Extremely Loud and Incredibly Chrome

Here’s the thing about the Transformers movies: I keep going to see them, and they keep not getting any better.

I do not enjoy these films. They are loud, and stupid, and noisy. And yet for a decade and a half, I watched Transformers movies. I reviewed the first five films as they rolled out – the 2007 original one for Metro, the rest for NOW because Glenn Sumi enjoyed watching me twitch for days afterward, I think – and caught Bumblebee when it came to Blu-ray. (That one wasn’t too bad, I guess.) I’ll catch the new one, Rise of the Beasts, when it comes to disc in the fall because it’s what the people want. But I have yet to actually like the experience of spending two-plus hours in the whirling buzzsaw world of Optimus Prime and his clanky pals.

Why do I do this, if it brings such pain? Why do I return to Michael Bay’s shiny crash-bang spectacles if all they do is make me despair for the future of cinema? Like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Alien 3, the Transformers movies have been in my life so long that I can’t remember a time when they weren’t there. And because Paramount Home Entertainment released a giant 4K boxed set of the first six films last week, to get everybody all amped up for the arrival of Rise of the Beasts in theaters this week. And that’s been instructive.

When the first Transformers movie arrived in the summer of 2007, it was exactly what people expected from Michael Bay: Two hours of giant robots punching other giant robots and screaming about the fate of the universe while a dorky teen and his hot love interest scrambled around trying not to get crushed like bugs. All I remembered about it sixteen years later was one beautiful, lonely shot of an Autobot standing alone in a junkyard against the night sky, which speaks to Bay’s skill at crafting sumptuous images; every shot in his movies is gorgeous to behold. It’s just that he throws them all into a blender and renders them down to incoherence.

Revisiting the films in Paramount’s new boxed set of 4K Steelbook editions was sort of a dare to myself: Could I find something new to like in the Transformers cycle? The films are frozen in time, so have I changed enough to appreciate them now – for the escapism, if not the stories?

I’ll say this: They sure do look great. Michael Bay’s movies are made to be seen at the highest resolution possible, with the most elaborate sound setup you can find. There’s a reason these movies keep winning tech Oscars: They are remarkable demonstrations of the artistry of sound mixing and visual effects, even though Bay keeps racing past the virtuosity of his artists. The primary colors of the Autobots pop in every corner, the clean lines of sports cars and trucks and jets create an almost soothing aesthetic in those rare moments when the camera lingers on them.

Every one of these movies is a demo disc for HDR and Atmos, and maybe that’s their true purpose. You can spin them up and just wander away until the room starts shaking, and you’ll know it’s time for a big battle scene. If Shia’s talking, just keep walking: The human characters are almost incidental to Bay’s stories; they’re just there to accidentally activate this Autobot or find that McGuffin, then stumble through war zones and be saved from debris and wreckage. I was happy to discover LaBeouf was more interesting than I remembered, at least in the first movie; he finds a little wonder within the anxiety and panic that nudges the barely-there role of Sam Witwicky closer to being a recognizable person.

Certainly the booming, swaggering Autobots are granted a dignity and poise denied to any of the Witwicky family, who exist to be pantsed, dosed, dissed and generally knocked around by life even before their alien robot pals show up – and while one might argue that Megan Fox’ Mikaela Banes is nothing but poise, it’s not like she gets any real respect either.

Although she’s introduced as a capable mechanic and a sharp customer in her own right, the movies regard Mikaela exclusively as the Hot Girl Who Likes Cars And Also Sort Of Tolerates Sam, and that’s all Fox gets to play. And when it was announced Mikaela wouldn’t be returning for the third film – the utterly generic Rosie Huntington-Whiteley stepped in as Sam’s college love interest – it felt like Fox’ decision rather than Bay’s. These movies can’t be all that challenging for an actor, and Fox was savvy enough to know she was only there to be ogled; one of the little asshole robots literally humps her leg for a quick gag in Revenge of the Fallen, for crying out loud. Would Buzz Aldrin stand for that?

No, he would not. And the third movie – Dark of the Moon – is the one I like the most; it’s total Bay overload, but that opening scene on the moon is the closest the guy’s ever come to acknowledging how utterly ridiculous all of this is, and shooting in 3D forces Bay to throttle back on the cutting and respect the visual geography of a given scene. (Otherwise the audience would be having seizures, I expect.) As a result, the film feels less frenetic and more elegant; the extended action climax in Chicago is a knockout, and it’s a shame 4K and 3D never figured each other out because that tilting-skyscraper sequence was a stunner when I saw it theatrically. Don’t get me wrong, the movie’s still dumb as a post, but people seem to be in on the joke – especially the ludicrously overqualified guest stars Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and John Turturro. (And hey, Andy Daly’s there too!)

Speaking of ludicrously overqualified guest stars, Stanley Tucci turns up in the Mark Wahlberg films that followed Dark of the Moon, and he clearly understands the assignment: He’s a sinister CEO in the fourth one, Age of Extinction, and Merlin, somehow, in The Last Knight, which dares to tell us, five movies into this dopey-ass series, that the Autobots have been on Earth for centuries, they’re just really good at staying under the radar. (I guess it’s easier when radar hasn’t been invented yet – or cars, or planes, or whatever else they disguise themselves as in the present.) But of course that little history lesson (delivered by Anthony Hopkins with the bemused gravitas of a man about to purchase a very nice beach house, and also the beach around it) allows for the possibility of a prequel, which we get in Travis Knight’s Bumblebee.

Which isn’t bad! It’s not good, exactly, but by being a gentler, calmer Transformers movie it rises to the top of the pile, with Hailee Steinfeld’s teenaged rebel befriending the eponymous yellow Beetle in 1987. The first half is just a chrome-and-steel reworking of E.T., and the scenes of quiet bonding between the human and alien protagonists mean that after a decade of constant mayhem one of these pictures finally gets to breathe a little. And then the Decepticons show up and it turns into another epic robot fight, but one with slightly better dialogue than any of its predecessors. And John Cena is around, and he looks like he’s having a good time too. It’s … a pleasant surprise.

So there we go. I still hate the ones I hated before, I kinda don’t mind the ones I kinda didn’t mind already, and they all look great. I think it was Roger Ebert whose used to say “Those who like this kind of thing will like this kind of thing,” and I know he meant it dismissively but it really does apply to the Transformers movies. I don’t like them, but each one is a massive hit; clearly, there are people out there who will want to buy this boxed set … though if you already have the existing 4K editions, you’re really just paying for the case and the admittedly snazzy Steelbook packages, which house a 4K platter of the feature and the corresponding special features Blu-ray. (Only Bumblebee’s BD offers the feature film.)

The set does not leave room to add Rise of the Beasts when it comes out this fall, but I guess that’s standard marketing at this point; anyone who likes these movies enough to re-buy them in a six-picture 4K megabox will almost certainly like them enough to re-re-buy them in a seven-picture 4K megabox down the road. Just as each of these movies ends with Optimus Prime declaring the real battle is yet to come, so is each boxed set merely a promise of another one. I think. What can I say, these movies wear me out.

This guy gets it.

The Transformers 4K Steelbook Collection is available now from Paramount Home Entertainment. It is very heavy.

Coming up in Sunday’s paid edition: Revisiting Blackhat and The Last Starfighter in Arrow’s new 4K editions, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings some much-needed silliness into the house. Upgrade to the paid tier right here, please and thank you.