Bay Hasn't 'Fallen' This Time

by Brett Parker

So here’s my deal: I was a huge fan of Transformers growing up. My brother and I used to collect all the action figures and we’d always plop in front of the TV every afternoon to watch their cartoon adventures. On an intellectual level, it’s perhaps a preposterous concept to have robots that transform into various vehicles battle each other on the principal that good and evil must endlessly battle each other, but there was an intoxicating excitement to be held in our childlike hearts whenever a new episode of the series graced the television screen. To this day, I’m still thrilled by the animated movie from 1986. It’s still kind of traumatizing to watch Optimus Prime take those crucial laser beams to the chest.

In 2007, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg teamed up to make a live-action Transformers movie and the result was an adrenaline-fueled blockbuster adventure that displayed some of the most impressive special effects work I’ve ever seen. The Transformers were brought to such grand and vivid life, I was in awe of how a live-action production could do full justice to their robotic bodies. If the film had any flaws, it was to be found in its lightweight human story. It wasn’t easy watching Shia LaBeouf, an actor of considerable wit and coolness, being branded as a pathetic dweeb and ultra-sexpot Megan Fox was way too sensual to simply be a high-school love interest. She seemed more appropriate as a femme fatale in a film noir. She and LaBeouf seemed like such a mismatch. Nonetheless, Transformers delivered the action goods; it honored fond memories of the cartoon series and wonderfully displayed the underrated and competent talents of director Michael Bay.

As I prepared to catch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the current sequel in the franchise, I discovered an overwhelming amount of negative feedback from the film’s reviews. It currently holds a 21% “rotten” reading on Rottentomatoes.com and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone thinks the film “has a shot at the title Worst Film of the Decade.” I’ve seen the sequel for myself, and I must say that Travers needs to chill the hell out. Revenge of the Fallen is an eye-popping, slam-bang summer entertainment that delivers exactly what it promises: a whole lot of action, humor, sexiness, and dazzling special effects. It’s pretty much on the same level as the first film, although I give the sequel more of an edge for showing more mastery with its human plotting. If this is indeed the “Worst Film of the Decade,” then we my friends have had a monumentally incredible decade of cinema.

The film picks up some time after plucky teenager Sam Whitwicky (LaBeouf) and his love interest Mikaela Barnes (Fox) survived an alien robot battle between the Good Autobots and the Evil Decepticons. Trying to resume a normal life, Sam prepares to head off to college while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Mikaela and his faithful Transformer Bumblebee, who doubles as his hot Camero. Meanwhile, Major Lennex (Josh Duhamel) leads a U.S. task force that enables the Autobots to battle and dispose of any remaining Decepticons still roaming the planet. The Autobots’ are very successful in their efforts, leading the government to believe if the robots should remain on the planet or not.

Yet the Decepticons don’t stay down for very long. The defeated Megatron is resurrected by his ally Starscream and is brought before an ancient Decepticon leader named the Fallen who wishes to assault Earth with full force. Word of this attack makes its way back to the Autobots who realize that Sam may hold the key to defeating the Decepticons and saving the world. This is where the plot gets super-complicated, so I’ll only reveal that this leads the main characters to Egypt where they discover secrets about the Transformers’ past and a violent showdown erupts across the deserts and pyramids of the ancient landscape.

Since the first film got most of the franchise’s exposition out of the way, Revenge of the Fallen becomes one of those sequels that dives head-first into its action and doesn’t let up. The film rolls out more impressive-looking Transformers than the first film and attempts to top the first installment in the action sequence department. I think it succeeds in that aspect. If you admire good special effects, then it’ll be ultra hard to resist the technical artistry of the Transformers this time out, especially as they slam and battle each other way harder than the first film. Picture the climax of the first film taking up half of this film’s screen time.

I was also extremely pleased to find myself enjoying the human story way more than the last time around. Shia LaBeouf is thankfully a lot less Screech this time and refreshingly more Lenny Bruce. Almost everything he says within the film’s first hour is comic gold (I liked how he refers to the hoodie he wore in the first film as his “Super Bowl jersey”). And even though the camera lingers heavily on Megan Fox’s smoldering beauty, she ends up bringing a lot more warmth and sincerity to her role than last time. I also found myself enjoying Sam’s college life which is depicted not as real life, but as a heightened Hollywood sitcom. Sam’s roommate and professor are made to be bizarre caricatures, his mother has a deranged episode with “special brownies,” and a frat party is made to resemble the club scene from Bad Boys. This would seem cheap and offensive in most films, but there’s a fun comic charm to it in this one.

When it comes to cinema, there are some aspects in which you either see the glass half full or half empty. That is certainly the case with Michael Bay’s films. Most see them as cheap action thrills gone offensively berserk, yet there are some who see adrenaline-fueled movie environments basked in breezy excitement. The Criterion Edition of Armageddon features a rather insightful essay by Jeanine Basinger that will honestly make you reevaluate Bay’s techniques in a new light. She describes him as “a master of movement, light, color, and shape” who wonderfully exemplifies “fast cutting, impressive special effects, and a minimum of exposition.” She may be right, for Bay is certainly not the soulless commercial monster moviegoers make him out to be. There is certainly a distinctive elegance and heightened drama to be found in all his films. He’s almost like Spielberg in the way he finds fluid camera movements to uniquely convey time and space while displaying stories that, when you think about it, play on grand cinematic emotions. Sure, his film universes may be cynical, sexist, and overflowing with testosterone, but like great filmmakers, he makes us feel like these universes truly matter. There’s an all or nothing feel to his work. While he undeniably indulges in fast-paced editing, it only heightens the anxiety and intensity of his action scenarios. It’s certainly not as offensive as its been in more recent and inferior action flicks.

No matter what you think of Bay, there is no denying that he is the perfect fit for the Transformers franchise. He has a gift for making cheap action scenarios feel more grand and dramatic than they probably deserve to be, and this gift is certainly welcome in a plot where giant robots pound on each other endlessly. I’ve always suspected that the Transformers films are in fact Bay’s most autobiographical films. I can picture the young Michael Bay being a lot like Sam Whitwicky, an outcast who is critical of suburban normalcy and yearns for the fantastical. As Sam turns his back on college life to run off into a grand adventure with hot babes and hot cars, we can sense Bay having such daydreams in his youth.

Despite my praise, Revenge of the Fallen does in fact earn some of the more negative criticisms I’ve read about the film. The film’s third act does grow rather lengthy as the battles between the robots seem to go on forever. Despite his fast cutting, Bay has always had a problem with length and prolonged action scenes. If he trimmed his action sequences down to half their length, his films would probably feel more effective. Bay also has a reputation for cruising past important plot points, leaving the audience confused about the story. That is strongly felt this time, for the Transformers mythology carries so many characters and ancient subplots that it gets confusing keeping track of which robots are which and just what in god’s name is going down in Egypt.

Yet these are only minor complaints. Revenge of the Fallen is definitely not high art, but I don’t understand why critics are spitting venom at the film. It wants nothing more than to be a roller-coaster ride of action fun, so why is it being condemned for doing so? Besides its length and coherence, the film is being criticized for its lack of humanity and emotions. To that I say, when you’re dealing with giant robots, how much humanity and emotions do you actually expect? All you can really ask for is eye candy, big laughs, and endless thrills. These are things that Michael Bay certainly knows how to deliver.

To read Jeanine Basinger's Criterion essay on Armageddon in its entirety, check out http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/48