Personally, I don't think they should have been. While I appreciate that the amount of time, skill, effort and money put into making gaggles of cluttered and indistinguishable-looking robots fight each other while CGI 'splosions 'splode around them is immense, the payoff of all this work has been nothing more than a melange of cinematic spam. "Lots" doesn't mean "best" and in my opinion many smaller films have presented far better, visually cohesive effects work.
But given the franchise's pedigree of contention it makes sense for the studio to once again try its luck.
Fair play. But it became foul play when the studio decided to push said luck. In a fit of delusional hubris Paramount has requested that Transformers 4 not only be considered in the usual technical categories that nobody cares about but instead be considered for nomination in every category. All of them. Including the ones people do care very much about.
You best believe Paramount ain't playing. When it says all, it means all.
By its reckoning, Transformers 4 stands tall as the Best Picture of 2014, the much maligned Michael Bay skirted genius as 2014's Best Director and Mark Wahlberg's performance as the tough guy/inventor/fantastically named Cade Yeager deserves to see him crowned 2014's Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Conversely, let me put forward for your consideration that Paramount be totes cray-cray.
Let's run through the "Best Picture" winners of the past five years: 12 Years a Slave, Argo, The Artist, The King's Speech and The Hurt Locker.
While none of these films would rate as my best picture of their respective years - or even appear on my Top 10 list from each year - I can appreciate why they were chosen and have no quarrel with it.
Now add Transformers 4 to that list. While no one in their right mind would argue that the Oscars are anywhere near perfect - we'll save this rant for another day - awarding Transformers the Best Picture honour would be a travesty, a farce, a disgrace. Simply, it would be wrong.
Transformers has all the artistic merit of a finely calculated profit and loss Excel spreadsheet. All it's trying to say is "Buy Transformers merchandise".
Perhaps Paramount is banking on the persuasive power of the people over reasoned critical judgment. Because while Transformers 4 sits battered and bruised on an eye-gougingly low 18 per cent at review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, it does so proudly with the "ka-ching" of the US$1 billion ($1.2 billion) it pulled in at the global box office ringing loudly in its cauliflower ears. An outrageous figure that truly makes you despair for humanity.
Nevertheless, I detached all personal bias and did what I'd been asked to do. I sat and quietly considered Transformers 4.
I considered that this whole sorry business could just be an elaborate publicity stunt to hawk a few more iTunes and DVD sales.
I then considered that perhaps this was a serious entreaty to ensure the work of a masterful auteur and his powerhouse actor not be dismissed as the garbage it is.
They were decent theories, but I concluded they weren't correct.
The true answer was that Paramount had just orchestrated and pulled off the greatest mass media troll since Orson Welles warned a hysterical public that an alien invasion was imminent back in 1938.
Transformers 4 then. It's no Oscar winner but you could say it's positively ... Trollwellian.
