Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Guy Movie of All Guy Movies

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 10, 2007

For a Minute You Thought That Said ‘Gay,’ Didn’t You?

Very little credit can be given to director Michael Bay for the box office success of what is arguably this summer’s biggest movie blockbuster: Transformers. As a whole, the film is nothing more than a mish-mash of elements predetermined for success with male audiences of virtually any age: sweet cars, big guns, massive explosions, widespread physical devastation, smokin’ hot chicks (a.k.a. Megan Fox, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, 2004, and Rachael Taylor, See No Evil, 2006), and an animated television show that 90% of our country’s male population grew up watching.

The Transformers production team, including director Michael Bay, cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, film editors Tom Muldoon, Paul Rubell and Glen Scantlebury, and production designer Jeff Mann, drew directly upon a number of scenes from other memorable movie blockbusters, including Peter Jackson’s 2005 version of the cinema classic King Kong and Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2004 monster-movie showdown AVP: Alien vs. Predator, in assembling some of Transformers‘ most visually impressive and emotionally touching scenes, including the scenes in which the government captures one of the Autobots (short for “Autonomous Robotic Life Form”) and another in which the U.S. government unveils one of its best kept secrets, a frozen transformer hidden in the Hoover Dam.

When Bumblebee—a voiceless Autobot that transforms first into an old and crappy 1974 Chevy Camaro and later into a sleek and sexy 2008 concept Camaro—is captured by “government officials” from the shady Sector Seven intelligence organization (“You see this? This is a ‘do whatever I want and get away with it’ badge.”), the method used to restrain the endearing yellow robot vividly evokes images from Cooper and Schoedsack’s groundbreaking 1933 film, King Kong, as well as from Jackson’s 2005 version of the same. Once Bumblebee is initially restrained and is carted off by these black-suited bimbos, led by a particularly annoying Agent Simmons played by the oft spastic John Turturro (Secret Window, 2004; O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000) whose presence manages only to detract from the overall quality of the film (with the exception of one or two extremely brief moments in which he provides some much needed comic relief during particularly tedious and unnecessary information-disseminating scenes), he is subjected to what can only be described as a futuristic version of the electroshock treatments given to Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

Well into Transformers‘ 144-minute running time appears Bay’s most blatant cinematic appropriation: the U.S. government has secretly held Megatron, leader of the evil, trigger-happy Decepticons, hostage, cryogenically frozen in one of the many underground chambers built within the Hoover Dam in an effort to camouflage the location of the high-energy “Allspark” cube sought by both the Autobots and Decepticons. Audience members familiar with the 2004 summer blockbuster AVP: Alien vs. Predator may experience some mild d©j  vu when the frozen Megatron is first unveiled, since the scene directly evokes images of the alien queen in AVP, frozen and chained in an amphitheater deep in the bowels of an ancient temple, waiting to be revived in order to wreak havoc upon the human race (again much like Megatron, who is hell-bent on the eradication of human life from Earth).

Transformers is a film not entirely without merit, however. Aside from an annoyingly unnecessary segment in the middle of the film in which Sector Seven makes its first major appears as agents of this secret government organization storm Sam’s house, take the Witwickys and Mikaela into custody, drive them around a bit, bring them to the Hoover Dam, and then spend an inordinate and incomprehensible amount of time talking strategy and demonstrating the awesome power of the Allspark, and despite its faults and cinematic appropriations, Transformers has produced at the box office as we all knew it would, earning $152.5 million domestically during its first six days alone (including July 2 advance screenings), making it the highest first-week grossing non-sequel film in the history of the motion picture industry.

Record-breaking box office numbers are good news for actor Shia LaBeouf, whose impressive performance, coupled with the massive popularity of the film, will inevitably boost him from the lower echelons of up-and-coming twentysomething actors (LaBeouf turned 21 on June 11th of this year) to the realm of his more prestigious (or at least notorious) peers, including Lindsay Lohan, (finally) 21, whose latest film, I Know Who Killed Me, is set for national release on July 27; Elisha Cuthbert, 25, whose next film, Captivity, is scheduled to open August 17; and Justin Long, 29, of this summer’s Bruce Willis blockbuster hit Live Free or Die Hard.

Shia LaBeouf delivers a surprisingly outstanding performance as Transformers‘ protagonist, Sam Witwicky, managing to transition successfully from the stereotypically sad but cute high school dork longing for acceptance into a believable diamond-in-the-rough hero not with ease—ease wouldn’t be believable—but with an obvious degree of difficulty that is most apparent when he hesitates, Allspark in hand, momentarily overwhelmed by the task laid out before him. “You’re a soldier now!” yells Captain Lennox, played by Josh Duhamel (Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, 2004; Turistas, 2006), snapping Sam back to reality and pushing him to deliver the alien cube to the U.S. government as fast as possible, despite imminent risk of death.

One aspect of the Transformers plot… if you can call it a plot… that is particularly interesting is the fact that this is now the second major motion picture released this summer to present a less than positive view of U.S. military forces. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s May 11 release 28 Weeks Later, sequel to the popular post-apocalyptic thrill ride turned cult classic known as 28 Days Later (2002), also touts the inability of U.S. military forces to overcome an adversary, this time a race of Autonomous Robotic Life Forms rather than a deadly virus that turns even the most mild mannered individual into a bloodthirsty killer. This aspect of the Transformers plot remains largely uncommented upon, indicating that perhaps U.S. citizens have finally come to the realization that our military forces are not invincible.

Overall, Transformers is what a summer movie blockbuster should be, by Hollywood’s standards: a profitable, entertaining film with excellent special effects that will ultimately remain popular enough with audiences to draw them back for more robots, guns, and girls when the inevitable Transformers sequel is released.

Read more articles by Paige MacGregor