The Death Of Techno
Fitting a movie series into a toy series is often a loss-making endeavor.
It's easy to imagine that director Michael Bay was happy with the first Transformers film because it had an image that excited kids and haunted their parents. What if the hideous Volkswagen was actually a heroic robot and an ordinary mobile phone turned out to be an evil alien? With the advent of AI, this last topic seems scarier than ever.
While the first film reminded Bay and his team how much fun it was to play with toy robots, the later films in this series reminded me of what happens when we get too big for our toys. Almost everyone involved seemed to be inspired by Hasbro and seemed quite bored.
Steven Caple Jr. (Creed 2) isn't particularly keen on this new venture either, and the five named writers (that's right, five) haven't given him or us any new human characters or cyborgs to love or hate.
As in the previous films, the daytime battles between the Autobots and their opponents are loud, furious, and difficult to follow. When one piece of metal overpowers another is hard to tell as neither dies. The characters are so subtle that the emotional investment creeps in. If the cars can be recycled, it's like a demolition race.
The stock doesn't go up or down. It just keeps up with the same incredible pace.
Of course, a new generation of evil robots called the Predacons worship a god who wants to devour the universe, just like Pac-Man. Their leader of the Scourge (Peter Dinklage) is trying to find the key that will help him in this quest.
The second group of cyborgs, the Maximals, have hidden parts of the key here on Earth, which seems pretty stupid even from a human point of view.
Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who has portrayed the role for decades) tries to help hunt down the Predacons and hopes the key will help his tribe return to their home planet. A struggling veteran (Anthony Ramos, "Hamilton") and an art scholar (Dominic Fishbeck, "Judas and the Black Messiah") somehow fit into the story, but both seem overwhelmed to play second fiddle to the crowd. toys.
On the other hand, it seems counterproductive to cast famous actors like Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, and Ron Perlman when their voices are electronically muted. Why cast an Oscar winner like Yeoh if you can't hear her words or see her face? This was a frightening trend in previous movies and seems even funnier now.
It also prevents artists from customizing new bots. It used to be fun to guess what quote might be coming out of Bumblebee's speakers. It now shows excerpts from the best films and reminds viewers that they can now watch the best films.
Hasbro even dares to add a second toy line at the end of this story, not realizing that their selling point has backfired. It was easy to imagine that watching 6-year-olds play with toys would be more fun. They don't know the clichés yet and would be much more excited about the process than the adults who made that garbage.
