Michael Bay ramps up more of everything to ludicrous excess in the latest Transformers film.
(Spoilers below - don't read if you're Taranthor)
I'm not saying that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is bad, as such, but I do want to punch Michael Bay in the crotch if I ever meet the man.
This isn't a film that starts at zero and speeds up sedately to 60mph in a nice linear progression, oh no. It's a Michael Bay film, and since he believes cinema audiences are ADD freaks with popcorn, Revenge starts instead somewhere in the vicinity of 100mph and then proceeds to ramp up like a Bugatti Veyron on crack. To say the pace is relentless is a ludicrous understatement.
Revenge kicks off with a stentorian voice over from Optimus Prime (and let's face it, when you have voice-talent like Peter Cullen1, you use it for all it's worth!) and cavemen fighting robots (I shit you not), before dumping us in the middle of an anti-Decepticon search and destroy mission headed up by the troops of NEST - a joint human-Autobot taskforce. Turns out Demolisher's been hiding in Shang-hai, so half the city gets driven over by his giant robot wheels before Optimus Prime is dropped out of a C-17 to take the giant bot baddie out.
Yes, dropped out of AN AIRCRAFT.
The opening fight pretty much sums up every other beat of the film. Humans get in over their heads; Autobots show up to save the day. Rinse and repeat. This rhythm is only broken up by Megan Fox or Isabel 'Aussie-girl-made-good' Lucas pouting at the camera or taking their clothes off, or crude, near scatological humour. It's about 90 per cent explosions, 10 per cent waiting for explosions.
Megan Fox quite publicly admitted that Revenge is not a film that's about the performances, and that's bang on. And a good thing, too, as her turn is actually more robotic than any Autobot's; that said, it's hard to take her to task over it, when Bay's direction was probably more of the "Pout more! Scream! Stick your chest out! Run from the pretend robots!" variety. Shia LaBeouf (which, you may be unaware, is French for Share the Beef - true story) hands in a workmanlike performance, and he delivers some wonderfully comedic moments. John Turturro returns as the paranoid Agent Simmons, and is - as always - a pleasure to watch, though it could be argued that his talent is vastly under-utilised in a film like this. Josh Duhamel looks pretty, and that's about all we can ask of him.
But talking about the quality of the acting and writing in a film like Revenge is like talking about the quality of cloth on the table when you're having dinner at Tetsuya's - it's beside the point. Say what you will about Bay, but he certainly puts all the gazillion dollars of effects money up on screen or has it blaring from the cinema speakers. It's a testament to the continuing skill of the guys at Industrial Light and Magic that the various robots, whether crashing through walls or standing proud on the bow of an aircraft carrier, never look or sound anything less than 100 per cent real.
And there's a lot of robots.
Longtime fans will be very happy to see Soundwave finally make it to the bigscreen, floating around in orbit tapping into various military satellites via glowing, nanite-like tendrils. It's actually a pretty spooky effect. Starscream returns, as does the deliciously voiced-by-Hugo-Weaving Megatron. On the Autobot front the characters are less pleasing, and in fact borderline racist - Mudflap and Skids (The Twins) are vaudevillian renditions of slapstick depth and vile stereoptyping.
You know - like Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys.
But for every time The Twins crack wise to please the cheap seats, along comes Optimus Prime to offer some deep-voiced wisdom, or Ironhide does something cool with a big fuck-off gun.
And that's really the trick that Bay seems to have pulled off yet again, if the audience applause that greeted the premiere screening is anything to go by. There's simply so much thrown at the screen, from fart jokes to robot decapitations to Megan Fox's pout, that some of it's bound to entertain. Sure the film takes way too long (and don't get me started on the fracking robot angels in Autobot heaven), and the level of exposition in some scenes threatens to sink the entire film, but before long you're lost in another robot on robot fight, or - like me - simply enjoying the silly pseudo-military babble all the special forces types are spouting.
Hell, even I peed my pants a little when a RAIL-GUN-ARMED-NAVAL-DESTROYER takes out the giant Constructicon Devastator. I'm only human.
But I still want to crotch-punch Michael Bay.
1. For some truly AWESOME Peter Cullen voice work, you've got to check out the first (and sadly, only) episode of the Star Wars fan film IMPS. Made. Of. Win.
Issue: 107 | December, 2009