It’s incredibly easy, and in my opinion, somewhat lazy, to jump on the current favourite bandwagon that seems to be gathering momentum amongst “proper” film critics. In order to gain entry onto this bandwagon, all you have to do is slag off Michael Bay as a terrible director with no ability, variety, nuance or intelligence. I’m as happy to admit as anyone that he does have no variety or nuance. I sent a text to a friend of mine about having seen Transformers 2 and without having seen it, he said back to me “Let me guess, lots of 360 slow-mos, sunsets, men getting out of cars/helicopters and of course explosions a plenty - that about it?”
Yes, his work is formulaic – but that isn’t always a bad thing so long as the films have saving graces. This is a plus point for some of his work. The Rock is great. Fun, self-deprecating, high-octane, relatively short, has Ed Harris, Sean Connery and Nick Cage back when having Nick Cage in a movie was a good thing. Armageddon is pretty good. Schmaltzy, yes. I mean, it’s unbelievably schmaltzy, and the sheer emotion of it all nearly ruins all the good work put in by having Bruce Willis blow things up, which by the way is another movie formula that has proven particularly a) lucrative and b) mostly quite good. But still, on balance, I like Armageddon. Pearl Harbour is terrible, not only because it’s full of pointless, boring and completely unbelievable romance and coma-inducing emotion, but because it’s monumentally inaccurate and the things that people outside Hollywood despise about Hollywood literally seep out of the open wounds in its own decomposing carcass. So, cross that one off. As for Bad Boys II, it’s literally the blueprint for Michael Bay films, but again manages to survive not only because it doesn’t take itself very seriously, but the epic charisma of the leading actors makes it believable and enjoyable. You can’t really fail with Will Smith. I mean, you can, because look at Hancock, but theoretically, you shouldn’t be able to fail with Will Smith, even if you are Michael Bay.
In fact, perhaps that is the key to Michael Bay’s success or failure. His good films? The Rock and Bad Boys II, both pointless exercises in blowing as much stuff up as possible and destroying as much property in ridiculous car chases as possible, but both are made eminently watchable and enjoyable because a) they don’t take themselves too seriously – or even slightly seriously in fact and b) they have charisma leaking off the screen in the shape of the cast. Bad Boys II has Will Smith, who – let’s be honest – has enough charisma to carry an entire movie, see Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness, Men in Black, I Robot, Hancock, I am Legend, et al. The Rock has Nick Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris, all of whom are excellent, and the supporting cast is excellent as well, including Michael Biehn and the late John Spencer. His bad films? Pearl Harbour is the worst for sure – and why? Well, it again is a pointless exercise in blowing stuff up, as well as practically spitting on the graves of a lot of brave men and women, and also, the cast has absolutely no charisma whatsoever. Watching Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale act together to quote Mark Kermode, is like watching chairs mate. Armageddon nearly fails because Ben Affleck is awful and Liv Tyler is fairly awful, but is rescued because Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi and Bruce Willis are just about the safest bets you can make. I haven’t seen The Island, but from what I’ve heard, even Ewan McGregor couldn’t rescue it. So it must have been pretty awful.
Now, what does any of this have to do with Transformers 2? Well, let’s look at Transformers 1. I quite liked it. It’s very much a Michael Bay by numbers movie, but the actors are engaging enough and the effects are incredible and the film running time feels much quicker than the 144 minutes it actually is.
So, what about Transformers 2? Well, let me just say this right off the bat. It is terrible. I really wanted to like it, I really did. Every part of me wanted to like it. I knew that stuff would blow up, I knew that there would be sunsets and slow-motion 360s, and men getting out of helicopters looking rugged, and I presumed that the writers would have still forgotten that Megan Fox is actually supposed to be an actress, not an art exhibit, and given her something to do. But I still wanted to enjoy it.
Well, no. It’s awful. It suffers greatly from sequel-itis, and by that I mean that having set up the characters in the first film, however flimsily, the film-makers decide that there is absolutely no need to do anything with them whatsoever. There are too many plot points which makes the film difficult to follow, there are too many characters, or in the case of this film, robots, and the whole thing just feels far too crammed in and complicated. The Dark Knight suffers from having too many characters, but Heath Ledger is so brilliant that you don’t care. Spiderman 3 is the same – loads of plot points, loads of characters, absolutely bloody awful movie. So in this film, the title hints that the Decepticons that were defeated in the first movie – who had, you know, fallen – would be having their revenge. But no. That would apparently be too easy. So now we have a giant sort of “daddy” decepticon, who is called “The Fallen” who apparently first came to Earth two million years BC or something, and doesn’t like people, and then had to bugger off, and can’t come back to Earth, except he can, but he doesn’t until he does even though he still can’t. Confused? You will be! The first film set up a sequel very nicely, so why would you go about making it so damn complicated?
The robotic characters dominate this film as you would expect. Well, you maybe wouldn’t expect it, but it happens anyway. Optimus Prime is very impressive, as you definitely would expect, and Megatron is very scary, I suppose. Bumblebee’s habit of finding the exact quote on the radio that he requires for any particular moment is a bit annoying but acceptable, and by and large, there are plenty of good things to say about the robots. Except Mudflap and Skids. If Jar Jar Binks was annoying both as a character and disconcerting because he was so blatantly racist, just wait until you encounter these two.
What about the human characters then? Well, Frank LeBoeuf’s son Shia does nothing in the film at all. He’s rubbish, and that’s partly because he’s given nothing to do, and partly because he does so little with what he does have. Megan Fox is even worse. Now, I can’t really comment on her skills as an actress because I haven’t seen her really act yet. In this film she gets about 3 seconds at the start that revolve around just how massively gorgeous she looks, but at no stage does this film stop short of completely objectifying her – and every other woman in it – and I’m sorry, but when did that become acceptable? Or is it just that I’m getting old? Also – why does Frank LeBouef’s college only accept people who have been on the front cover of Maxim or FHM? I don’t recall that being the way university works – and the way I know this is, I got into one.
Oh yeah, and there appears to be an entire subplot between the two main characters in which neither of them will tell the other one that they love each other despite the fact that they both know that they do and they’ve also been dating for two years. Seriously, I don’t know how else to put this – I think I’ve literally summed up an entire plot point of this film. Wow. I think the severity of that just hit me. It’s desperately, desperately poor.
The entire film is just idle and completely lazy. Every single character, with the exception of John Tuturro, phones in their performance, at best. The direction is utterly directionless – left totally unguarded by a bloated budget and a seemingly endless running time, and the tone, soundtrack, dialogue, really everything that makes a film, is lazy, moronic, and pointless. Then there’s that running time. Whereas I was amazed to find that the first film was longer than 2 hours, I’m amazed to realise that while watching this film I didn’t age 2 whole years in the cinema. It’s long, and it feels it. It even feels longer than The Dark Knight, and that is a film that both feels, and is, really long.
Making a film like this should not be difficult. Yes, it IS lowest-common-denominator cinema, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it is done in the right way and at the right time. Bay has done it before, and several directors have done it well and it would appear that Judd Apatow is making a massive amount of money and an entire career out of it. And I don’t begrudge him that – entertaining people with pointless forget-your-troubles entertainment at the end of the day is both difficult and important. The first Transformers pretty much ticked every box for a decent action flick that could brighten a dull day. This tripe, this garbage on the other hand ticks nothing and leaves the viewer feeling nothing but short changed that they have been robbed of what feels like 64 hours of their life.
Michael Bay described the tone of the film as "Ben-Hur (1959) fused with Apocalypse Now (1979)." I don’t want to accuse him of false modesty but those two films won about 600 Oscars and are considered epic masterpieces of cinema. There is no dimension in which I can possibly imagine this film ever being considered in such lofty terms. At best I was hoping for a good old fashioned action flick that demands nothing from its viewer but delivers brainless entertainment that whiles away a couple of hours with pointless fun. And instead I got this.
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