10 Movies That Could Have Been Truly Awesome (With A Single Change)

6. Transformers

Michael Bay has been the brunt of internet fanboy jabs since AOL was a hot commodity. When news of a live-action Transformers movie surfaced though, many had high hopes. How could anyone, even Bay, ruin a movie about robots punching each other? It couldn't possibly be any dumber than the eighties cartoon series. Plus, Peter Cullen was in it. And yowza, who was that girl? Transformers simply could not fail.

In terms of box office, it didn't. Transformers was successful enough to spawn two sequels and revive the brand beyond Hot Topic shirts and comic book reprints. That very success is the sole reason older fans can get a special edition of the 1986 animated movie. If you enjoy your non-bootleg, subtitled, Japanese Transformers DVDs, keep in mind that you'd have waited a lot longer to get them if this movie hadn't succeeded.

Of course the movie's terrible. Anyone expecting otherwise was deluding themselves. The best you can say about any Michael Bay movie is that it's visually interesting. Special effects are expensive, though. They have to pad the movie out somehow.

Hence, acting. Sort of. Bay is notorious for getting the worst performances out of even the best actors, Sean Connery and John Turturro among them. This is to be expected from movies about people in fast cars and planes. But when the cars and planes are the people, why bother with human actors at all? If Transformers had dispensed with its human-oriented subplot, and reduced Shia LeBouf and Megan Fox's performances to pointing and screaming at special effects, it would have been a better film. Shorter, too.