Update: Megan Fox Transforms into Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

So Megan Fox has been officially replaced. And did it go to some of the actresses in the running? Nope. It went to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the Victoria Secrets lingerie model.

I guess Michael Bay came to the realization that when you work with actresses they constantly want to do this really annoying thing called acting. Much better to have a lingerie model to give this direction to:

"In this scene, I need you to bend over and stick your ass out. Oh, and this part is really important, make sure to lick your lips."

"Lick my lips?"

"Yeah. Like you want to blow him."

"In which scene did you want me to do this?"

"In every scene."

(source)

Megan Fox Transforms into...

So Megan Fox is off Transformers 3. The decision was hers according to her, stating Michael Bay was being verbally abusive. Paramount says it was their decision not to re-option her contract. However, earlier press releases state that it was ultimately Bay's decision.

I am inclined to believe Fox on this one. Because Bay lies all the time. This was the guy that said that Megatron was not going to be in Transformers 2, not hinted or implied, flat out said he wasn't going to be in it. Then guess who was in the movie?

But it ultimately doesn't matter. She is off and now her list of replacements has been narrowed down to three: Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Sarah Wright, and Brooklyn Decker. Huntington-Whitely is the frontrunner at this point. And now you ask yourself, "Who the hell are these people?" Good question. Wright was in The House Bunny. Decker is a swimsuit model that just landed a role in Just Go with It, a comedy starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicole Kidman. Huntington-Whitely is a Victoria Secrets model that has never acted before.

Hmm...a lingerie model with no acting experience? Sounds like the perfect person to play the co-lead of a multi-million dollar blockbuster. Sounds like Bay's thinking to me.

Bay says he wants to launch a fresh face in the role, but I'm sure there are mitigating factors leading to that. The film is already in production (started May17th) and the actress that is cast will have two weeks before she starts filming scenes with Shia LaBeouf. That's a pretty tight window. Also, there is the fact that he is Michael Bay and not Christopher Nolan and big talent only works with him for a paycheck.

On a final note, they are already in production and are now having to rewrite the script to kill off one love interest and introduce another. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.

(source)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review

Michael Bay set out to make the biggest movie of the summer. Instead, he made the most disappointing.

I'll begin with the most basic problem: the script. I'm not asking for a deep, psychological quandary - I'm aware I went to see Transformers. I would just like something that A) makes sense and B) is original. I guess Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have been writing so much lately that they are running out of ideas. There is a little bit of Star Wars, a little bit of The Matrix - hell Kurtzman and Orci even stole from their own work: I noticed a striking similarity between one of the final scenes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and one of the final scenes of Mission Impossible III. Also, Kurtzman and Orci have decided that they don't need to explain things.

They confused a lot of people with the time travel plotline in Star Trek, but this is worse. Who is the Fallen? One of the original Primes. Only a Prime can kill him. Why? I don't know. Because he's so powerful? Maybe? You wouldn't know how powerful he is by how short his battle scene is. His big moment lasts less than three minutes. In the middle of an action sequence that just seems to go on and on. Also, what is this all-powerful Matrix of Leadership (was that the best name they could come up with? Honestly?) besides being the key to a weapon that could destroy the planet? I don't know. What the hell was that place Shia went to where the spirits of the original Primes fixed everything? I don't know. And why did they do that? Because it is his destiny, I guess. I was too busy shaking my head at that point. But that grand sweeping gesture speaks to the deepest problem in the whole franchise.

The film is called Transformers but the focus is always on the humans. I understand that it may be deemed necessary to have humans in the movie so that audiences have something to grasp onto and relate to. I get it. I won't point out that it wasn't necessary in any other iteration of the franchise. Would you like to know why? Because those Transformers had personality. Someone needs to send a memo to Bay, Kurtzman, and Orci that just because the Transformers are made of metal doesn't mean their dialogue has to be. Nothing that comes out of their mouths seems to have anything that feels like life. It all feels so stiff and forced. So it becomes impossible to care about them. But back to my point about the focus on humans. The story focuses on the humans as if they are the ones with the power to do anything. But whenever anything needs to be accomplished, the humans just call in the Autobots and sit back and watch. The humans get all the attention and the Transformers do all the work.

Now it's Michael Bay's turn. Bay, you disgust me. I'll touch on the racist robots for a moment first: Wheelie and Skids. It's bad. It's really bad. Watching them I was reminded of blackface performers from the days of vaudeville. But what really bothers me is the sexism. It bothers me that every woman in the film is gorgeous, wearing skin tight clothing (what little of it there is), and shiny lip gloss on lips that are always in a sexy pout. It bothers me that every shot of Megan Fox seems to start on her ass or chest and pan up to her face. That bothers me. But worse than all of the disgusting behavior is this: you are boring.

Bay and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are boring. I know what shot that he is going to cut to. I know what he is going to put in slow motion. I can predict because he always does the same thing. It's old and it's stale and it's boring. And so is Transformers. There is a blandness to everything, a genericness, a feeling that you feel like you've seen it all before.

So why should you pay to see it all again?