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I understand that the movies are geared towards teenage boys, but I really enjoy watching them. I don't find anything deplorable in the movies (besides some lack of story).

Most of the complaints I see tend to be some mix of the following:

• Too much focus on the humans
• The design aesthetic of the Transformers
• Due to the color schemes, a number of action scenes devolve into gray blur fighting gray blur with no idea who is who
• The 'humor'
• Characters appear and disappear as the writers seem to remember that they're supposed to be in the movie
• Irrelevant or meandering subplots
• General length of the movies

There's probably other general points I'm forgetting

It's complicated. As films, they don't measure up very well to usual metrics of quality, but there's obviously something to them that kept people coming back. Well, at least until the last knight.

I like'em.

And enough people did to go back three more times in bigger numbers till the tail-off kicked in with the fifth.

Hell, I even have a strange love for Last Knight, just for being batshit.

This is a two part video essay on all of Bay's films that he's directed and it explains why some people have problems with Bay's films.




and here is part 2 which talks about Bay's Transformers films:






Then there is also Lindsay Ellis' series The Whole Plate which is currently at part 9 and focuses more on Bay's Transformers films and some of his other films, to explore various film theories like auteur, feminist, queer, Marxist, and so on it's worth a look. I'll post part 1 here because I don't have the time right now to post 9 links to these videos, but they are really good and informative.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't thin they're overly horrible. I just wish everything didn't look like randomly spinning blurry metallic things half the time.

I've liked them.

But their excess in the fiddly details, the aesthetic mentioned, kinda reminds me of the particular synth pop sound pioneered by Donna Summer in the mid-to-late 70s ... at first it's brilliant and then, later as it's been done to death, it just distracts.

Lately here in the UK they've been showing 'Dark of the Moon' on repeat. I turned on the subtitles with the most recent airing and it made the world of difference. There was so much babble that I wasn't comprehending until now. Sam is incredibly annoying, and its not a patch on the first film, but definitely try these films with subtitles if you can!

But surely comprehending Dark of the Moon takes all the fun out of it?

There's fun in DOTM?

The only two I enjoy are the first one and DOtM. The rest are garbage IMO. The last two felt like endurance tests with little to no reward. Loved Bumblee though, it was a much needed Bay-less reset.