Michael Bay has made his final dollar off of me.

I posted this to Facebook a while back, and I’m posting it here so that the rest of the world knows.

I recently realized something about Transformers 4, a movie that sucked horribly bad. This is a long post, but it’s worth the read.

Transformers 1 had plot holes and annoying characters with first-grade potty humor and awesome action scenes. I was willing to overlook all of the former because the latter was the main attraction. I saw it four times in the theater, plus a fifth in IMAX.

Transformers 2 had even more awful plot holes, riddling inconsistencies, terrible acting from terrible characters, and reams of high-octane action that dwarfed the first film. Saw it three times, plus IMAX.

Transformers 3 had fewer plot holes, a head-scratcher on the moon, a cameo by Buzz Aldrin, plenty of bad acting, and action scenes that put the previous two films to shame. Saw it twice in 3D, including IMAX.

What did Transformers 4 have? Plot canyons. Bad acting. Bad premise. Overlapping stories that tugged it all apart. Confusing motives. Confusing characters. Confusing backstory. Zero payoff to any of it’s actual good ideas. Some decent action, most of which was wasted on an effort to make the audience wonder what they’d just done with ten dollars.

But none of that was the worst part: the worst part was that Transformers 4 was BORING. You heard that right. Halfway through the film, I was BORED. And that had never happened to me with Optimus Prime on a gigantic cinema screen. Nay, it should never happen to me while I’m waiting for Optimus Prime to come riding into battle cavalry-style upon the back of a robot dinosaur.

Yet that is what Michael Bay delivered to me, for $11.50 on a Friday night. I’ll give him this much: it was the most artistic way that any human being has ever flipped me off with both hands and a smile.

The most unsettling thing about all of this is that I will tolerate Michael Bay annoying me; I will put up with him mistreating my intelligence, offending my sensibilities, wasting the potential of a childhood favorite, and laughing at me all the way to the bank…yes, all of these things, I will gladly endure…

…but I won’t put up with him boring me. Somehow, after all that, I waited for boredom to be the final straw.

So why did I hate Transformers 4 so much?

On top of everything else, it made me realize that *I* was the problem.

And that’s why I won’t be watching a 5th.