It’s Exactly What it Looks Like

Just got back from a screening of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” I’m not even going to talk in detail about it, because it’s exactly what you think it is. Exactly. Truth be told, the “Transformers” series constitutes a cinematic weak spot for me. Many of my friends criticize me for being unforgiving of popcorn cinema, and they do so quite accurately. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” spoiled me, I expect nothing short of magnificence, and blowing something up just doesn’t cut it anymore. Still, I also have an affinity for sheer, awe-inspiring artistic spectacle, and in this way Michael Bay’s movies about Hasbro toys come to life get the better of me. The amount of crap they blow up is so incredible that I’d pay just to see them do it, no story included. I mean those three-story robots actually look real! The first one was passable: some of the comedy worked and some of it did not, but the pace was quick and the special effects dropped my jaw. I was literally flabbergasted that action scenes of this magnitude were even possible, and I was so delighted with their execution that I whole-heartedly came to the conclusion I had gotten my money’s worth. Also, they had Shia LaBeouf, who inexplicably grows a whole bunch of talent and charisma whenever Michael Bay directs him (more on that later).

Problem is, “Revenge” is your standard recession-age tentpole movie: a creature born of fear, mindlessly placating the “make it bigger” mentality, terrified to actually be something and displease anyone. It’s really a very desperate animal, it knows that its only chance to receive your approval is by sheer exhaustion. It wants to smother you. In the first one, it was amazing enough just to see the Autobots roll out, but now that’s old news, and the boys and girls at Paramount are panicking, packing more and more TNT into every square inch of film. Did you know that in some of the major action scenes of this film, it took ILM five days to render one frame? There are twenty four frames in a single second of most movies.

Still, I got my money’s worth again…I guess. Most of the major set pieces in “Revenge” were absolutely beyond belief, they were so big I almost could not help running numbers in my head: how many stuntmen? How many second units? How many render farms? That’s all I went in for, and that’s what I got. I can’t claim that it’s “good” of me, but I do think the sheer technical achievement of these films is so gigantic that it warrants a sort of amnesty. You forgive opera for being pretentious because it’s incredibly technically complex (and because it’s deeply meaningful, but you know what I mean), and a similar sort of thing goes on here. In the end, though, I think the original “Transformers” is actually more impressive. There’s a certain point by the end of this new film where none of what’s happening means anything, there’s just been too many robots, too much ka-boom. It all washes out and becomes redundant, especially the climactic battle, which was a pacing nightmare. The original film was a spectacle, but there was still a freshness to it all, and the filmmakers relaxed and let the wonder of what was happening sink in. The sequel may be bigger, but I think the original had more awe.

On the subject of Shia, many of you know I am not a fan of his…except here. The original “Transformers” was an incredibly uncomfortable experience for me, because the little jerk made me love him, especially when I could tell he was improvising. His shtick meshed so flawlessly with the tone of the picture that, lo and behold, the whole thing came to rest on his shoulders. He created an emotional center of the film. John Turturro and Jon Voight were making idiots of themselves around him (and you know how I love you, Turturro), but Shia was right on key. It was one of the most inspired leading comedic performances I have ever seen. And even worse, he was totally credible in the action scenes. Most people don’t give actors credit for being believable in a gunfight, but there’s actually a massive difference between a subpar hero and a great one. Your performance has to be 100 percent, you have to sell us that you’re in the fight of your life (for 20 takes in a row), and that does not happen just by grimacing. Think about how you didn’t believe that Adrien Brody was in peril for a single moment of “King Kong,” and how flat his stupid car chase with the gorilla was as a result. Or recall the tepid sense of threat in “Episode II,” and again you’ll find the acting to be the culprit (except for you, Ewan McGreggor, you were awesome). In “Transformers,” by contrast, the action has grit and substance because Shia, damn him, makes us believe he’s in trouble.

I still don’t like him in anything else, though.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll come to regret defending these flicks in any fashion, it’s certainly happened before. Matter of fact, I’ve begun compiling a list of movies I told everyone I liked and then later realized were crap. Would you like to see it? Of course you would.

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My family, who I saw it with, tried to tell me, but I wasn’t listening. I had Spielberg, aliens, and the man in the fedora himself. I wasn’t ready for the truth. And I don’t hate the film for the reasons some other people do; I was fine with the aliens, I still think Area 51 was a perfect piece of pop folk lore to incorporate into the series. But with the passage of time, the more I think about that stupid refrigerator escape scene, the angier I get. What an absolute turd. Putting Indy in the atomic age, in the Cold War, should have been solid gold material, and they absolutely blew it. The blame? George Lucas, and George Lucas alone. Word around the campfire says that Frank Darabont’s (writer/director of “The Shawshank Redemption”) script is incredible, and Spielberg and Ford both loved it, but ooohhhh no it wasn’t good enough for George [note: that's just the rumor, so maybe I'm wrong]. You can almost taste Frank’s version, hidden in the waves of arbitrary plot machinations and paper-thin characters contributed by King of the Ewoks himself. I swear, the same exact crap that screwed up the prequel trilogy came back with a vengeance here. He’s getting lazy, he just doesn’t care enough anymore.

2. Quantum of Solace. We actually watched the opening car chase of this film in a class of mine, then deconstructed it from an editing and shooting perspective, and came to the conclusion that it was a textbook example of how not to make an action scene. While nowhere near as bad as Indy 4, “Solace” is still guilty of a flat villain (not the fault of the actor, who was great), a relentlessly stupid “evil plot,” and the hollowest Bond girl since that other chick in “GoldenEye;” you know, the one who didn’t kill people with her thighs. When I first saw it, I was blinded by the awesomeness of Daniel Craig as Bond, but repeat viewings have left me with that special headache that comes from a meandering, unsatisfying cinamtic experience.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake). I saw the re-do before the original, and it scared the pants off of me, so I grudgingly endorsed it, even though I found it mean-spirited and cold. Then I saw the original, and realized that all the scary elements in the remake had been plundered from the source. Also, there was significantly less grotesquery and gore in the ancestor, and with that I promptly disowned Marcus Nispel’s crude little horror shop.

4. The Crow. “Dark City” (from the same director) was cool and I had some half-formed childhood memories of “The Crow” being really spooky, and that mixed with an oddly difficult search for the DVD created a thirst too easy to satiate. Initially, I thought it was great. Then I realized it was a plotless mess.

5. Desperado. Some movies begin so wonderfully that they fool you, and “Desperado” is one of them. The first third is so sexy, so deliriously effective at bringing John Woo south of the border, that you almost forget that the middle of the movie makes no sense, and the third act literally does not exist. Robert Rodriguez is either the laziest writer in Hollywood or something went very wrong on that set. Go watch it again: right as the climactic gun battle should begin, where the Mariachi is hopelessly outnumbered and far from any cover, the screen fades to white and we suddenly cut to Antonio Banderas without a scratch on him, dusting off his hands, emerging victorious. What?

6. The Matrix Sequels. Defending these things was like trying to bucket water out of the Titanic. With every argument I got into, a creeping feeling snuck into my stomach, because the points my opponents were making…were all true. One day I just picked up the DVDs and threw them across the room. Most sequels take your money and suck quietly, but “Reloaded” and “Revolutions” genuinely tainted the memory of the original. They dashed our hopes for our own “Star Wars” trilogy (thank God Peter Jackson showed up with “The Lord of the Rings”). The first one was a classic, a flat-out masterpiece, but it will never be remembered the same way again.

7. Spider Man 3. My official line on that one was that it was messy but still somehow loveable. That was far too kind. “Spiderman 3″ was punishment from God. It had Tobey Maguire, the whitest man in the world, with stupid-looking dyed black hair doing a dance number. A dance number. And it’s still the most expensive film ever released. Because he has more or less publicly apologized, and because he made the “Evil Dead” movies and “Drag Me To Hell,” I don’t hold it against Sam Raimi. But what a piece of crap.

And now, on a brighter note, here are some movies I initially disliked and then grew to adore:

1. Blade Runner. Saw it in the sixth grade, had no idea what had happened. Saw it freshman year of college, couldn’t even finish it. Pulled it out of a drawer three years later and watched it every day for two weeks until I knew every word that came from every character’s mouth.

2. Most Kubrick Movies. Same thing, you put them away and go “whatever.” Then you wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about them, and Stanley laughs at you from beyond the grave.

3. The French Connection. I remember as the credits rolled, my first thoughts were, “So the bad guy gets away and the good guy shoots a fellow policeman on the day of his greatest victory? This sucks!” I was angry for about six months, and refused to watch the thing, but its gritty, 70s atmosphere was already getting soaked into my bloodstream. The next time I popped it in I couldn’t think of a negative thing to say.

4. A History of Violence. A friend of mine and I saw it in the theater, and at the time I had never seen a Cronenberg picture. I found myself…uncomfortable almost the entire time: where were the grisled heroics I was expecting? The long stream of vigilante justice to round out the climax? The action scenes were brutal and staged with a deliberate absurdity, much like violence in real life. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And yet every time I saw the DVD on the shelves,  I confess I found myself more fascinated by it than others of its ilk. As soon as I had let go of the hope that it would be “Death Wish 9,” I came to see a unique and thought-provoking film that deals with one of my most treasured themes: is the identity we assume as real as the one we are born with?

5. National Lampoon’s Animal House. No, I don’t know what was wrong with me. For some reason, the first time I watched this comedic masterpiece I was…I don’t know, I must have been doing speedballs, or hallucinating, or something. When I watched it the second time and collapsed on the carpet in front of our couch from spasms of laughter, all memories of this disastrous “first vieweing” were erased.

6. Mulholland Drive. It’s hard to blame anyone for not liking this one the first time through, it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense…or does it? Thorough study reveals a real solution to the puzzle, an answer instead of a bunch of artsy questions, and so “Drive” becomes an avante garde masterpiece.

7. The Wicker Man. Unless forewarned, which I was not, everyone feels like the Devil just backhanded them when the credits roll on this bad boy for the first time. But of course, that’s the price you pay for what may be the single most original story in cinema history.