Transformers is a great movie.
Why is Transformers a great movie, you ask? Well let me tell you.
Michael Bay is one of those directors that can be ignored. He thinks he's making movies about certain things, like patriotism or self-sacrifice, but his films seem to encompass themes very separate from his perceptions. Bay has always been defined by his rambunctious editing, car chases on long freeways, slick and generic humor, and female body worship. It doesn't sound like he's any different than any other action filmmaker, but oh how wrong that assumption is. His movies are usually edited so fast that they resemble abstract art; the narrative of his action sequences is usually lost in this editing as well. It is hard to keep track of the characters and objects being utilized in, for instance, any of his car chases because the sense of geography is ignored. Consider that we rarely see overhead shots of car chases, and if we do it is from a pretty short distance. Bay puts his camera on the same level as the cars being smashed.
And things getting smashed is what he does best. Consider The Island, a film much like Transformers or Pearl Harbor in its vacuity of thought. When the clones discover the truth about the harvesting of their body parts and escape their prison, they seek out their originals. Even though the clones have made a strong stand for the value of themselves as individuals, they are given moral license to kill the originals. If that's not far enough, when they get to the obligatory freeway chase scene, they are given moral license to kill anyone. When the movie gives characters dialogue about the sanctity and value of human life, it is nothing but lip-service for the overarching message of the film: things getting smashed is awesome.
This isn't a negative quality of The Island necessarily. It's almost better if Bay's films have ideas in them that are smashed to bits by their own action scenes. Transformers is a film that wants to be about freedom, national identity, and self-sacrifice. Yeah whatever. The movie ends with a 45 minute action sequence filled with sharp edges, explosions, slow-motion impossibilities, and robots getting smashed. How does that relate to freedom? It doesn't really, except for the premise that the military is benevolent and selfless. Transformers shows a government working together with aliens to destroy other aliens who threaten a generic idea of "freedom." Though this premise could have potentially lead to some sort of war on terror allegory or another agenda, Bay strips any possible meaning from his film by making his action scenes, and even his dialogue scenes, completely unrelated to the rousing speech that will inevitably be given at the end.
So what do we have here? Fast cuts, slow motion, lots of robots, explosions, and some humor and character sprinkled on top. The movie doesn't really have "scenes" so much as it is one entire piece, one entire scene, completely undeveloped but totally overcooked. It's brilliant because it's vacuous, it's beautiful because it is simply images. There is no weight to Bay's action, no message or idea. Bay is a visual stylist who is practically baroque in his combination of sight and sound that overpowers and overwhelms while being in every way insignificant. There is no necessary part of this film: consider the stupid jokes, like a robot peeing on a man, or a fat guy eating donuts, or parents talking about masturbation. These things don't belong in the movie and are completely tasteless. Yet Bay's absurd action scene is mechanical pornography itself; taste doesn't really enter into it.
Bay's a master at making heavy-handed frivolity. He's an idiot savant, and this latest misstep is his best piece of trash ever.
Topic: Transformers (Read 35045 times)
