Josh Duhamel – Action Hero Movies

There’s a bit of a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones vibe to this movie, which kicks in shortly after the first hour is done. The whole movie goes on for 2 and a half hours.

It’s good to see the return of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, as Cade Yeager. This movie also features Anthony Hopkins as a supporting cast member called Sir Edmond Burton – he’s neither in a very major nor very minor role, but somewhere in between, and is listed second in the cast list in the closing credits, probably in part due to his level of fame. It’s good to see Josh Duhamel back as Colonel William Lennox. And the lead female this time called Viviane Wembley is played by Laura Haddock – she’s probably the best lead female in a Transformers movie thus far.

The best part of the movie is probably when Mark’s character cunjures a sword for himself long with the power to stop the swinging sword of one of the Earth-guardian transformers, thus saving Optmus Prime’s life when they’re about to execute him for betrayal even though he’s already realised his mistake. At that point, the guardians see Mark’s character has the amulet of King Arthur and they immediately recognise him as their leader. This only lasts a few seconds, but it’s probably the best part of the movie. The next best parts don’t last long either, which makes this movie quite thin considering it’s 2-and-a-half hours long. For this reason, even though this is one of the better Transformers movies – possibly even the best one to date – at least about as good as the first two – I’d still rate it pretty much Bang Average – on a par with most of the others, because the difference isn’t significant enough to justify distinct ratings, and the density of this one isn’t enough to justify a score of Above Average.

All Transformers movies ranked (up to this point)

If I had to rank all transformers movies thus far, I think I’d go 5, 4, 1, 2, 3. I’m confident in saying that movie 1 is slightly better than movie 2, and also that 5 is slightly better than 4, and that 3 is comfortably the worst of them all. But when it comes to 5 vs 1, that’s more of a style preference – do you prefer the originality of the movies 1 & 2, where the core concepts were first coined, or do you prefer the more powerful cast, magnificent script and less childish acting from movies 4 & 5? I’m tempted to go with the latter but it’s not a clear-cut decision by any means.

This movie is frequently quite childish, and is heavily banging the American military drums, but aside from that, it’s not a bad movie – it’s quite action packed from start to finish and has a decent basic story to it. The basic idea is, a bunch of sentient alien robots (Transformers) landed on Earth, and the good ones are battling the bad ones to save Earth and the human race from the destruction that the bad Transformers are planning.

Shia LaBeouf is officially star of the show; and Megan Fox plays his girlfriend who comes along for the ride most of the time, so is probably the second main character, officially. But in terms of charisma and screen presence there’s a few actors who stand out above both of them, including Josh Duhamel who plays the captain of the camouflaged military team operating in the Middle East; John Turturro who plays team leader in the secret Sector 7 agency, wearing a black beret; and funny guy Anthony Anderson who plays a useful hacker (who’s lost a lot of weight these days, but not at the time of this movie). Now if these three were the lead characters and it had less of a childish script, and it had a strong lead female added too, then it would probably be a significantly better movie, but as it stands I can’t rate it any better than Bang Average.

Peter Cullen‘s voice was also a notable feature in this movie, as the voice of Optimus Prime – leader of the benevolent side of Transformers.

Sequels

The first three Transformers movies are led by Shia LaBeouf.

The immediate sequel – the second movie in Hasbro’s Transformers movie series – is called Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009) and is pretty much the same quality as the original. It gets off to a better start but soon dwindles back down to the standard set by the original. It has a slightly new plot concept, but nothing significant. It has all the same cast members, and a very similar storyline, with another strong dose of pro-military persuasion. It’s equally childish, with a similar amount of decent action, although the action gets a bit more monotonous this time round I think. For this reason, and the fact it lacks the originality of the original, I would rate the second slightly weaker than the first, but by no significant margin – I’d rate them both Bang Average and suggest watching them sequentially for full context. One of the more interesting aspects of this movie is how Shia’s character goes into crazy genius mode from time to time, just like his grandfather did, drawing symbols on walls in the language of the Primes and debunking Einstein’s theories etc.

Third up, is Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and while the first 90 minutes are drama-heavy, with occasional uncoordinated action, the final hour is a long final battle scene which brings the story together and rounds it off. Overall, this third movie lacks originality and creativity in plot and action, just like the second movie – probably worse. As such, I’m tempted to rate it Below Average, but it’s not significantly worse than a lot of movies rated Bang Average. Much of the cast is the same here, but the lead female has changed from Megan Fox (who’s nowhere to be seen here, she just disappeared from the storyline without explanation) to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and I’d describe this change as going from bad to worse, which is representative of the movie as a whole since it’s a bit worse than the previous two. One of the more interesting aspects of this movie, is how the Decepticons attempt to control certain humans including Shia’s character by turning into unremovable torturesome wrist-watches.

After this initial trilogy starring Shia LaBeouf, the next couple of Transformers movies are led by Mark Wahlberg which I think is an improvement, then after a couple of movies with him, the series goes rapidly downhill, with a movie led by Hailee Steinfeld in 2018 followed by a movie led by Anthony Ramos in 2023.