Once upon a time, a long while before Michael Bay and Transformers, critics when wanting to offer up a soubriquet for the latest popcorn blockbuster epic, would say something like, 'well, it’s a terrific rollercoaster ride". I guess this was a way of expressing that what you get in something like the best of these kinds of movie experiences, say, The Terminator, was a 'gut’ experience that was exciting and scary and thrilling all at once.
Near the end of this, the third rather lame-o entry in the Transformer franchise, there’s a surprisingly good action scene featuring a tottering building; the hapless movie heroes slide along the floor and down the outside of a building like, well, they’re riding a rollercoaster. It’s a great visual pun and something of a post-modern gag, which is typical of Michael Bay’s wink-and-nod style of filmmaking. I mean here’s a director who is absolutely shameless; his way of 'introducing’ the movie’s romantic lead, former underwear model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and new girlfriend for the films’ human hero, Sam (Shia LaBeouf), is a long 'close-up’ not of her pretty face, but her bottom. Not only is this kind of shot a sop to the fan-boy/fan-girls who appreciate this kind of tack as high-camp 'irony’ (when in reality it’s good ol’ fashioned sexism), it seems also a rather nasty dig at recently departed star of the series Megan Fox, who had the temerity to complain out loud and in public about the way Bay depicts women in his movies"¦
Still, in a very real sense, considerations of taste, poise, and style are irrelevant when talking about Michael Bay and Transformers. It’s a Teflon movie; whatever lofty standard any critic may mobilise to attack it will slide right off its slick, give-'em-what-they-want surface. For every critic who complains, 'It’s rubbish", you can hear the fans rejoinder, 'Well, what did you expect?"
But then, by its own blockbuster standards, Transformers: Dark of the Moon seems a stumble; it’s bogged down with the 'something for everyone’ aesthetic, which seems to over taken big movies in the last decade or so. The dead-hand of corporate Hollywood all but kills its energy with domestic sub plots that go nowhere, dud wise-cracks, too many characters, and too many adult characters who behave like 14-year-olds, tedious rock video montages and long, long scenes of plot exposition that are repeated not once but several times so that the most inattentive viewer can’t help but 'get’ every loose end of a tangled plot.
Actually, Transformers: Dark of the Moon does have some fun bits in the plot; it name checks Apollo moon mission conspiracy theories, the space race and the Cold War, as well as in a roundabout way Chariots of the Gods (a superior race influencing human experience across the ages).
Only trouble is that aside from the last hour, Dark of the Moon doesn’t have much action, which seems an oversight in an action movie. But, between LaBeouf’s domestic trials (he spends most of the first part of the movie looking for a job and being jealous of any man who looks at his girl) and lots of shots of very expensive vehicles, there are some amusing bits of comic business from a pretty good cast: Frances McDormand, John Turturro and John Malkovich. Of course, when the action does arrive, it’s like an assault; in a style true to Bay’s form, the final face off between the Good machines and the Bad Machines takes up about an hour of screen time and is an orgy of noise, destruction and jingoistic mumbo-jumbo which is delivered in a visual style as messy and incoherent as anything in Armageddon (or anything else he’s directed for that matter). The climax manages to not only wipe out most of central Chicago but also forward a dated (and dangerous) political message that supports both US isolationism and the idea that the US is the world’s policeman. Oh, and by the way, the Middle East comes in for a hammering too.
The effects and 3D have already received a lot of advanced praise; it sounds like I’m a spoil-sport but the CGI action has a glossy sheen that appears synthetic – it’s dazzling, but it feels, well, untrue, as in you experience it as an effect. As for the 3D, I never had to duck, not even once. A bad sign I think.
