I have a difficult time defending Michael Bay, sometimes even to myself. There is so much wrong with his movies from an ideological perspective that it often threatens to overwhelm the qualities that are good about them. Other things that bother me less, like the consistently poor quality of his scripts on a dialogue level, seem to define the critical reception of his films. I think this, in a way, is what inspires me to defend him on certain levels. I think that analyzing what are, primarily, action movies, based on the relatively thin context filmmakers provide as an excuse for that action is only relevant if the filmmakers clearly wish it so. Something that aspires to be a more cerebral, more "intellectual" piece of genre filmmaking is worth looking at for what it attempts to do. The recent Anton Corbijn film, The American, stripped of all context save its three action scenes, would be a pretty effectively tense action movie. It would also be about 8 minutes long. The rest of the film has pretenses of elevating the action thriller to a realm of philosophical discourse and, in these aspirations, it fails mightily. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen never threatens to be anywhere close to an intellectual pursuit. It dodges and flees any notions of wit and self-reflection. It is, however, an occasionally beautiful and balletic action film. And, because it has no higher aspirations than that, I feel it should be judged mostly on these facets. Having said that, it is also worth exploring the ideological ramifications of much of what Michael Bay takes for granted in his pursuit of adolescent satisfaction. These, I feel are issues that could easily be avoided and, even if he does not encourage you to consider them, are still worth considering for what they say about Bay as a filmmaker and, perhaps, us as a culture. But even these are much different than the dialogue and plot, which are the main things reviewers seem to latch onto in dismissing his works (and, by extension, his abilities as a craftsman). Perhaps reviewers are just as guilty of taking what is problematic about his films for granted as he does.
So it is, with a strange sense of regret, that I must admit I did not enjoy Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, with anywhere near the pleasure I did upon my first two viewings. The very first time, in the theatre, I fell into the crowded mess of conceits that bloated the film to 2.5 hours long as a symptom of Bay's generosity. I believe he believes he only wants to make movies that make people happy. There were so many movies he would like to make, that he ended up stuffing them all into one movie as a way to give people everything. Comedy, drama, romance, action, suspense -- the things people sometimes insist they want to see all of in a movie. So we have a strange military scenario, with meddlesome Washington administrators getting in the way of Real Heroes trying to fight terrorists with a college comedy about a freshman trying to cope with an expanding world and maintain a long distance relationship and then thrown in the middle is a plot about robots fighting each other and someone trying to destroy the planet. Because of Bay's skill at rapid pacing, the movie's expansive overreaching and mixy-matchy-ness went down smoothly, and I appreciated his gusto and willingness to look silly by giving far more than was probably necessary. The second viewing was not as fond, though I still appreciated much of what I did previously. Now, perhaps my eyes are less tightened by fandom for Armond White and a desire to defend Bay for his formal qualities (which are considerable) at the expense of everything else. I see what people are saying when they complain about his unabashed conservatism. I see the weird, and frankly ridiculous and gross, ways Bay has likened Decepticons to underground terrorist cells. And the flat, personality-less Fox who exists as teenage boy titillation and nothing else. The movie clearly assumes that girls are never going to watch it, ever. Unlike many people, I have no problem with Shia LeBouf. His rat-tat-tat stream of neurotic pseudo-geek consciousness does, at least, feel like a cartoon version of a possibly real person. But what do they have in common? It falls into the same poisonous trap that John Hughes spent much of his career suggesting, that nerdy guys deserve to date girls because the guys are sweet and caring and the girls they deserve to date are the "hot" popular girls, because they're the girls "all guys" want to date. The women are reduced to objects and it's really just strange that this continues to be un-addressed and is continually gaining popularity. Is this an accurate reflection of what women want -- that the ideal woman continues to be thin and popular and pretty, but the ideal man is now a neurotic guy with no chin? Is this a terrified mass exodus of the female population for something Ben Affleck, former hearthrob and symbol of all that is chiseled and chinful did?
All these problems and more (the twins -- siiiiigh, the twins) begin to dissipate from memory, though, the moment Optimus Prime goes crashing through a forest, sliding along the hillside, flipping and twisting in a dance of mechanical violence. There's a fluidity to the pleasure of these moments, and their brutality is tempered by their existence as fictional constructs made of machinery (in the movie) and computer-generated images (in reality). The separation from anything resembling real-life creates a detachment that allows torn off limbs and exploding faces to exist as a pure kinetic pleasure, delightful for the ways in which they move and conflict with each other. I have no idea if this detachment presents any problematic implications in the long run, but for the short term I am willing to accept them as an effective substitute to pretending real human beings are disposable (the way much of the rest of the movie does, as countless infantry die without any explanation as to why they are even there to begin with). I don't know, Michael Bay, why can't the whole movie be super robot battle ballet. I would like that movie a lot. Instead I like these parts a lot, and the rest of the movie kind of not a lot.
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