Thoughts on Transformers 2
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen might be the worst movie you see this summer. Heck, it might be the worst of 2009. It’s gaudy, reckless, inane, nauseating, and even casually racist and misogynistic. It’s also the most fun I’ve had at a movie this entire year and, truthfully, deserves a bit more than the average ‘IT WAS TOO LOUD!’ review.
I’ll spare you my attempt at reconstructing the story. Reflecting with some friends afterward, I couldn’t recall what had happened, and neither could anyone else. I do remember something involving a Matrix device, Megan Fox closeups, machines, deep voices, and non-sequiter cutaways to Sam Witwicky’s humping dogs. The entire film exists in a 2.5+ vacuum of noise, color, and chaos. Plot is secondary to buckets of effects and too much yelling.
Critics (especially those across the pond) have blasted Michael Bay for constructing a disgusting portrait of everything that’s wrong with cinema today. They’re right, really, but they’re still not being entirely fair to Mr. Bay. A friend of mine intriguingly suggested that Bay is actually making a cutting indictment of American values. I’m not going to give Bay & Co. that much credit, but he’s right to point out how much of Transformers is…American. From sultry female eye candy to overt commercialism and from hypermasculine military men to dizzying inclusion of all things gaudy and pointless, Transformers is a practically a montage to the worst of American (or even Western) culture. So, though it tries to be a linear traditional motion picture, it becomes an almost avant-garde journey via sound and robotics. From a philosophical perspective, this will send you into a vacant hole of nihilism. The light, pictures, bodies, metal, and fire combined with that pathetic feeling of plotlesness leaves behind a weird, unsettling feeling of nothingness.
A glitch in the digital projector in our screening caused the sound to cut out in the middle of an “essential” scene (note violent scare quotes) in which a dead Sam Witwicky is given the secret to…something (it sounded important). The scene was rewound twice, but the sound still stayed muted during the revelation of “the secret.” It’s oddly suiting that my theater never found out the secret. The secret is, for Mr. Bay, nothing. Nothing is the answer, and the answer is nothing. Nothing happens, and nothing matters. Transformers 2 may not be a subtle exploration of postmodern America, but it’s still, to me, an expression of deep epistemological angst . A pathetic scream of frustration that communicates the vacancy of culture, and life. The trash heap of history. Nothingness. Noise.
…
Okay, so I’m stretching. As much as I’d like to romanticize and make this a deep spiritual discovery, in the end, it’s nothing more than a bunch of “sh*t going kablooey,” as one passing theatregoer poetically put it. It’s a maddening and sadistic experience, this film, but somehow I had fun. It all depends on your attitude. Though last year’s big blockbuster (The Dark Knight) was subtle and overtly philosophical, I believe the blundering film that is Transformers 2 could be thing of the summer that provokes the most profound ideas. As a culture, we need something this mind-numbing to make us ask the hard questions. I don’t know what they are yet, but when the dust settles, maybe we’ll have some ideas. Maybe.I have a headache.
