YMMV / Transformers (2007)

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Michael Bay had already developed a controversial reputation among moviegoers, and being tapped to make a live action Transformers movie was seen by many as a surefire sign the movie would fail. But backed by Steven Spielberg, Bay reinvented the very concept of how Transformers would look and feel on screen. He used advanced cinematography, crafted complex action sequences with Practical Effects that merged seamlessly with the visual effects and the VFX artists noted that before the movie the most complex CGI robot character made was General Grievous, which was blown away by the detailing in Ironhides' cannons alone. When the movie was released the hype and box office success had vastly exceeded all expectations, and Spielberg stood by that Bay was the only person who could bring it to life the way it did.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: When Sam gets the idea to merge the AllSpark with Megatron’s spark as a means to destroy them both, Optimus tries to dissuade Sam from the idea and stick to their plan of placing the cube in Optimus’ spark chamber. Did Optimus think Sam would get killed when he tried to approach Megatron? Was Optimus afraid Megatron would be strong enough to survive the AllSpark’s power (and potentially even get a power boost from the merger)? Or did Optimus not want Megatron to die, still viewing the tyrant as his brother?
• Award Snub: How many unquestionably feel about losing the Visual Effects Oscar, considering the truly impeccable work put into making the special effects. The other two nominees also had mixed reviews at best and the winner The Golden Compass is usually considered the worst, with some even insisting that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End would have been a more respectable choice.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Infamously the sequence of Michaela fixing the car while the camera shamelessly ogles her.
• Epileptic Trees: Back when the film came out, there were theories that the motorbike Lennox uses in his assault against Blackout was originally meant to be Arcee before she was removed from the cast. While writer Roberto Orci has Jossed this theory (stating that she'd already been written out when the Lennox scene was created), he also admitted that if she weren't removed, she probably would have been part of that scene.
• Fan Nickname: Bumblebee projecting an Autobot signal into the clouds = the Bot-signal.
• Fanon:
  • The fact that the planes that attack Megatron in Mission City happen to be identical to Starscream's alt-mode has resulted in the idea that the latter blended in with them to take some shots at his boss. Nothing in the film ever suggests this, nor is it particularly fitting to Bayverse Starscream's character, but the idea persists.
  • Some have theorized Megatron was fully-aware and sentient during his frozen imprisonment in Hoover Dam by Sector 7 and that his immediate hatred of humans comes from being dissected for almost a century and being aware the whole time.
• First Installment Wins: It is universally agreed that, while not flawless, the first of Michael Bay's Transformers movies is definitely the best of the ones he made.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The main character, Sam Witwicky, was never a particularly well-liked character, but his use in the first film is generally seen as the only one where he was tolerable. While he had a lot of This Loser Is You traits, this was counterbalanced by the fact that he had some attempt at a character arc and even a few sincere moments that implied those traits were a passing thing. Later films not only kept those traits, but seemingly had him get worse, and gave him nowhere near as much as a clear arc in favor of him being a Pinball Protagonist, putting his increasingly wretched personality in the spotlight.
  • The extensive focus on humans was one of the biggest sore spots of the series, due to the characters not being considered particularly interesting and taking away focus from the robots. The first film itself had three sub-plots (Sam and Mikaela discovering Bumblebee's nature as an alien robot, William Lennox and his crew surviving against Scorponok, and Maggie and Glen trying to figure out who has been hacking into the US government), that all intersect by the second act, but even then could be seen as attempting to preserve much of the mystery of the Cybertronian race. By the sequels, however, the human characters continued to get focus at the expense of the titular characters, which caused many fans to believe they had overstayed their welcome.
  • Optimus Prime in the first film was involved in a few surprisingly brutal action scenes, including driving a sword through Bonecrusher's head, but these moments were fairly brief and mostly counterbalanced by his many thoughtful speeches that gave the impression that he wasn't just a killer. By the second film, though, said speeches are a lot rarer and seemingly every fight Prime gets in has at least one person having their head ripped apart, and the series didn't exactly improve in that respect from there, to the point that Prime has become the biggest Memetic Psychopath in the franchise.
  • The film series has gained a reputation as Lowest Common Denominator blockbuster for its shallow characters, gratuitous fanservice, and recycled story. However, while the first installment had these problems, audiences and critics were able to ignore them since the film did offer spectacle on an unseen scale that successfully masked most complaints. However, as the series progressed, the film's creators did nothing to improve the film's reputation and the spectacle proved less effective when newer films, most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe, offered similar types of bombastic action while also providing better writing and characterization.
  • The films have been criticized for its needlessly sexualized portrayal of women most notably through Bay's use of the Male Gaze. However, although the female sexualization started with the first film's female lead Mikaela, most audiences were more forgiving since she is an actual character. As noted by Lindsay Ellis, Mikaela was written sympathetically with actual character depth as a Wrench Wench trying to atone for her criminal history, while also contributing to the plot by helping destroy several of the Decepticons. In contrast, the other female characters are depicted as eye candy for male viewers yet have none of Mikaela's charisma or Hidden Depths. Tessa from Age of Extinction is particularly hated by fans for being a whiny, bratty teen who doesn't actually contribute to the plot.
  • Jazz showns signs of being black-coded and is given a few stereotypically "black" traits like his transformations resembling breakdance and talking with crude slang. The sequels would also give the robots sterotypical ethnic traits, but also went overboard with them; in ROTF, the "twins" (Mudflap and Skids) came off as black caricatures due to their behavior, looks and (lack of) intelligence^note granted, this was allegedly unintentional; they were intended to be a parody of white kids emulating african-american culture, but the message was lost since one couldn't tell they were meant to be "white". In addition, their actors (one of whom is black) improvized a lot of their dialogue. Meanwhile AOE introduced Drift, who looks like he's made of samurai armor, fights with swords and occasionally drops haiku. While Jazz is usually given a pass for a variety of reasons (he's Out of Focus for most of the movie, his robot mode is relatively accurate to the source material, the stereotypical traits are mostly limited to his introduction scene and most versions of Jazz were already black-coded), the later entries not only added stereotypical mannerisms or appearances to characters who lacked them in the source material, but then also gave them large amounts of screentime.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A funny moment happens in which When Sam's dog Mojo pees on Ironhide in the first film he worries about rusting. Cut to two films later in DOTM, and it's not so funny anymore when he rusts to death after being shot by Sentinel Prime, during the horrifying and jarring scene of the latter revealing his betrayal.
  • The blatant sexualization of Mikaela has become extremely uncomfortable to watch once awareness increased of what Megan Fox had to put up with when working with Michael Bay; having been previously a Fanservice Extra at only fifteen in Bad Boys II, her 'audition' for Transformers was basically washing the director's car, and she had to gain weight for the second film because he "doesn't like skinny girls".
  • It's established by Sector 7's testing that Sam has been exposed to quite a bit of radiation during his brief time with the Autobots. The Last Knight would later imply that Sam died off-screen. It's entirely possible that the radiation exposure from being near cybertronians for three whole movies eventually catched up to him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Michael Bay taking the criticism against him in response to the film in stride makes his cameo in which Megatron calls him "disgusting" before flicking him away all the more amusing.
  • Hugo Weaving voices an Evil Overlord with a demonic face who plans on using the energy dispensed by a cube-shaped MacGuffin to Take Over the World, and is killed by said MacGuffin when he makes direct physical contact with it. Four years later, Weaving would play another Evil Overlord with a demonic face who plans on using the energy dispensed by a cube-shaped MacGuffin to Take Over the World, and is seemingly killed when he makes direct physical contact with it. Both characters even have an Arch-Enemy with a red and blue color scheme, to boot.
  • On July 19, 2022, not long after the film's 15th anniversary, a big fire broke out at Hoover Dam (leading to no injuries, thankfully) that made many fans of the movie to make references to Megatron breaking out of Sector 7. Funny enough by itself. The source of a fire turning out to be a burst transformer? Hilarious.
  • Travis Van Winkle plays Trent DeMarco in the film, who is a Jerk Jock who was Mikaela's boyfriend until she breaks up with him. He's then Put on a Bus in the sequels. In Friday the 13th (2009), he plays another Jerk Jock also named Trent, and people involved with both franchises claim they're the same character. If this is true, then it explains why he made no appearances in the sequels.
• Memetic Loser: Let's just say that Jazz's reputation has been torn into two pieces.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Optimus Prime saying eBay.
  • Bonecrusher hates everything. (Taken from his toy biography.)
  • Optimus Prime: GIVE ME YOUR FACE.
  • SHUT UP, GRANDMA!
    • DRINK YOUR PRUNE JUICE!
  • The scene where the FBI conducts a raid on Glenn’s grandmama’s house while he’s working his magic on the stolen government intel is edited to have him researching benign things such as illegal Lego building techniques, prompting the FBI to break in.
  • "[X] but if it came out in 2007" ^ExplanationIn August 2022, the Internet rediscovered the movie's ending with the chorus of Linkin Park's "What I've Done" hitting right as the credits roll and have applied it to a number of other movies such as The Godfather, Citizen Kane, etc
    • WHAT I'VE DOOOOONE ^ExplanationFollowing on from this meme, it's become popular to comment the first line of the song's chorus on images of the endings or Title Drops of other films or TV shows.
• Most Wonderful Sound: For many Transformers fans, hearing Peter Cullen's voice again after twenty or so years.
  Optimus Prime: My name is Optimus Prime.
  TFWiki.net: Admit it, you stood up and cheered and/or wept from joy after this exchange.
• Once Original, Now Common: The movie was fairly well-liked at the time, mostly for its decent plot and Rule of Cool thanks to large-scale special effects bringing realistic transforming robots to the big screen. While the special effects have held up rather well, considering how other action blockbusters made since then, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, offer equally extravagant visual effects as well as much better acting, plotlines and characterization, the full package of the movie can come off as dated.
• One-Scene Wonder: Colonel Sharp, the commander of Lennox's base, doesn't survive his first scene. Nonetheless, he's pretty memorable for the alert stance he takes when Blackout arrives and how he uses an ax to destroy the computer server Blackout is trying to access. He was such a favorite that his actor, Glenn Morshower, was brought back for future films to play basically the same character but with a different name - named after him, no less.
• Padding: The movie is already lengthy with three major plots - the race for the Allspark, Sam's coming of age, and soldiers fighting alien robots - which all come together in a climactic battle bursting at the seams with awesome. Then there's the aforementioned "signal decoding" subplot, which starts off totally inconsequential, then fizzles out altogether with shreds of exposition that the viewers already learned forty minutes earlier.
• Signature Scene:
  • Blackout's attack on the Qatar military base is best remembered for just how horrific and chilling it is, from the build-up to his arrival with the higher-ups noting the chopper he's impersonating had already been destroyed some time ago to the absolute carnage he inflicts on the base as the humans are helpless to stop him. It sells the Decepticons as a real, unstoppable threat, with many viewers calling it the epitome of the film's, if not the whole series', Nightmare Fuel.
  • The Arrival to Earth scene, held in strong regard due to the epic scale of the scene and providing a big, memorable introduction for Optimus Prime, The Hero of the franchise, in live action. The score for this scene is often regarded as the best piece composed for the entire film series as well.
  • The ending with Optimus Prime's ending speech, in which he invites new Autobots to join his team on Earth and gets viewers hyped for the sequel, set to Linkin Park's "What I've Done" became iconic, as evidenced by the massive surge of memes around it for the movie's fifteenth anniversary in 2022.
• So Okay, It's Average: The movie has a barely positive 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a comparatively coherent plot contained in a more manageable running time while benefiting from impressive special effects and set pieces. Some people considered it the only watchable movie in the series until the Soft Reboot Bumblebee came along.