and is always very out of place. The score itself was pretty bland as well, I saw this thing only 20 minutes ago and I can't think of a single theme from the movie, except for when they played Jablonsky's Autobots theme at the very end, and I think they had a subtle Unicron Medley playing during the Unicron dialogue scenes, which was a nice touch.
Usually I don't have too much of a problem with the human characters in the Transformers movies, but man these were the worst human characters by far in this franchise, which is surprising given how theres only like two humans in this movie that you see for more than 2 minutes. I have already forgotten the girls name, and as for Noah, you can't just say he used to be a soldier and then refuse to show anything that would back that up for the entire movie. He shows no experience or control in combat situations, and if anything this museum girl is better at it then he is until he gets a power rangers suit that just does the work for him. (I kind of agree with Optimus when he says "he doesn't look like a soldier".)
As for this mcguffin key, I have never cared less. I also don't get why they try to say Unicron can use it to get to more worlds, sort of like the space bridge used in Dark of the Moon, and yet they show the Terrorcons having to activate it on earth so Unicron can get there. What exactly is the purpose of this device if Unicron is already sending his minions to the place to set up this giant tower so he can just get there faster? Since when does Unicron, the planet eater, need a space dorito to get to other galaxies? Why would that ever be something his minions need to take care of? Don't get me wrong I was crazy hyped to finally get Unicron in these movies, especially after whatever the crap they were trying to do in the Last Knight with the Transformers: Prime Unicron ripoff that does nothing but rise a few horns out of the ground, but they should've come up with a story to incorporate him in without another 'end of the world uh oh unicron' kind of threat. Also remember this is all supposedly to be in-line with both Bumblebee and the Bayformers? So how did everybody forget about the planet-eating giga robot in the 90s around the time of Transformers (2007)? They really need to just throw in the towel and do a complete reboot, you don't need to directly connect the movies to satisfy both audiences, especially if you can't succeed at either as shown by this movie.
Also I can't get over the fact that Bumblebee dies and just nobody really cares, Optimus throws a piece of a train and then they just carry his corpse around the world for no reason, just for him to be magically resurrected at the finale with some sort of energon rock? What even is this? Why did they even do this? Everyone watching the movie knows Bumblebee is in the 5 sequel movies after this, and also you can't really convince modern audiences of fakeout deaths these days unless you do it properly. Kill wheeljack or something. They had this same exact fakeout death for him not once, but twice before in this film franchise and I honestly felt his death was less impactful than any of the recent Disney fakeout deaths, which is really saying something.
Also how is it possible that the transformers themselves have even less personality in this movie than in the Michael Bay films? There are characters in this movie that have 0 lines, Rhinox just roars at the screen once, and then you got these psychopaths in the youtube comments saying he had more 'personality' than any character in the previous films (Genuinely think I'm losing my mind when I read through these). Also what on earth did they do to my boy wheeljack? They showed him with his accurate appearance and voice in the previous movie and was looking forward to seeing a version that wasn't Albert Einstein (sorry, Que), but what even was that honestly? Optimus I guess doesn't like humans at first but then kinda does at the end? Other than that I can't really say if any other characters even have an arc at all except maybe Primal? But even he doesn't show up until the 3rd quarter of the movie where he just goes "its optimus primal time" and he then tears up the grid iron like nobody's business (Props to you if you got that reference).
Actually now that I think of it Wheeljack doesn't do anything in this movie except look at Peru with his glasses and make a quip about racism. Even Arcee, who finally gets a main character spot after 7 movies, just kinda runs around in the background shooting her dart gun. Mirage and Optimus are pretty much the only characters you really get to know, and its a shame because Mirage is one of the reasons I gave this review the name you see above (I cannot stand Mirage).
Not to mention the maximals, they don't become relevant until about halfway into the movie, and its unfortunate that I can say you can have the same movie without them. Their purpose begins and ends with the fact that they just happen to be the ones who have the madeup dorito mcguffin, and then to do funny "its maximizing time" during the aforementioned abysmal grey void final battle. You can have the same exact plot with or without them, and honestly the more I hear about the deleted scenes I wonder why we didn't get this alternate version of the movie, if it truly was any better than this atrocity.
The dialogue in this movie truly is something else, I lost count how many times the characters were just saying what was happening in the moment, It felt like I was watching the Mandalorian. For example theres a moment where Noah just explains to Mirage what the transformers are, what the dorito mcguffin is, and the wacky skybeam for like a full 30 seconds in car ride and I thought I was going to have an aneurysm. There were quite a few conversations that could be entirely cut out because they didn't add anything whatsoever to the movie, they would either be just repeating themselves, or, like I said, talking about whats happening at that exact moment, as if the audience cannot follow whats happening onscreen at any given moment. Is nuance not a thing anymore?
I remember thinking 6 years ago that 'theres no way they can make a transformers movie more ridiculous than this' after watching The Last Knight, a movie I still can watch and somewhat enjoy, but man, was I so wrong. Worse yet, I think this movie is also worse than Revenge of the Fallen. The only things I like about this movie are that Peter Cullen gets a full role again, and 'till all are one' is finally brought into the movies as a tagline. Without a doubt, the worst movie of the bunch, by far. Never thought I'd see the day.
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