Jealous of G.I.Joe’s Wretchedness, the Transformers Movie Tries to Catch Up

Meet Wheelie. The R/C car transformer. Who speaks like Clamps from Futurama, who himself spoke like a thug from the ’40s Looney Tunes cartoons. Except Wheelie is constantly talking and mutering to himself, as if he was a parody of Joe Pesci’s criminal from Home Alone.

His awfulness knows no bounds.

Now I know the idea of giant transforming robots from space isn’t the most serious idea, people. By why of god’s green earth is Michael Bay going out of his way to make it goofier? Why does he keep lowering the bar? 

The folks who give me shit about wailing on the awfulness of the G.I. Joe and Transformers movies because the ’80s cartoons were themselves goofy are missing the point. Yes, we know there were episodes where Soundwave took over a disco. But there were enough good episodes and enough basic awesomenesss that we stayed fans of these series more than two decades later. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for fans to want the movies of our favorite childhood franchises to show the good parts of those franchises. We’re older now. We understand that robots from space likely don’t and probably shouldn’t have silly voices. We know that what seemed goofy in the ’80s cartoon as kids will seem incredibly stupid and insultingly retarded in a live-action movie.

So why doesn’t Michael Bay know this?

And one last thing: In the iincredibly scant TF mythology generated by the first movie, the Autobots learned to talk through radio signals (except Bumblee, who was retarded). The fact that Jazz was inexplicably black was odd enough. How can you possibly justify an alien robot who not just speaks, but actual is, a shitty Joe Pesci impersonation? You can’t. You just film a lot of explosion and not give a shit. Fuckfucker.