Michael Bay's Transformers movies have had mix to negative reception. But are they as bad as most make them out to be? Personally, I don't think so. Alot of people complain about them being more focused on the humans rather than the transformers themselves. Here is what I feel the movies got right that make them good, The second movie, was ok at best and mediocre at worst.
Strong focus
The Transformers films are known to have focused on the humans more than the robots, that's also where some of the critizisim lies. I think if these movies were set on Cybertron, then yes It would make sense for them to focus on the robots. Them being on earth in this series though (It should have ended at Dark of the Moon) the focus was on the humans and quite frankly, it made it more interesting. I'd rather see how the humans deal with everything rather than the robots.
Reality and Fantasy
The films do a good job at tieing in real life events and architecture with the history of the robots. Hover Dam in the first movie, Egyptian Architecture for the second and Apollo 11 for the third. It's a very unique and unexpected take on the franchise, at least for the first anyways.
Length
The movies are pretty lengthy, but it's because of the development of the characters. The first film did a great job at doing this, but then the second and third films suffered from lack of character development but was solid in story development. That was the problem with Revenge of the Fallen. It was good in story, poor in execution. But you also got to think, a writer strike was going on at that time. Did you expect something amazing during the writers strike?
Epic
Now, before I hear complaints. I want to explain this. The films as a whole weren't epic, but the sheer size, scale and the music from Steve Jablonsky is what makes them epic. Well, I should say the first and third. I didn't think the second was epic at all in any shape or form.
Direction
Michael Bay is to blame for some of the faults of the films but also think of the scripts. Michael Bay does like action movies and they've been pretty good. Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys, Transformers 1 and 3, just to name a few. He makes good movies but he gets a bad rep because he makes loud action movies, movies with explosions. You can't expect anything else.
This is what I think. What about you? Comment below and be respectful.