I wish Michael Bay had gone to film school. And I mean that in a good way. Bay does a few things so spectacularly well that I cannot help but let my jaw drop in awe at what he can create. It helps greatly that for the most part what he does exceptionally well is scenes of action so over the top insane and out of control that you have a hard time believing they actually happened. What he doesn't do well is emotional connection on a cerebral level and damn near everyone in Hollywood has spent the last 100 years pushing that particular envelope. So Bay has a weapon that everyone envies (even if they talk mountain's of shit about it) and none of the core tools that everyone else got coming up in the world. This presents a wildly fucked up film maker.
I have a theory, After transformers 2 made more money than God, but was critically shit on by pretty much everyone and their brother, Bay was hurt and confused. He had created a financial success, obviously the audiences loved the movie, but he kept hearing the same thing over and over again, horrible story, atrocious dialog, absolutely inane, flat, worthless, empty shells of humanity pretending to be characters. Even now he admits the movie is pretty much dog shit. But why? Does he really understand why it was critically panned? In all this time is it possible maybe he learned something about story telling other than putting underwear models in explosive danger?
Transformers 3 is our answer, and the answer is No, but fuck if he didn't try his ass off. Actually he did he 'learn" something about how to present and create emotional connection and growth in his characters, he learned that he has a lot of ground to cover and a lot of basic techniques to practice.
Transformers 3 should have been Michael Bay's two and a half hour master work of mayhem and storyless destructo-insanity. Instead we got a fucking brutally awesome short film about the "true" history of the space program and then an hour and twenty minutes of Bay trying every possible way he could think of to get us to care about a character we've already spent two movies with, has never been more than a secondary character at best, and that Bay himself doesn't really give a shit about. But this time he did something odd, in Sam we see Bays' fears concerning his own career. Through Sam, Bay attempts to level not with the audience but with the critical community and for someone who started out on beer and underwear ads its a startlingly honest and raw presentation. Does it have a single iota of anything to do with the actual movie we're supposed to be seeing? FUCK NO, and frankly every other character in the movie seems to know it.
Sam's whole story line is that he knows he's useful, he knows that when you get down to brass tacks he's done what no one else on earth could do and he's done it more than once, in other worlds, this kid may not look like much but he's got it where it counts. Bay knows he has a talent, he knows his eye for action and physical cutting edge insanity is second to none, but every time he comes out swinging he gets his balls clipped off for not being "emotional" or "intellectual" or "having a piss poor story written by three six year olds hopped up on pixie sticks and pokemon". So Sam and by extension Bay keep interrupting their own movie to make sure that everyone knows they are trying to grow, trying to stay relevant, trying to be even better than they already are. And oddly enough the world in Transformers 3 seems to be pissed that this story line is even happening. Only one character even doubts that SamBay is fucking useless and she needs to shuffle off and die already. Everyone else is to damn busy actually doing their jobs to notice that SamBay is worried about their actual worth in life. This takes exposition that could have been done in forty minutes max and stretches it out to an hour and twenty minutes. I applaud the guy for trying to expand his tool set but there are times when you gotta stop pushing your boundaries, lock in the guaranteed run and rocket a homer to the moon. Transformers could have been Bay's giant middle finger to the critical community. He could have dumped a plotless 2 hour music video of destruction and one liners on us and it would have been fucking awesome. But he doubted his abilities and we got to see him make the worlds most expensive grad school character drama seemingly written by The Three Stooges.
But once you get past that hour and twenty minute desperate attempt to grow as a film maker Bay does in fact for the most part Shoulder the bat and drive a long bomb out of the park. For all the times that Transformers 2 had me laughing at craptastic illogical bullshit and the first Transformers had me snoring out of disconnection and boredom, Transformers 3 caught me leaning forward at times. In awe of shots, sequences, elements of visual design. The sky diving sequence alone made me feel like I was seeing a Bay that we haven't seen in a long time, maybe ever. And ultimately he got me to do the most important thing you can do in a Transformers Movie, in the end I gave a shit about Optimums Prime. It took him three films but he finally found a magic moment and drove home a shred of connection.
So over all, it's a hard movie to sit through, its got some of the old fuck ups from two, its got some of the dry "DON'T CARE MAKE BLOW UPS PLZ" exposition moments from one, but ultimately three was a definite improvement. Bay needs to stop doubting himself and do what he's in Hollywood to do. No one has ever given Wes Anderson shit for not using explosions or his lack of action scenes (not that the guy has even tried) and I wish that Bay would actually deliver on the action, cut the story and really just make burnination with awesome hot women every where and do it with fucking pride. These are not things to be ashamed of, especially when you use them the way that Bay is known for, its just hard for Hollywood to separate their 11 year old saturday morning cartoon brain, from their snooty film critic brain and having an hour and a half of exposition that leads up to destructovision that would make Roland Emmerich wet his pants fucks with critics heads.
I state here and now that I will voluntarily see Transformers 3 again, prolly on Blu Ray. And most importantly I am looking forward to seeing Bay's sack drop, and to see what he can do when he either decides to learn the elements of emotional story telling or decides to flip critical Hollywood a set of deuces and does what he does best with no remorse.
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