What would summer be without a Michael Bay movie? Probably a pretty good summer. In 2007 Bay gave us Transformers, a big budget, big explosions, and big robots film based on the popular toys from before the internet, when kids played with real toys as opposed to creating fake names online so they can chat with lonely cougars who usually live in the New Jersey area.
The last film went on to rake in over $700 million worldwide. I guess a lot of people played with Transformers when they were kids. I never really understood why it was cool for a robot to turn into a car. When I was a kid I was kind of hoping the robot would turn into a prom date with loose morals.
The Hollywood studios woke up to the fact that kids’ toys make profitable movies and now they are trying to turn all the things you cherished growing up into over commercialized product for the big screen. I’m still waiting to see “Cigarette: The Motion Picture”, because we all know that the cool kids play with cigarettes more than any other toy. Now Bay is back with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Here we go again.
When I left the theater after Transformers, I was completely lost. Not geographically, I knew I was in New York City on 2nd avenue, but I was confused by the story of Transformers. It didn’t really make any sense to me. There was a cube that the Decepticons wanted to get, but then at the end they press the cube against Megatron. I hadn’t been that confused by a movie since watching Pamela and Tommy Lee’s home videos.
The other thing that threw me in the first movie was that the camera was always moving during the fight scenes. It would swirl around the Transformers as they were battling each other. I got so nauseous, I thought I was pregnant. But that in a nutshell is a Michael Bay movie. The plot doesn’t need to make sense and usually it doesn’t, while the action is a chaotic frenzied mess that gets bigger and louder as the minutes pass.
The new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen looks to be more of the same. More robots, more action and more Megan Fox. In fact, the one thing Michael Bay does right is cast good looking females in his pictures. Megan Fox was pretty much unknown (I mean, sure her mother and friends could pick her out of a lineup but the movie going public had never heard of her) before Transformers and Bay thrust her into the spotlight with the first film. Lonely teenage boys and men serving twenty five to life have been thanking him ever since.
I think I’ll be passing on the new Transformers, and I might be the only one. The word is that advance ticket sales for the film are through the roof. But I think I’ll enjoy a nice quiet evening at home. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the missus will let me watch Bridget Jones’ Diary with her in the basement.
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