So, I finally gave in and watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and much to my lack of surprise Michael Bay has stayed on course for his regular formula with another loud as fuck, spastically shot, CGI laden flick.
It was then that I fully realised that Michael Bay films are the physical embodiment of style over substance, cleavage over character and explosions over emotions.
Do Michael Bay films provoke thought with in an action format like Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy?
No.
Are the Transformers films a painfully long explosion wank fest with an incomprehensible plot?
No doubt.
Bay's films seem to follow a very similar plot. The characters blow shit up, they run from explosions, they look up at things and they look up at things exploding.
Alas, 120 minutes of shit exploding a movie does not make (but fuck me, he's tried).
So his characters tend to spend a lot of time negotiating, whether it's for a used car, access to classified military base or for the fate of the universe. And let's face it, negotiations are pretty much the verbal equivalent of an explosion.
Cinema goers these days are so easily entertained that directors like Jim Jarmusch, one of the most inventive film makers of all time still struggle to get together money to fund their films, and people like Michael Bay throw around millions to remake (aka ruin) my favourite horror movies (Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Nightmare On Elm Street) on an annual basis via his production company Platinum Dunes.
But, I'm not going to harp on that too long as I think I've covered that ground fairly extensively already.
Bay currently has an approval rating on IMDB Pro of 65%, whereas legendary and iconic filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg (ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil), Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange), Martin Scorcese ( Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull) and Francis Ford Coppola ( The Godfather Part I and II, Apocalypse Now) only sit between 71-76%.
Now, IMDB is far from a faultless resource for all things culturally significant, but it does help form a picture of what the fuck is happening to the movie industry.
IMDB approval ratings are calculated between dollars made, critical reviews and people who like the movie enough to rate it on the site, which is from where the main issue with these percentages are born.
But it's safe to say the $1 billion box office grosser that is Transformers: Dark of the Moon makes a big part of that 65% when it only holds a 20% average on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
It's also safe to say that the $160,000 Citizen Kane (1941) lost from it's $830,000 budget in it's innitial run is a big part of Orson Welle's 76%.
Even though the film has an approval rating of 87% and is generally considered "the greatest film of all time" the writer, director and star of the film is a mere 11% ahead of the director of, ahem... Pearl Harbour.
How much press did you catch on Broken Flowers? A shit load less than the amount of Transformers Happy Meals you had. Because action movie tie-in's work for fat fucks because it tells them that it's okay to shovel that shit in your face 24/7 because Shia Lebouf does and he's saved the universe three times already, and no one wants to look like Bill Murray, so a brilliant movie goes nowhere when it comes to public awareness.
This disease plaguing Hollywood cinema by virtue of people like Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing, Deep Rising), Roland Emmerich (10,000 B.C., Godzilla) and of course, Michael Bay is now seemingly spreading to those who I thought I would always be able to turn to in times of need like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith.
The Grindhouse Series (Planet Terror, Death Proof, Machete, Hellride) while amusing for what they were, are mindless, soulless and a lack the imagination and innovation that films like El Mariachi and Reservoir Dogs had in abundance, and Kevin Smith? Kevin Smith, who is one of my personal top 5 favourite film makers of all.time (Yeah, I said it. I hate everything and everyone hates Kevin Smith, so I should join in, right? NO! Wrong, I hate the ignorant as fuck Kevin Smith haters) produced a film that by all means should've worked. Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan in a throwback buddy-cop film that's soaked in dick jokes and the soundtrack selections to become the Beverley Hills Cop of it's generation.
Yet, it sucked! The editing was sloppy, the writing was stale and the pacing was slower than a Downe Syndrome suffering inbred redneck with a concussion.
All of these films feature intensely over the top action scenes, little to no character development and just enough of an A+ track record from the creators to make me want to see them. Similar to how Sean Connery lead me to witness my first Michael Bay abortion (The Rock) many moons ago.
The saddest thing is I can't really blame these dudes for their recent mediocrity (in Kevin Smith's defense I did dig Red State), I can't even blame Michael Bay for setting the bar so low for actual storytelling and originality. I guess the only people I have to blame for this is every single one of you. Cunts like you that pay to see Transformers at the cinema, buy Bad Boys 2 on Blu-Ray and DVD and download Armageddon on Netflix.
