TRANSFORMERS 3 will almost certainly suck

TRANSFORMERS 3 will almost certainly suck

Mar 23

If you were to lay out a bunch of headshots, a complete list of casting options for all currently working actors, and asked me who I thought would crop up in the upcoming Michael Bay metal CGI robot fighting fest Transformers 3: Ridiculous Subtitle TBA, quality actors Frances McDormand and John Malkovich would be very near the bottom of the barrel. But, just like in a bad dream where logic holds no sway, this is exactly the state of affairs we find ourselves in — Frances McDormand and John Malkovich have officially signed on to appear in Bay’s next abomination. Of course, a third Transformers flick was always inevitable. Now the script is ready, the cast has all been re-signed, locations and characters are being finalised, and the train appears to be just about ready to leave the station and end up a mangled wreck in a cinema near you circa July 2011. So what exactly can we expect from this second robot sequel?

Well, the most recent news is casting-related: as mentioned above, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Ken Jeong are “locked in” to appear in the third film. You might remember the former two from the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading; how do good actors like this get duped into appearing in Michael Bay films? McDormand will apparently make an appearance as the “National Intelligence Director,” while John Malkovich will play the boss at Sam Witwicky’s (Shia LeBeouf) first job. And then there’s Ken Jeong, who played the doctor in Knocked Up and the naked bloke in the boot in The Hangover, whose casting is mildly controversial, given how badly Michael Bay has handled race in the past. These three new characters will probably just end up getting swirled into the overcrowded melting pot that already is the Transformers cast and will probably just get in the way rather than contribute anything meaningful to the story.

Next up, there’s the shooting locations. Bay lists LA, Chicago, Washington DC, Florida, Texas, Africa, Moscow and China, which most Americans would smugly call a globe-spanning shoot. One of the many numerous, varied and crippling problems plaguing Revenge Of The Fallen was its obstinate refusal to stay in any one place; the teleportation “suddenly we’re in Egypt LOL” scene was a poorly executed excuse to set the action somewhere slightly more exotic than the local shopping centre. Doesn’t anyone involved with Transformers have an imagination?

What else? Apparently Bay is under pressure from studio Paramount to shoot TF3 in 3D. Oh goody. I had the misfortune of catching Revenge Of The Fallen in Imax last year, and it was so loud I almost couldn’t hear myself think, which I rather suspect is why everyone loved the movie so much — their brains were rendered inoperable by the overbearing and busy soundtrack. I imagine that the 3D super-fast hyper-editing of TF3 will similarly distract audiences and render them incapable of using their brains during the whole picture, which is, of course, the only way Bay could hope of accruing fans: by brainwashing them with white noise.

And finally the usual gang is, naturally, set to return. Shia LeBeouf will reprise the role most accurately described as “babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen’s prostate that somehow achieved sentience;” Kevin Dunn and Julie White will be back as the most annoying parents in cinema history; Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel will don the camo gear again to play the entirely pointless hoo-rah gung-ho American marines that probably should have died in the first movie; John Turturro will return as the only moderately-interesting character in the entire Transformers universe; Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving will growl and pontificate once again as the robot leaders; and last (and probably least) Megan Fox will rock up on set yet again to demonstrate approximately seven percent of her alleged acting ability.

Making fun of Transformers never gets old. It’s just one of those quintessentially awful films that everyone loves regardless. No matter how many things Michael Bay does wrong, no matter how many minorities he offends, no matter how juvenile his humour and basic his appreciation of the art we call cinema, his movies all steamroll the box office, and there’s not a single thing humble critics such as yours truly can do to stop the cultural apocalypse heralded by the likes of these films. That’s why we constantly nail the films for their inadequacy — to most people on the street, criticising Transformers is somewhat akin to blasphemy, yet blasphemy sounds a lot like it violates that freedom of speech thing the yanks so fervently cling to. So here we are, tearing the shit out of this movie partly to raise awareness about how bad it is, but also partly to let the world know that hey — criticism is important and meaningful, and we cranky critics are here to stay.