I knew the movie would suck badly, and it did in all the ways I thought it would (check out the VG Cats comic I linked to earlier, underlining some of the most blaring flaws beyond the sheer michaelbayishness of the whole thing), and yet it still managed to suck in other, unexpected ways.

A lot of the script’s stupidity could be excused if the action scenes were well filmed, but they’re not (because Bay insists on showing them from a human point of view — which is not what the original Transformers was about). And I already knew that. But the over-the-top, unreadable action could also be excused if at least, at the very, very least, the transformations themselves were cool. And they’re not.

No wonder there’s no Optimus Prime toy of the “Ultimate” series (i.e., the actually transformable figures, of which there’s… one, Bumblebee): the new transformations are so complex you just can’t make them work in toys, and they don’t look so good on screen — the robots might as well be actually morphing. Which, oh wait, they also do! Is there any way the fucking moron of a writer could explain why those damn robots bother to transform when they’re able to morph from (warning, minor spoilers) old Camaro to new Camaro, or from boombox parts to cellphone, in a split second?

I can deal with the stupid bottom-of-the-barrel action movie script, the God-cube, irrelevant romance, irrelevant army sequences, irrelevant computer geeks and irrelevant nerd teen (wait, no — that one is relevant, and he’s actually the perfect “token human” for the story, as VG Cats puts it). And I can deal with the unflattering perspective that doesn’t work on action scenes. But wasting the transformations themselves? That’s a crime against my childhood. Anyone notice that the show is called fucking Transformers?

Only flip side of the coin, I finally have a good reason (beyond price) not to buy the Bumblebee figure, as cool as it seems to look (never managed to see it in person): there’s no way in hell I’m giving any money to Hasbro.