Transformers (2007)
There's a moment roughly halfway through this film where I genuinely lost track of which robot was fighting which, who was winning, where it was happening, and frankly why I should care. A jumble of chrome limbs and grinding metal fills the screen, the camera whips around at a speed that could give you whiplash, and the score hammers you into submission. That moment, more than anything else, sums up my experience of revisiting Transformers nearly two decades on. Not awful. Not great. Just loud, breathless, and oddly forgettable for something so relentlessly determined to be remembered.
The premise, on paper, has genuine charm. Ancient alien robots, two warring factions, a war that spills onto Earth and lands squarely in the lap of a hapless teenage boy and his suspiciously cool car. There's a pulpy, Saturday-morning-cartoon joy buried somewhere in that setup, and occasionally you can glimpse it. But Michael Bay seems constitutionally incapable of trusting the simple pleasures of his own story. Every quiet moment gets bulldozed. Every character beat gets cut short for another explosion. The film is so desperate to impress you that it forgets to engage you.
Shia LaBeouf, I'll give credit where it's due, works hard. His nervous, stumbling energy suits the role well enough, and he keeps the human side of things grounded in something resembling actual personality. But Megan Fox is another matter entirely. I'll be blunt: I think she might be the worst leading lady I've seen in a major blockbuster. It's not entirely her fault, because the script doesn't give Mikaela anything to be beyond decorative, but there's very little sign of anything trying to push past those limitations either. She's framed, lit and directed as scenery. It's uncomfortable to watch in 2025, and it wasn't exactly subtle in 2007.
John Turturro shows up and commits magnificently to the absurdity, which is both entertaining and a little heartbreaking, because you're reminded what this film could have done with its supporting cast if anyone had bothered to write them properly. Josh Duhamel is earnest to a fault. The script, meanwhile, lurches between exposition dumps so clunky they'd make a lesser audience groan, and comic relief so misjudged it actually made me wince.
And then there's the action, which should be the saving grace and is instead the biggest frustration. The Transformers themselves are genuinely impressive feats of design and visual effects, especially for the era. When one of them unfolds from a vehicle into a towering robot in full light, there's a flicker of real wonder. But Bay buries it all under rapid-fire editing and shaky camerawork so aggressive it becomes impossible to parse the geography of any given fight. You can't tell who's winning, who's losing, or where anyone is standing. The tension drains away and you're left watching what amounts to a very expensive blender running on maximum. It's not that the action is bad. It's that it's directed with the frantic energy of a hamster wired to a car battery, and you feel it in your temples.
I've sat through plenty of Bay-adjacent blockbusters with similar DNA. I've written about Armageddon before, and that film at least has the self-awareness to be emotionally manipulative in ways that actually land. Transformers wants the same populist roar but never quite earns the feeling to go with the noise.
Two and a half stars, and I mean that generously. There's fun to be had here if you're willing to meet it on its own terms, which is to say: switch your brain off, sit back, and accept that comprehensible action choreography was never really on the agenda. In the moment, some of it works. The morning after, you'll struggle to recall much beyond the volume. If this is the baseline for the franchise, I'll be managing my expectations carefully going forward.
Watch it for the spectacle. Don't go looking for the story. And maybe keep some paracetamol nearby.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2026-05-27
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Paramount Plus · Sky Go · Now TV Cinema
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Paramount Plus Premium · Paramount Plus Essential · Paramount+ Amazon Channel · YouTube TV
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
