Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction is a film that continues to confound. As I said in my review it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before and in browsing through some of the film’s reviews I can’t say I’m a fan of the dismissive approach some have taken in evaluating this behemoth. Take, for example, David Edelstein‘s review where he describes the script as “incoherent” and then seems to coherently describe everything that happens in the film for the next four paragraphs before saying the film is “basically a shambles”. Pardon?
But when I came to Richard Corliss‘s review at Time I found an interesting line in which he seems to have meant as a negative, but I think he’s closer to getting at a greater truth than he may realize when he writes, “The final half-hour devolves into a kind of Abstract Expressionist chaos, with commercials.” To say it devolves is definitely an interesting choice of words.
First off, yes, the film has product placement, I mentioned as much in said of the product placement in his film’s in the past, “That saved me $3 million on the budget, it’s not whoring the movie out.” Considering Age of Extinction cost a reported $165 million compared to the $200 million it cost for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I think Bay has chosen wisely, even if it means Mark Wahlberg has to stop in the middle of the film to crack open a Bud Light.
Commercialism aside, I think Age of Extinction has opened my eyes to a whole new world and approach to what some are calling vulgar auteurism, though I don’t think anyone does it the way Bay does it. And, as Corliss says, I think referring to his work as abstract expressionism (not a new idea) is spot on.
The problem for us as film critics, used to looking at movies one way, is it’s incredibly difficult to adjust our way of thinking to not look at what a film is saying about the external world, or what we can take away from a movie, but instead to simply absorb and experience the chaos and mayhem.
Conclusion? Michael Bay is cinema’s reigning blockbuster expressionist and a film such as Age of Extinction may be his vulgar masterpiece.
This way of thinking has also caused me to look back at my opinion of Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim, but make no mistake, that’s still a film I loathe and most likely for reasons fans are likely to ardently disagree.
My review teaser of Pacific Rim read: “Pacific Rim is the equivalent of watching a nine-year-old smashing his toys together in the backyard while we watch for over two hours.” You could easily substitute Transformers: Age of Extinction into that sentence and few, if anyone, would bat an eye. Hell, reincarnated Megatron as Galvatron in Age of Extinction looks exactly like one of del Toro’s Jaegers and by the film’s end giant robots are battling giant dinosaurs. For all intents and purposes we could just as easily be talking about the same film.
So why do I loathe Pacific Rim, but find appreciation for Age of Extinction? Because as much as it may sound like we’re talking about the same films, we most definitely are not.
The term “vulgar auteur” suits Bay and I think he’d welcome it with open arms. His filmmaking style is vulgar in the way it revels in its chaos, its misogyny and in its treatment of its characters. Del Toro’s approach is childlike, it’s cuddly in comparison, a vision of a soldier illuminated by the rising sun after saving an innocent is meant to be inspiring whereas Bay would approach it as “fuck yeah” heroic… and on he goes to the next act of heroism.
If you buy into del Toro’s gentle touch you’re likely to find more value in Pacific Rim than I did, I find it overly sentimental, tedious and it bleeds into the action, slowing it down and distracting from its entertainment value, particularly because I haven’t bought in to del Toro’s characters and the necessary emotional attachment isn’t there… for me.
For how much del Toro tries (and, in my opinion, fails) in Pacific Rim to connect us to his humans through cliches, in Age of Extinction Michael Bay dispenses with formalities, knowing you recognize who these characters are and what they stand for and gets on with it. In short, Bay doesn’t give a shit — Here’s Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a broke inventor and single father with a daughter (Nicola Peltz) that wears nothing but short shorts and is graduating high school. Here’s Kelsey Grammer, evil government overlord. Here’s Stanley Tucci, overbearing corporate CEO, egghead and soon-to-be comic relief. Here’s Jack Reynor, the epitome of a cardboard stand-in. ROBOTS!!! Any questions?
In my opinion, Pacific Rim is trying to be something it’s not, rejecting its vulgarity and wedging in sentimentality, while Bay’s Age of Extinction is 100% vulgar, aware of it, embracing it and wholly honest about what it is. Bay isn’t here to make you cry with his transforming alien robots or tug at your heartstrings, he’s bringing the awesome and here to bludgeon you into submission.
In a world where the evaluation of movies has come down to whether you consider it “rotten” or “fresh” or if it gets a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, you quite simply cannot judge Transformers: Age of Extinction. We all believe movies are art so why have we resigned ourselves to judging them on such a black and white scale? It’s one of the reasons I hate grading movies and offer subscribers the chance to remove them from this site entirely.
After all, how do you judge a movie such as Age of Extinction, decrying its sound and fury when that’s exactly all it is and all it’s meant to be? This is a film meant to evoke a mood and response through its visuals. That’s it.
Bay’s movies aren’t deep. Even when he was exploring something interesting in the first half of The Island he resigned himself to chase sequences for the final 90 minutes. Hell, the narrative depth of Age of Extinction can be boiled down to one quote Bay gave Slashfilm when he said, “I wanted to go back to more down-home. They wanted me not to go to Texas, and I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to Texas.’ There’s a shot of Texas because there’s no more down-home place, you know what I’m saying?”
Yeah, we know what you’re saying… not much at all.
As I said in my review of Age of Extinction, it’s a film I don’t ever want to see again, but I can’t ignore the effect it had on me. I can’t look at it and say it was “bad”, because as a piece of abstract expressionist filmmaking it had a profound effect on me and there are few films out there like it (consider them better or worse, but the Fast and Furious franchise and something like Crank comes to mind).
Age of Extinction is a test, it’s an endurance challenge and it is most definitely an event. Go see it with a group of friends and see how you all feel once you walk away. Maybe you’ll hate it. Maybe you’ll love it. One thing is for certain, you will have experienced it and we have to appreciate that on some level… don’t we?
