It has been a lengthy and at times demanding road for the Transformers franchise. When Michael Bay gave the world its first taste of the Autobots on the big screen in 2007 the critical response was mixed and the fans’ response was muted.
Overall the first Transformers film was largely viewed as a failure. With its over-reliance upon bombastic explosions, a simplistic and yet inordinately grandiose narrative and the overly hedonistic use of an incoherent amount of slow motion – the film felt like it tried to find the child in all of us but instead found the angry parent who longingly yearned for a time when video-game style violence was nothing but an axiom for hipster psychobabble. The opening hour of the film was solid, even enjoyable – but as soon as the cosy confides of the Witwicky family home had been left behind – and the entertainingly antagonistic relationship between LeBeouf’s Sam and Kevin Dunn’s Ron was completely lost to the perpetual fight scenes, the film had already misplaced something it came close to finding – a soul.
TNS: "Despite years of mindless cash-ins and unimaginative copy-paste borefests, video game adaptations have finally turned a corner! Here are the best of the best."
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