You're absolutely right but then again people who went to see that movie don't care about all the qualities that a great movie needs- all they want to see is cars turning into robots that fight each other. It's just as the movie Idiocracy predicted. Now we're making movies based off Saturday morning cartoons- Transformers, Speed Racer, G.I. fuckin' Joe.
"all they want to see is cars turning into robots that fight each other" In all fairness, that's what the '86 movie was all about, and it was fucking awesome. My gripes reside with the focus on the human characters taking away from the mecha action.
I am only slightly embarrassed to say I liked Speed Racer.
Now, G.I. Joe looks like it's just going to be one of those BAYSPLOSION parody trailers, stretched out to movie length. I am perversely interested in that notion. Also, live action The Baroness. Hot damn!
My main complaint with the first movie is that the action was too schizophrenic. The camera was all over the place and you couldn't really tell what was going on during the fights. That said, it also didn't really make me care about the human characters...a bad thing, considering how much screentime they had.
I thought transformers was a really mediocre movie. Sure its fun seeing the robots transform but it felt like a teen soap. And like Seizen said, the camera work was a bit.... rough.