Michael Bay does a few things really, really well. He blows things up. He worships the well formed female body (he also can showcase dudes, too). He loves hardware. And he likes to do a bit of flagwaving.
And that's the essence of a Michael Bay film, the rest is just details. Really, that's all there is to it. With the Transformers variation, the key difference is giant alien robots that mostly transform into, again, big pieces of hardware, which Michael Bay loves to smash together with lots of noise and explosions. And again, there is no doubt he is a master of metal porn. Problem is, well, everything else.
I don't think Bay saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, which featured Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher. Not picking on Mr. Wahlberg, as he is capable of some deep acting when properly directed and when provided with a matching script. But, for example, his role as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights tapes into a certain elemental mail archetype, the stud turned porn star, which I think Wahlberg can naturally tap into with his inclinations. But science/logic types? Mark Wahlberg, buying you as an engineer, even the more artistic, intuitively driven type, that is just out of your range, by my estimation.
But here he is as Cade Yeager, a struggling inventor. He also has a daughter and a race car driver boyfriend...but that just sets up empty, non-clever and somewhat patronizing banter (re. his daughter) and a bit of macho posturing which quickly gets dull.
The story is about the REAL cause of the end of the dinosaurs, which involves the Transformers somehow (bad enough the "false history" of the Moon landings, now this) and from there, we eventually get an introduction of the Dinobots, which seems ironically almost an afterthought, given the premise of the film. And...they don't talk. They just break stuff. Kind of pointless, since we have that all covered.
If this series is going to go on, we need some ideas. I'm pretty certain Michael Bay has run out of his.
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