Better than the trailers made it out to be, but tragically by the time I saw it it fell to the opposite end of the scale- built up too much by fans. Yes the live action movies sucked, and in comparison to those this is five stars. There’s some good visuals, decent action. Hemsworth emulates Cullen well, and I was skeptical of Tyree Henry in the trailers but he sold me as the movie went on with a gradual and natural vocal transformation.

But I expected more from the praise with the story. Optimus and Megatron start strong in their friendship, but Megatron’s fall feels like it’s missing too many steps. He hates Optimus without ever trying to get him on side, and I just didn’t buy it. It was flattening- right down to his big motivation being destroying it all out of anger and the schism before that being about executing the baddie- enough for Optimus to sacrifice himself to try and save him. Combined with Optimus getting all the idealism and leadership, it doesn’t sell Megatron as a fallen hero. I prefer the versions where Megatron was the one to sell Optimus on revolution, where he inspired him to act. That’s much more tragic, there’s much more pathos there. But the film is afraid to give Megatron any real points or positives beyond the brotherhood with Optimus, so when that’s gone it’s just violence and anger and destruction far too early when part of the appeal of dimensional Megatrons like this one wants to be is that he had a point once, was a true hero once, but let that pain and rage corrupt him.

Then there’s the quippy humor and the rest of the cast. Key is fine but the typical comedic relief he’s served in things like the Mario movie. He doesn’t get obnoxious and gets a few laughs but does get a little annoying. And ScarJo is so flat as the requisite girlboss better at anything the lead can do, and she’s the only major female character besides the lieutenant she has the required girl fight with. Laurence Fishburne acts around the vast majority of this cast. And it’s such a missed opportunity and a summation of the flaws of this movie that there’s three other main characters and none of them join Megatron or bond with him in any way. That would require some level of nuance or temptation.


I sound harder on this movie than I am- I’m holding this to the standard of the franchise revival others seem to. As a kid movie, it’s fine- better than fine. The animation and action, and the attempts at characterization even where flaws, gets it to three stars. But it’s not resparking my love for Transformers like I hoped it would.