A funny thing happened when I arrived home from a long day at the mobile office. My roommates were cuddled together watching the most romantic movie in my six hundred volume movie collection, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Say what you will about the quality of his work, Michael Bay certainly tells interesting stories. His entire career is built upon gluing your eyes to the screen at every moment by filling it with over-the-top action, violence, sex, racist jokes, and every other form of depravity the Ancient Greeks ever stooped to. When you put it like that, it is no wonder he redefined movies forever, creating a brand-new genre of apocalyptic mega-blockbusters in the process.
Armageddon was one movie, yes. But it easily became two (even without a sequel) when Deep Impact was rushed out months before even though it was made as a blatant rip-off. In both of those movies, celestial bodies crash into Earth, killing untold millions of people and causing catastrophic damage which makes World War II crawl in a corner feeling sorry for itself for not being good enough.
The Rock was the perfect example of the desire for unnecessary violence and destruction, as Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery destroy the good half of San Francisco (but really, it would make no sense for Michael Bay to film people destroying the nearly-rotting corpse of the city because there are no romantic trolley cars to eviscerate) before they even contemplate going to, you know, The Rock to fuck shit up.
Bay’s Transformers trilogy takes the apocalyptic genre and sets the bar so high, next generation’s movie directors will have taken their $500 million budget and head to the Third World, offering it as a prize to the nation which successfully invades its neighbor all while filming the carnage in order to “push the boundaries of their art.”
Michael Bay’s insatiable bloodlust and desire to destroy the world, on film, that is, by means of a genocidal war between robots and their unwitting human allies, masks his grandiose statements excoriating massive corporations and governments for their media manipulation and successful propaganda techniques. No word on whether Mr. Bay appreciates the irony of having this message in three movies about toys created by a massive corporation which also produced the film trilogy.
Irony aside, Mr. Bay produces an entirely plausible dystopian universe where secret government agencies exist in order to keep certain information secret. This alternate universe also includes a Los Angeles-type city only minutes away from the Hoover Dam, a giant field filled with airplanes just outside the Smithsonian Institute in the middle of Washington, DC that’s so secluded nobody notices the giant robot walking about, and where Patrick Dempsey is a villain (“Not McDreamy!”)
The world is successfully kept in the dark about robots destroying a major American city which also happens to be the media capital of the world, home to perhaps twenty thousand photographers and millions of camera phones. The group who kept these incidents secluded from sight had apparently been doing it for generations, according to former S-7 Agent Simmons in the sequel.
If you are familiar with the movie, you know the Decepticons are the bad guys who want to take over Earth and make it their new home, complete with a human extermination to get things rolling, which is the exact opposite plot to Avatar, come to think of it. What is it with directors and killing millions of insignificant beings to prove a point?
Anyway, back to the point. Michael Bay relates how dangerous interlocking corporations are working behind the back of not only the American people, but all the world’s people, only being concerned with profit margins and sleek sports cars that can kidnap your wanna-be girlfriend. His most subdued, but perhaps more important point concerns the very fabric of robot society, and also human society.
Who, exactly, are the Autobots? Yes, in the film, they are the heroes. They stand up for the rights of their human hosts, always standing in the way of the nefarious Megatron and the Decepticons, who are portrayed as bloodthirsty and wicked. But from a practical standpoint in Cybertronian culture (the planet the robots are from is Cybertron and it doesn’t exist anymore, so their whole “culture” might not officially exist), they are the villains.
The Decepticons want more of their kind to survive—that’s the entirety of their motivation throughout the film series. They want more energon so they can create more and more of their clan. How is that any different than a man wanting more farm land so he can feed his family for generations to come? Throughout the trilogy, the Autobots are massively outnumbered by their enemies who seem quite good at spawning quantity, though not quality considering Optimus Prime and his allies kick the ever-loving shit out of them all like they are made of the same cheap Chinese plastic their action figures are constructed with.
So, a small minority of tough, battle-tested warriors who were created with guns and swords as natural appendages decimate a larger clan because they are inferiorly constructed? And why do they do this? Because they are political entities attempting to control their respective race.
In the end, the clear minority of the robot populace wins and their species is doomed to oblivion in only a few generations, at least until they figure out a way to not only ring back the villains for a fourth movie, but also another source of energon to sustain their race. Yeah, Optimus Prime, some sort of revered robot demi-god understands that beating his kin Megatron means his race won’t have a new paradise on Earth, but instead be the houseguest that not only destroyed a precious vase, but also allowed the dog to run away, clogged the toilet and accidentally murdered your aunt.
In the end, humans side with the Autobots, not because they are on the right side of the argument when it comes to the robot species, but because they eventually save mankind. I emphasize ‘eventually’ because they only save the world after they pretend to kill themselves, in order to allow the Decepticons to show how evil they are by killing as many people as they possibly can
Moral righteousness never applies to the judgment of the American people, especially the Obama Administration, as portrayed in the film. The Autobots were as morally righteous as they were programmed to be, often threatening their allies, and the war-weary government repeatedly told them to “Fuck off. You are causing too many problems.”
Can’t argue with the logic, frankly. But being stuck in the middle of a war between powers you would much prefer leave you alone leaves you with two choices: pick a side and probably die or don’t pick a side and die anyway. First, they chose the Autobots, working secret to stop the evil Decepticons. They did this when it was to their advantage. Then, the world switched sides when it was clear the Decepticons were stronger. Only then, after realizing how bad they really were, did they welcome back the Autobots, the saviors of their way of life.
Hopping in bed with whoever offers us the best deal at the very moment? Is that the American way?
Umm…
No comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment