Michael Bay’s latest (and let us pray last) assault on the Transformers property opened this week.
From deadline:
“The latest pic in its franchise —Transformers: The Last Knight — is on track to take in about $40M+ for the three-day and is looking at a $63.9M five-day, which would be the lowest opening in the series of five films. The last time out, Transformers: Age of Extinction grabbed $100M in its opening weekend in 2014 also in June. It seems the studio and Hasbro has squeezed every drop out of this film franchise; audiences are clearly growing tired of it.”
I’ve hated this series from the jump. Not being a fan of Michael Bay’s bombastically-moronic-geared-toward-the lowest-common-denominator filmography didn’t help. I just knew he would take everything good about the Transformers concept and toss it in the nearest waste bin, replacing it with his own artistically bankrupt sensibilities.
I’ve never been more irritated at being right.
Soulless, superficial trash…year after year came pumping out of his production team. Where the animated series and film focused on the actual transformers and their relationships, the movies reduced these iconic characters to props while idiotic humans in every stereotypical form imaginable, populated the screen, over-acting and screaming at each other in the bay-esque comedic style:
“Captain Lennox: I need a credit card! Epps, where’s your wallet?
USAF Tech Sergeant Epps: Pocket!
Captain Lennox: Which pocket?
USAF Tech Sergeant Epps: MY BACK POCKET!
Captain Lennox: You got like ten back pockets!
USAF Tech Sergeant Epps: LEFT CHEEK! LEFT CHEEK! LEFT CHEEK! “
A series that had managed to build enough cache that millions of children (and a bunch of adults) wept when a beloved character died was reduced to jokes about pot brownies, testicles, and urination.
I do not hope to ever understand the mindset of the movie goer who actually supported these films financially over the years. But it seems that even these folk have grown cold to Bay’s brand of Transformer. Would this have happened if this was a good series? Possibly, there are now 5 films and the attention of the movie-going audience is notoriously short. But Universal’s Fast and the Furious franchise is in its eighth film of the bunch and it still cracked the billion dollar mark.
I would like to think that the audience in general is realizing that these (Bay’s) movies have done more to hurt the Transformers legacy than help.
But frankly, at this point I don’t care why they die off…I just hope that they do.
