If anything good came out of physically enduring 2007's vacant, rhythmless "Transformers" and 2009's even worse, just plain embarrassing "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," it was the pleasure with which I got to rip them apart and seek my own personal brand of vengeance for sucking away untold brain cells and two-and-a-half hours apiece of my life. Michael Bay's adaptations of the Hasbro toy line and subsequent cartoon series were symbolic of the worst to be found in modern-day Hollywood moviemaking, wasting hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars on empty, utterly soulless products that used—and criminally misused—admittedly top-notch special effects to service a tedious, choppy, incomprehensible bombast of pitiful comic relief, shameful stereotypes, and thoroughly amateurish action set-pieces. Akin to a lot of crunching metal flying around on the screen, the films were vacant of one's emotional investment and held not a solitary second of actual wonder, awe or tension. The sad fact is that, regardless of the script or project in question, Bay is not a particularly good director. He can light the heck out of a sunset and knows where his pyrotechnics experts are at all times, but he typically hasn't a clue how to appropriately choreograph and cut action or give audiences a reason to care about his usually plastic characters.
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