Daryl Surat posted:

Scorponok is in fact not killed by the military gunship: he is forced to withdraw. It takes quite a bit of damage to kill Transformers in these movies. Recall that he reappears in the finale of the second film, at which point Jetfire kills him.


The problem with this is that your assessment can't possibly be true given that the films are so tremendously successful. Most people are not paying ever-increasing movie ticket prices to watch blockbuster films in the theater ironically or with the intent of subversively arguing that the film's "good" protagonists are actually antagonists or "not good." People pay premiums to watch blockbuster movies for spectacle, since summer action films succeed or fail based on their ability to be spectacular. Despite near-universal seething disdain both critically as well as by hardcore Transformers fans, these Transformers films have been massively, massively successful. We can therefore conclude that lots and lots of people do legitimately enjoy these movies, even though they are not people likely to write reviews or discuss films online.

Because of Transformers specifically, Michael Bay is now the 2nd highest grossing director of all time, and the guy occupying the number one is his executive producer. Success of that sheer magnitude over such an extended period of time--it's been seven years now of these movies--is not something that happens due to advertising hype (maybe for a first movie, but not for a fourth) or people "hate-watching" (too few in number). That kind of success can only come when a substantial amount of people believe that the caliber of action spectacle on display in these movies is simply at a scale and fidelity that surpasses even other blockbuster action pictures. People are going in expecting "a good and fun movie" and having those expectations not only met, but exceeded to the point that they not only buy the films on home video in an age where Netflix/Redbox are the default choices, but come back for the sequels.

It is lazy thinking to write the reason for this off with something dismissive like "well, I guess the masses are asses who'll consume any crap put in front of them," "I guess people just don't know what actual competent film making is," or the ever-popular-in-this-thread "wow, they must accept everything at full face value, no questions asked." We need to actually accept the possibility that lots of people genuinely believe the title of this thread to be true such that--per your terms--they do indeed honestly like the story, the characters, the dialogue, the directing, the music, the special effects, the cinematography, and the action scenes. I happen to be one of these people.