At the time of this post, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has grossed approximately Michael Bay. He is the proverbial scorpion on the back of the frog. He makes us complicit in the death of our own good taste. Bay acts as a pop cultural Satan who gets us to lower our standards just a tiny fraction each time out. And what do we do? We drop a few more coins in his palm and smiling glassy-eyed ask him to do it again.
I remember going to see Armageddon over a decade ago at the behest of a friend who was a great admirer of both Bad Boys and The Rock. After the film he turned to me with a grin and started laughing almost with tears in his eyes and then summed up his feelings on that film with a slew of invectives. I'll admit I thought the film was serviceable with a few moments of inspired lunacy (space madness? lifetime income tax exemptions?). Little did I know I was only encouraging Bay to continue. Years later I had the misfortune of watching Bad Boys 2 which I found not just crude in its execution but racially offensive which is no minor feat since one of the leads was Will Smith (I'm recalling the scene where this kid comes to take Martin Lawrence's daughter out on a date--Roger Ebert makes special note of it in his review). I caught his film The Island on DVD, I think. I found it to be his least offensive film. It was nonetheless a mediocre effort marred with Bay’s signature desultory chases and explosions. The man doesn't seem to strive to make films so much as cinematic energy drinks.
I don’t mean to say he is without talent. He at the very least has an eye. You could take stills from a number of his films that would rival the work of Annie Leibovitz. Bay is an auteur without question. I would call his particular style Brutalism (apologies to any architects). He assails the viewer with a wearying combination of visual and aural concussive bursts. Some viewers find this stimulating, exhilarating even. In small doses I find it tolerable, but extended beyond say an hour, I just find it exhausting. I become numb to whatever is unfolding on the screen trying to pass for a story. His characters have no internal complexity. His films often lack internal logic and flout the external variety. Apologists often say he's just making fun movies. But that's just it: His movies are not fun.
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Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen finds Bay at his absolute most indulgent worst. I went in with the lowest expectations for the movie and somehow it managed to undercut even that. I knew I was in for an interminable experience when the first words I heard Optimus Prime utter were: "Punk @$$ Decepticons." It would only go downhill from there. The film is an endurance test and I almost failed. I could have walked out and felt no shame (the only other movie I ever almost walked out on was Rush Hour 2; Brett Ratner is bar none America’s worst working director).
The film is super-saturated with action sequences, which is to be expected, but the bulk of them are completely unintelligible from a visual or logistic point of view. Imagine watching action scenes from The Bourne Identity, but replace Matt Damon with ILM’s hyper-articulated (and downright ugly) CGI robots. I defy anyone to make sense of 90% of the fight-scenes in this movie. At some point it’s just random bits of ornate metal smashing into each other and splintering into more pieces. No attempt is made to imbue any of these creations with character or soul. That goes for both organic and inorganic creatures in this film. The result is action that fails to resonate at all; it's a paradoxically inert spectacle.
I was disappointed to find the screenwriting team responsible for the new Star Trek also penned this dreck. I found that film immensely enjoyable and smartly designed. There is no point rehashing the plot of TF2, because it’s utterly meaningless to the proceedings. The dialogue as noted above is at turns offensive, vapid and cliché (in many some cases a combination of all three). And the less said about the two Sambo-bots: Mudflap and Skids, the better. I will just note how disappointed I am that Steven Spielberg’s name is on this flick. It would seem he had no issue with a film that prominently features two Gremlin-faced, simian-looking, jive-talking, foul-mouthed robots (one sporting a gold tooth, no less) both of whom are apparently illiterate. I hold this against Spielberg even more so than the surprisingly flaccid and disappointing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
So all this terrible dialogue, frivolous plotting, and incoherent action rumbles along for over two-and-a-half hours, daring the audience to revolt against it. Yet, at the end of the screening I attended on opening day, people actually applauded. I was dumbfounded. I understand art is subjective, but some things are just inarguable. How anyone in the audience felt a connection to anything that transpired on that screen is beyond me.
The only way I can explain it is that the film is pornography for the action-junkie set. It arrives at its goal in the most artless and brutal way possible. I wonder if people who enjoyed this movie felt shame afterwards? God, I hope so.
Of course Bay is not the sole villain here. He is merely the most successful. The past decade has been commercially ruled by Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the bloated and boring Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, the derivative National Treasure films and his mind-numbingly repetitive television work. Bruckheimer and his ilk, the Stephen Sommers' (who will inflict more pain on our cortices this summer with GI Joe) and McG's of the world, hold the reins. This is the entertainment we flock to and I just don't understand it. We've created a generation that thinks Terminator 2 is a better film than Terminator; that Jaws is boring (yes, somebody actually argued this to me); that Transformers 2 should get a pass because it's got cool effects. Aesthetics in a bare-fisted, knockdown brawl against good story-telling--and it's been no contest. Films like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen are sins against Creation. And the sooner the movie-going public at large recognizes this, the sooner our redemption can begin. Please, WTFU.
And this sums up everything I've been trying to say:
