Cybertronian Vertigo

My head hurts. All day the apps that I open whenever I use my computer for productive reasons, including today, were left just opened: no new files were saved, nor old ones modified. I can’t think. Try as I might, I could not for 8 hours progress on my work projects, and then I shut them down. A specter is haunting my brain; the specter is not communism (my brain isn’t Europe).

The specter is the aftereffect of watching a Michael Bay film. It puts the cerebrum to sleep, and reverberates noxious sounds of explosions in all nerves. Those who want to replicate the sensation without watching the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) can go to an amusement park. Ask its personnel to surround an octopus ride with giant replicas of the robots. Put on a loudspeaker and have it loop the sounds of explosions at the highest volume. Gather all the casts, including the motor-mouth Shia LaBeouf, and let them shout nonstop. 

Then for 149 minutes ride the octopus that never stops except for the 2 seconds pauses whenever you’re near Megan Fox and could take a peek at her cleavage. The breasts may make it sound like the resulting dizziness is a small sacrifice for a reward so ample, but, trust me, when you’re reading Maxim you never have to swirl it.

Now showing: Lensflaremers Revenge of the Brightened

…but let’s go backward in time a bit. Before I saw ROTF, I was aware of the hordes of criticisms it garnered. Responses are not tepid; they’re near-universal disgusts. I’m not a fan of director Michael Bay and I disliked the first movie, but my skin crawls anytime I see anyone gets punished by a crowd. Almost out of pity, I approached ROTF with faint hopes that I would vindicate the director, even if only in the eyes of those who respect my opinions, with a blog post that states ROTF being not as bad as critics say. If it turned out bad, at least it would have satiated my appetite for the classic robot rock-‘em sock-‘ems.

However, my perspectives overturned half an hour into the movie. The critics weren’t the prosecutors; they were the victims, and Bay sits at a throne commanding his minions – in the form of toilet humors, infantile sensibilities, ethnic stereotypes, misogyny, frenetic camera movements, rampant militarisms, Bush League jingoisms, and explosions fetishisms – to pound his critics repeatedly and unrelentingly while he screams his authoritative power like bullies do in schoolyards. Not a single time in ROTF did I feel that Bay aimed to please anyone besides the zit-faced mouth-breathing pre-pubescent crowds. Certainly not the audiences with ardor for good plots and/or the transforming robots themselves. And you know what, he doesn’t give a hoot about it! When pressed to answer the flaws of his movies – most of all his utter incompetence with the medium - he always, always use the box-office numbers as his defense. He doesn’t understand that people see Transformers because of its association with an 80’s cartoon and a Hasbro toyline (who cares about The Island?). Guilermo del Toro could direct it and it’d also be a hit.

There are myriad flaws in the movie, flaws so fascinating it’s a wonder Bay ever gets paid to direct a film. Directors may not be the ones writing the script, but it’s their job to film the scenes, evoke the appropriate acting, cut off the superfluous bits, and arrange the sequences so that the story makes sense. According to michaelbay.com, Bay himself added the fillers, which do absolutely nothing but bloat the movie to twice its necessary length. In the intervals between the fights there are all these scenes of unfunny comedy and uninvolving drama. Nobody ever shuts up, the background music never stops playing, and I’m just stupidly watching Bay vomit one cue card after another:

Here’s a plot exposition card. Pay attention Allspark shards Signs Matrix of Migraineship okay it’s over. Here’s a drama card CRANKS UP ROUSING INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC AMERICAN SOLDIERS WALKING IN UNISON CLOSE UP SHOT OF MEGAN FOX ACTING SCARED FOR NO REASON. Now let’s take a break with a comedy card. Dogs humping Bumblebee goop John Torturro thong robot farts minstrel showbot HAHAHAH THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!! Now, fight card RUN SHOUT KABOOM!

Speaking of the fight scenes, I’ll be shocked if anyone could make the heads and tails of what’s happening to whom. The robots all look like Stickfas made of magnetic parts thrown in a junkyard, and what emerges is a Bionicle that transforms …kind of. They don’t have distinctive designs or colors. I’m not even sure if Soundwave or The Fallen transformed once the entire time. Isn’t the point of the movie about transforming robots? The much-ballyhooed master of explosions couldn’t even pull off a palpable choreography for the actions occurring on screen.

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It is also loaded with characters that don’t do jack and squat besides turning the movie based on the Toy property less kid-friendly. Hasbro sponsored this film, right? Great, so please tell your young customers about marijuana, swearing, cutting classes, gawking at Megan Fox’s cleavage, and Megan’s legs being humped by robots (we get it, Megan’s hot!). Nobody in the movie is likable – and this may even be the first time I was indifferent with Optimus Prime and his preachy lines whenever he speaks – not the least of which are the human characters, all of them looking so bored. The returning actors, Shia LaBeouf Sleazy LaBlip Spastic LaBarf and Megan Fox, have lost their charm, and the new ones like Ramon Rodriguez should’ve stayed in The Wire. Yet none of them comes anywhere as bewildering as the new autobots Skids and Mudflap, who might as well be called Shuck and Jive.

Look, Bay, critics rag on you because you got a huge ego such that when people take issues with your racial caricatures, you dismiss them as mere naysayers. You go to the presses and whine about your critics. Because you lack the humility to say you’re sorry, you should’ve done things differently, people tape your picture in their punching bags, heaping insults in you, sometimes getting downright ugly (see: Pajiba.com’s “Small Penis Humiliation”). Directors like James Cameron and Sam Raimi are masters of spectacles too, and they don’t get “naysaid” on because they give us humanity and story coherency without shoving fanatical patriotism and pornography down our throats. By contrast, your ROTF is shallow and devoid of acting talents, funny bits, subtleties, emotions, and nuanced characterizations. It deserves all the scorn it gets. Only you can make an escape so deprived of joy, but why does that matter if it’s grossing millions of dollars? Right, Bay?