Transformers: The Vindication of Michael Bay

Transformers is the best big, slick, downright fun summer blockbuster since the first Pirates of the Caribbean opened across the Multiplex four summers ago.

Unlike the dreadful Spider-Man 3 and the disappointing PotC: At World's End, Transformers doesn't make the mistake of taking itself so seriously that it forgets you've probably gone to the theater for a good time.

I dig the heck out of Transformers. From the moment the excitement of the first teaser trailer hit the big screens last summer (before PotC: Dead Man's Chest) I've been in a slow burn descent of worry about this movie, with a ray of hope coming only in the past week (more on this below). It's not that I hate Michael Bay movies (they're always visually pleasing, at least), it's just that I figured he'd be the exact kind of director who wouldn't respect the source material. If he could get it right, the film could be awesome. If he got it wrong, however, it was going to be tragic and forgettable, and every ad I saw, every interview I read made me less excited. I just kept coming back to the fact that it didn't look like Michael Bay was smart enough to trust the material - Megatron looked like ass, Optimus Prime had stupid painted flames and a mouth, and there were too many damn people - Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese, Shia Lebouf, Anthony Anderson ... every ad brought another actor when what I wanted to see was another robot.

And not Bumblebee as a Camaro, but as a dorky V-Dub Beetle.

Perhaps it is a case of a film simply exceeding low expectations, but to say that isn't giving Bay and the cast and crew enough credit. There are too many people in the movie and not enough robots, yet the people work because Bay doesn't overburden us with mountains of melodrama. Duhamel's character is a Marine, serving in the US Forces in Iraq and he's got a wife and kid at home. He wants to see them. She thinks he's dead after the Decepticon attack on the base. Simply reading that is about all the time Bay devotes to that on-screen. It's enough for us to know that Duhamel wants to get home; he doesn't need to spend any time whining about it. He's still a soldier and his first thoughts are always of the mission. I respect that - constant reminders of his wife and child would drag this movie down, and this isn't Apollo 13 and Bay knows it. (Heck, the whiny-assing there dragged the movie down and there it's story appropriate.)

Bay plays to genre stereotypes about what his intended audience wants - a social "loser" who is really more than he appears is placed as the antagonist and surrounded with hot women, robots, cool machines, cooler tech, a plentitude of explosions, and a legitimate sense of right and wrong. Bay smartly realizes those elements are the candy and that to get them to really pop you've got to treat the source material seriously. You don't have to treat the material like it's a sacred text, but you've got to treat it straight. You've got to show the core audience that you're not doing to the audience what Bumblebee does to John Turturro's character - which is to say, pissing all over them. This is a movie about robots who transform into vehicles, yeah, but it's also about a Civil War where two factions of a society are waging war against one another.

It's the war that you've got to take seriously because "Protect" and "Destroy" are not just catchy marketing slogans.

Wired has an interesting cover story this month on Transformers. In the main article, Scott Brown discusses fandom's ire over Bay's choice to direct the film. Brown writes how Bay was, from a technical standpoint, seemed like exactly the right guy to direct this movie, but it wasn't the technical aspect that had fan's worried. Brown argues:

"Among a certain sect of geekdom, there's more at stake. Prime practically step-parented the latchkey kids of the mid-'80s. He was our Allfather at a time when flesh-and-blood role models were increasingly few and far between: Stallone had begun his long sag. Arnold was already more credible as machine than man. So when Prime declared, "One shall stand, one shall fall!" in that seismic, tear-down-this-wall timbre of his (or, more accurately, voice actor Peter Cullen), you believed him. Thus began the cyber-outsourcing of masculine heroism, a process that would eventually, inextricably, link Y chromosome to Xbox."

I'm not sure I fully buy Brown's argument, but I do believe Optimus Prime was going to make or break this film to many people. Myself included.

Optimus Prime was the moral center of the cartoon, the Transformer equivalent of Captain America or Superman (and not a Sly or Ah-nold character as Brown argues), and while every other Autobot got to be cool or gimmicky, Prime had to be the rock at the center who took the greatest burdens, made the tough decisions, and kept everyone's moral compass pointing straight.

Bay largely nails Prime. In the smartest decision he could've possibly made (and something I found out a week ago, which buoyed my spirits considerably and gave me hope that Bay would deliver), he brought in Peter Cullen to reprise his role as the vioce of Prime. It's amazing how the little things can change your opinion around so quickly. Noting that Bay had cast Cullen made me question all of the negative thoughts I had about his ability to bring this franchise to the screen because it showed, at some level, that he understood. Bay certainly could've dialed up some big Hollywood talent to come in and voice Prime - he did it with Megatron, after all, who's now voiced by Hugo Weaving (though Frank Welker will reprise his role in the video game). Casting Cullen, however, was like casting Prime to play himself. It's so simple that you'd figure Hollywood would get it wrong, and so right that you'd figure time would've robbed Cullen of his ability to bring back the voice of Prime you remembered.

The simple genius of Bay's treatment of Optimus Prime is that it literally looks like he pulled the Optimus Prime of the 80s cartoon series and plunked him down in the middle of a Michael Bay film. It's not just that Prime has the same voice, it's that he talks in the exact same tone and with the exact same dialogue. The importance of that moral, sacred center (to the core fans) can't be overstated in a movie like this - you can have all sorts of craziness happening but if you don't play the center straight you're going to have problems with the core audience. If you do that you better make sure the non-core crowd likes what you're doing enough to keep the box office returns high.

Michael Bay played the moral center straight. Yeah, the flames look stupid and yeah, the mouth looks stupid, but two seconds into hearing the initial Optimus Prime narration those concerns went away. When Prime announces in the film that "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" you believe him. Bay even managed to turn the latter negative into a positive when Prime's standard faceplate appears during fight sequences. (And, yeah, when I saw it finally appear I grinned like a kid who'd just gotten his favorite toy on Christmas morning, which in a certain year, was a whole lot of Transformers.)

A lot of my concerns about Bay going into the movie were with Executive Producer Steven Spielberg, whose made a very nice career for himself turning in the same movie over and over again. He just changes the costumes on his characters and, in his "serious" movies, takes out the jokes, but Jaws, ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Schindler's List, etc. all function in pretty much the same manner and tell pretty much the same story played with differing tones. It's not a stretch to see Indiana Jones or Alan Grant as possible adult versions of ET's Elliot (or vice versa) - Spielberg likes his heroes to be smart and boring without being geeky nerds. And yes, there are exceptions and yes, there are variables, but for all the criticism Bay gets for the "Michael Bay" genre of movies, there is most assuredly a "Steven Spielberg" genre, as well.

Transformers has some Spielberg touches, most notably in the main character of Sam Witwicky, who's nondescript enough not to be noticed by the hot bad-girl he obsesses over, yet not such a classic dork that he's noticed for being that, either. If you walked by the classic Spielberg Hero on the street you wouldn't give him a second notice. Like many of Spielberg's main characters, Sam's a bit of an awkward loner who still manages to get the girl by the end of the film.

Perhaps the influence of the "Spielberg" and "Bay" genres makes Transformers the success it is. Spielberg's movies are almost always anti-Government (not anti-American Government, necessarily, but anti-Some Government) while Bay's are almost always pro-American Government (usually evidenced as pro-Police or pro-Military). Here, there's a mix. American marines are attacked in the Middle East by a Decepticon attack marking them as Bay Heroes, yet another portion of the American military complex (the secretive S7 group) captures and tortures Bumblebee, marking them as Spielberg Villains.

The capture and torture of Bumblebee is one of the strongest sequences in the film. The Autobot is captured because he puts himself at risk to save Sam and Mikaela, and is then left in the hands of the humans as Prime makes the hard decision to continue on their main objective - finding the Allspark.



The friendship that develops between Bumblebee and Sam is done subtly - which for a Michael Bay movie means it mostly happens when they're getting shot at together. Still, it highlights the basic difference between the Autobots willingness to fight for humanity, who just happen to be the dominant life-form on the planet where the Allspark crashed. Prime says he's seen goodness in humanity, but it's Bumblebee's decision to ultimately risk his own life for Sam and Mikaela, and then decide to remain on Earth at the end of the film that proves humanity's worth. Bay's Bumblebee works as the Autobot version of a late teens, early twentysomething kid - he's not the youngster desperate to earn the respect of Optimus Prime that he used to be, but he's still the kid of the group. He's one step closer to manhood than Sam, a bit more experienced but still with a young heart.

I would have rather seen the movie told from the Transformers POV instead of humanity's but I can understand why they did it the way they did and since it works, I'm not complaining too loudly about it. The humans work as characters and their frailty makes the Transformers power even more awe-inspiring. The Autobots and Decepticons are fighting for victory, but every time one of them launches a rocket or casually tosses a car or blasts through a building you get the very real sense that the humans in the film are just trying to hang on, get through, survive.

And I would've liked to see more Transformers. Other than Prime, Bumblebee, and the hilarious Frenzy, they all sorta look the same. Bay drains their robot forms of color and in amidst all the explosions it can be tough to figure out if you're looking at Megatron or Starscream or Jazz or Ironhide. The Decepticons largely get the shaft, too. Megatron spends most of the movie frozen inside Hoover Dam, but he does recover nicely, killing Jazz by ripping him in half, and throwing his trademark, "You have disappointed me, Starscream" rant at his treacherous second-in-command.

Transformers is a highly enjoyable, skillfully crafted movie that just simply works. It gives you two-plus hours of big summer diversion that will make the kid in you smile without offending the sensibilities of Adult You.

The applause that broke out in the theater at the end of the film matched my feelings perfectly.