This may be the laziest big-budget movie I have ever seen. I cannot think of a film that did so little in so much running time; at two and a half hours we get no character development, no plot that makes any semblance of sense; just noise; lots and lots of noise.
And noise by itself does not satisfy. You may have noticed that Mozart, perhaps the finest musician to ever live, liked to incorporate quiet moments in between the noise. It helps to make the noise that much more impactful. The same goes for film; if you constantly ramp the noise to eleven, it begins to sound like one.
Let me put it this way; Michael Bay is a hack. It is a testament to the creative genius currently residing in the noggins of the powers that be in Hollywood, that a director with no capability for storytelling should be allowed to be the creative head of such an expensive film. And the unfortunate thing is that they will keep doing so as long as we keep going to see Bay’s films (and the irony is not lost on me that I paid to see it!).
Worst still, as an action director he has no ability to choreograph an action scene. Lots of things go BOOM is about as much as we can ask for. There is none of the ballet of John Woo’s early work, none of the kinectic energy that The Wachowski Brothers brought to the first Matrix, and certainly none of the piercing intelligence that John McTiernan brought to his seminal action film, Die Hard.
Die Hard is The Greatest Action Movie Ever Made (and no this is not open for debate; if you do not agree I will come over to your house and give you a severe talking to; there may be finger wagging!). McTiernan takes great effort in establishing the geography of Nakotomi Plaza; this is just as important to making the film great as all of the pyrotechnics that he orchastrates. Michael Bay’s inability to grasp this concept is why he is one of the worst living action directors today! It is the interplay between the objects that makes a great action sequence; men within an environment, man against man, man against bullet, man against machine, machine against machine; as they twist and turn within the proscenium of the film screen we revel at their interaction.
Also, for an action scene to work on more than a superficial level the audience needs to engage with the characters. It is hard to engage with someone whose redeeming feature is to scream alot and to always manage to run just fast enough to get out of the way of the next explosion. All Bay seems to want from an actor is a reaction shot to his explosions; it is insightful that Ramon Rodriguez, who plays sidekick to Shia La Beouf in this one, had the following to say about his audition:
For 90 minutes, he had me jumping, running, diving over the furniture in his office — that was the audition. I was drenched in sweat. He told me, ‘OK, hide behind the desk!’ ‘Now, run over here!’ And man, I was looking in his eyes, and he was enjoying it. He’s got a passion for action. It shows in the movies too.
And, it is hard to feel any suspense if characters are always getting saved in any circumstance (SPOILER WARNING); such as Sam dying, visiting “Robot Heaven” (no joke folks) and having the “robot angels” tell him the key plot point and then ressurrect him. I have trouble arguing with that; it is like arguing with someone who says that chocolate ice-cream tastes better because the moon is round… I mean, where do you start?
The characterisations are rote; women are shot like dancers in a rap video or actresses in porn. With the men being either puritanical heroes, or blitheringly, fall on the ground in a pool of their own urine, incompetent sidekicks. And, somehow (ANOTHER, ALBEIT OBVIOUS, SPOILER), they all manage to save the day in time for the sequel.
The most distressing part of the whole enterprise is that someone, an adult, in charge of millions of dollars, thought that we the masses would eat this up; and, looking at the film’s current grosses we did (again, the irony is not lost). This same adult thought that dogs f@%&ing and extreme racial slurs by way of three characters (see two at the head of this review) were suitable for what is ultimately a children’s film. I have no qualms with something being un-PC; but build some social commentary into it; or heaven forbid, make it actually funny! This was just blatantly lazy and offensive.
I don’t take pleasure in giving Transformers 2 a bad review (I do like dissing Michael Bay a little though); for all of its flaws I enjoyed the first film and this one could have, no, should have, been even better.
It is not all bad; one early sequence reminded me of an earlier Speilberg produced flick close to my heart, Gremlins; that is before the afore-mentioned dogs f@%&ing popped up. And, no matter how inadequate Bay is even he cannot screw up how blindingly awesome Optimus Prime is; casting Peter Cullen in that role may be the only genius move Bay has ever made; but, let us not forget that he was only following the choice of a casting director from so many years ago (Cullen voiced Optimus in the original cartoon).
So, in summary; Transformers 2 blows. I was never bored, but I was almost always in a state of incredulousness. The only folks that should be patting themselves on the back about this is the marketing team; they sold their souls to Satan and it paid off in spades. It is their success, along with the nostalgia for the Transformers franchise that is oiling the wheels of this gargantuan beast. May they never sleep another peaceful night.
