Why does the Fast & Furious series get respect and Michael Bay doesn't?

 Brendan asked me on Twitter:

As the foremost Bayesian of our time, your thoughts on this Ben Kuchera piece?

For the uninitiated, Ben's reference to my expertise is a nod to my book MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films, which is currently available on Amazon. Go here to read the announcement if your memory needs refreshing. A brief primer on my view on Michael Bay can also be obtained by reading my review of TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, a film I called "the most brilliant and subversively political film you'll see all year."

Mr. Kuchera puts forth a very interesting opinion piece and while I will be quoting some relevant bits here just to give my stance some context, I encourage you to read it in full. A key statement comes at the start:

"Many of the same people who heap scorn on Michael Bay are unapologetic Furious 7 fans. The entire Fast series has earned the sort of open fandom that is only matched by superstar franchises like The Avengers. Why do people seem to hate the Transformers series but the equally dumb car racing films get a "free" pass?"

I want to highlight how this is less Kuchera's own statement than it is a summation of "conventional wisdom." However, it's critical as far as establishing the goal posts for any discussion that follows as the question takes as a given that Transformers films are "dumb" and the Fast series is "equally dumb." If you've read my book (available for only $4.99 on Kindle) you might understand the fallacy of the blanket statement, at least in its simplicity.

As I discussed in my Age of Extinction review, this final Transformers sequel is a subversive deconstruction of the entire event blockbuster genre. Indeed, my discussion of the second and third films in the series draws greatly on the idea that Bay himself is frustrated by that sort of product, and has essentially become a prisoner of that genre. After the frustrating failure of some of his original ideas, it often feels like Bay returns to this series in repeated efforts to blow it up once and for all. There is an intelligence at work in those films, but it's put in service of the message that the characters presented as heroes are actually the true villains. It's the cinematic equivalent of Bay catching our underage selves sneaking a smoke and punishing us by demanding we polish off the entire carton.

The Fast films have no such pretensions, and until Tokyo Drift's writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin returned for a second go-round in the film's fourth entry, there was very little narrative or creative continuity. They began as a series of mostly disconnected one-offs until the fifth film tied threads from all the disparate movies together into one glorious Ocean's Eleven-like gift. The Fast films embrace their history, warts and all, when it probably would have been just as easy to ignore the second and third films, sticking to the movies that feature only most of the original cast.

With that comes the sense that everyone involved WANTS to be there. Everyone in front of and behind the scenes is having a ball making it. The stunts are insanely ridiculous at times, often in complete defiance of even the loosest concept of physics. But they look cool, and even in the midst of a chase, the characters usually let us see the adrenaline rush on their faces. It's a roller coaster ride you can't stop laughing at. It owns its implausibility, as if to say "We know this would never happen, but do you care?"

That's a sharp contrast to the Transformers series, where the actors play the peril as terrifying, not something getting their blood racing in all the right ways. Though Bay's metatexual criticism tends not to be perceived by most viewers, on some level they must recognize the films' direct disappointment in its audience. Both films are chocolate brownies, but the Fast brownie is the one saying, "Have another bite. Don't I taste great?" The Transformers brownie pipes up as you draw it closer to your lips and says, "Excuse me, do you have any idea what I'm doing to your hips?"

To paint either series as "dumb" is to miss the point. Both of them often struggle with plotting. Furious 7 has a lot of weakly-motivated plot developments, but it also had to deal with their production being completely upended by Paul Walker's death mid-shoot, so most audiences are inclined to treat those lightly. But once you take plot off of the table, it becomes more noticeable that Fast films earn a lot of good will from their characters. Most of the main players in the series are criminals to one extent or another, but they also have their own sense of honor and loyalty. They do bad things, but they're not bad people. This is why the finale of the latest film is so affecting - it's purely about these friends saying goodbye to Paul Walker's character in their own way. Yes, a lot of the audience's emotional reaction is a result of transference of Walker's death onto the exit of his character. Even if our mourning for Walker isn't profound, we can perceive the actors working through their grief on-screen and their sorrow surely strikes a chord in the hearts of anyone who has lost someone.

It's an emotional depth never really attempted by Transformers, and one that probably could not be matched even if one of the leads perished mid-installment. The robots are ostensibly good people, but they bring nothing but pain and destruction to Earth. It's the inverse of how we perceive Fast's Dom Torretto and his crew. Instead, Bay takes figures whom popular culture tells us should be heroes and inflates them so the scale makes their failings impossible to miss. Do you really want to root for Optimus Prime, or do you want to shout at him and Megatron to take their bar brawl somewhere else?

The humans in Transformers find their lives only made worse by contact with the Autobots. Unless you count Sam landing two ultra-sexy girlfriends in a row, there's really nothing aspirational in any of the movies. There's no moment to make the audience go, "Damn, I wish that was me!"

Certainly Kuchera's article is onto something when it highlights the multicultural nature of the Fast films. That cannot be ignored as a factor in the Fast series success. However... that works because the movie already is pitched at a tone that makes it easy to love. Swap Shia LaBeouf out for Michael B. Jordan and trade Rachael Taylor for Naya Rivera and you would still have a movie that keeps harrumphs at the audience for showing up for it.

So yes, the article grazes a bullseye when it says, "Michael Bay movies tend to be cynical; they feel like the creative team and interchangeable stars are taking the audience for granted at best, and at worst exploiting our worst impulses. The Fast and Furious franchise, on the other hand, are made by creative teams that are clearly invested in the franchise and care about showing the audience a good time. They're not cynical, they're hopeful, which is a great thing in a huge-budget action film."

Where we go wrong is in assuming Bay doesn't know what he's doing. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing - it's the audience who often misses his point.

Announcing my book: MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius of Michael Bay's Films. On sale now!

Starting today, you can purchase my first book, MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius of Michael Bay's Films on Amazon. Yes, that's right, for the mere price of $4.99, you can be downloading and reading this first-ever examination of Michael Bay within seconds!

----
His movies have cumulatively earned $2.4 billion in the domestic box office, making him the second most-successful director of all time, right behind Steven Spielberg. If one gathered the top six directors in that category, that same man would be only one of the half-dozen to not also be in possession of an Academy Award: Michael Bay.

Commercial success and meaningful art don’t always go hand-in-hand, but is it possible for a filmmaker to consistently hit his mark with the audience without truly doing something right artistically? Professional critics have long taken aim at Bay’s music-video-honed visual style, full of fast cuts, moving camera shots, hot women. The internet is full of negativity and scorn for the director too, but has anyone truly given Bay’s oeuvre the benefit of the doubt?

Michael F-ing Bay: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay’s Films is the first-ever attempt to approach the Bay catalog from an intellectual standpoint. Come ready to find the deep subtexts and profound meanings in Michael Bay’s filmography.

EXPERIENCE – the controversial discussion about man’s relationship with God buried within Armageddon!

DISCOVER – how Pearl Harbor demonstrates that emotional truth is far more vital than strict adherence to actual historical events!

LEARN – how The Island is a pointed allegory attacking the proliferation of remakes and reboots that Hollywood produces!

UNDERSTAND – the vulnerable confession that Michael Bay offers under the cloak of a true-life Miami crime story in Pain & Gain! And much more!
----

With the holiday season coming up, it's the perfect stocking stuffer for your friends and family. You can even gift the Kindle versions if you only want to spend an Abe Lincoln.  If you love Michael Bay, you will find something to enjoy in this book and if you hate Michael Bay you'll probably still find plenty to love here. Every movie Michael Bay has directed is covered here, in all-new in-depth examinations.

This is not a greatest-hits compilation of posts, nor is it a how-to screenwriting book. The only segment that's seen the light of day before is my analysis of Transformers: Age of Extinction. It became one of my all-time most-popular posts, so you've probably read it already. If you haven't, give it a read for a taste of what you're in for with MICHAEL F-ING BAY.

And all this is yours for $4.99! If you have been a long-time reader of the blog, that's like tipping me less than a dollar a year. It's a tiny drop in the bucket. You can cover the cost by skipping your latte, maybe not necessarily your essential morning latte, but the one you get in the afternoon just so you have an excuse to leave the office a bit.

But what if you don't have a Kindle or a tablet with a Kindle app? Good news, you can still read MICHAEL F-ING BAY! Go here and download the Kindle reading app for your computer.

Here are the instructions for the Kindle for PC program.
Here's where you go for Kindle for Windows 8.
Here's the site for you Kindle for Mac people.

So you're looking at those sites and it still seems complicated and confusing. Or maybe you're just the type of person who likes to hold a physical book in your hands. I'm looking out for those few of you, which is why I have made it possible to buy a physical, dead-tree edition of MICHAEL F-ING BAY as well.

Link roundup:
Amazon Author Page here.
Kindle version of the book here.
Dead tree edition here.

Your support would really mean a lot to me, guys. E-books like this succeed through word-of-mouth, so please sound the trumpets for my first book. I really hope you enjoy it.

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION is the most brilliant and subversively political film you'll see all year

Transformers: Age of Extinction might be the most cinematically daring film of this decade, if not this century.  It's a genuinely rare pleasure to be cognizant of film history being made as you watch celluloid (figuratively) unspool before you, but Michael Bay has never been a conventional fillmmaker. With T:AOE, this Picasso of Pyro has produced a potent film as subversive and singular as anything one might find from John Waters or Michael Haneke.

“It would be nice to not have to do effects and big car crashes. I’m waiting for the great written word.”

This is a quote from Michael Bay, fifteen years ago.  By then, he was already famous for Bad Boys, The Rock, numerous music videos and was on the cusp of Armageddon's release. Many dismissed him as a surface-level filmmaker, an ironic attack as that charge could only be deemed plausible if those who subscribed to it limited their gaze to the flashy exterior that coats Bay's films like glaze on a donut, or baby oil on a desirable woman.

Much like The Beatles, whose pop exterior were merely the delivery method through which more complex and profound ideas were smuggled, Bay was always planting deeper themes for those willing to look for them.  Anyone who appreciated his masterful reworking of the Beauty & The Beast tale in music video form could understand that, when a singularly-beautiful creature wins the love of desire incarnate... at the price of trading in their unique appearance for the grotesque visage of Meat Loaf.

Alas, Bay's work more often was appreciated (and derided) for its facile charms by those not in on the joke.  Accordingly, Bay exaggerated their scale with each subsequent film, in the futile hope that taking the material increasingly over-the-top would expose it as satire and criticism of the values so many erroneously assume those works endorse.  And still the call went unheeded.  It's impossible to think of any peer in his field who has been so aggressively deconstructive of his own work within the films he has helmed.

It was during this film that clarity finally dawned on me -  Michael Bay is Daniel Clamp, the billionaire developer played with aplomb by John Glover in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. In that film, Clamp was responsible not only for a pending modernized redevelopment of Chinatown, but a fully automated building that was more often a source of consternation for those using it.  It also proved to be the perfect romping ground for the Gremlins to destroy.  Having survived that chaos, at the end of the film, Clamp looks at his achievement with new eyes, saying, "Maybe it wasn't a place for people anyway. It was a place for things. You make a place for things... things come."

At some point, Michael Bay looked at the summer movies that arrived in the wake of his films, and realized he had turned summer into a place for things.  Armageddon and Pearl Harbor are the sound and fury that made films like G.I. Joe, Battleship and White House Down possible. With Age of Extinction, Bay has finally reached the point where he's stopped being subtle about trying to implode the automated building he forged.

The most meta line of dialogue this summer is uttered by Kelsey Grammer's character, the true hero of the film as he states, "A new era has begun. The age of Transformers is over..."

Taken together, the Transformers Tetralogy are the most intensely self-aware criticism of the MTV-style, explosion-happy, titilation-soaked style of filmmaking.  For the last several Transformers films, Bay sought to make this motivation more obvious by recruiting Ehren Kruger for screenplay duties. One of the leading voices in film, Kruger is clearly of a like mind when it comes to making audiences confront the superficial nature of the works they submit their intelligence to.

Artists and critics often talk about "emotional truth" versus "logical truth."  This is the justification by which a film doesn't have to make logical sense - or even adhere to its own stated logic - so long as it feels right.  Does it makes sense, or is it even historically accurate, when President Roosevelt defies the odds to rise out of his wheelchair in Pearl Harbor? Absolutely not.  But it provokes that sort of "never give up spirit" that is essential to the film.  The genius of Kruger is that he carries this further.

Consider the ending of Arlington Road, where Jeff Bridges is played for a fool by terrorists who manipulate circumstances with god-like precision.  No less than the great Roger Ebert once misread this film:

"'Arlington Road' is a conspiracy thriller that begins well and makes good points, but it flies off the rails in the last 30 minutes. The climax is so implausible we stop caring and start scratching our heads. Later, thinking back through the film, we realize it's not just the ending that's cuckoo. Given the logic of the ending, the entire film has to be rethought; this is one of those movies where the characters only seem to be living their own lives, when in fact they're strapped to the wheels of a labyrinthine hidden plot... 

"But leave the plot details aside for a second. What about the major physical details of the final thriller scenes? How can anyone, even skilled conspirators, predict with perfect accuracy the outcome of a car crash? How can they know in advance that a man will go to a certain pay phone at a certain time, so that he can see a particular truck he needs to see? How can the actions of security guards be accurately anticipated? Isn't it risky to hinge an entire plan of action on the hope that the police won't stop a car speeding recklessly through a downtown area? It's here that the movie completely breaks down." 

With respect to Mr. Ebert, this is the entire point.  Kruger wasn't attempting to write a brilliant thriller, he was writing a brilliant criticism of brainless thrillers and attempting to provoke the audience into recognizing the smoke and mirrors behind them.  For a film to tell you that it's climactic twist was ironic or impressive should not be enough. "It doesn't make sense!" the film screams. "And you lemmings lap it up every time!"  When that moral failed to land, Kruger repeated the trick with The Ring - a film that ends with a moment that feels shocking and dangerous ("You didn't let her out, did you?") before reminding us that freeing Samara doesn't make things worse. She still only can kill those who have watched her cursed tape.

Thus, it's impossible not to interpret AGE OF EXTINCTION as two brilliant deconstructionists jam-banding on an action movie specifically designed to burn the house down.  This is Kruger and Bay as Bialystock and Bloom, dropping "Springtime for Hitler" on an unsuspecting crowd like it's an atom bomb.  And appropriately, the soundtrack of the damned can only be provided by Imagine Dragons.

With the fourth Transformers, Michael Bay finally accomplishes what the three previous films tried so hard to do - turn the Transformers into bad guys, the enemies of all mankind.  The first film is idealistic and Spielberg-like for the first hour.  It's the story of a teenage boy advancing into manhood by pursuing the desirable girl.  It's a story as old as time and one gets the sense that were there no killer robots, Sam might win Mikaela's heart easily.  But then the killer robots smash into Sam's narrative and from then on, the simple joys of independence from one's parents and pleasures of the flesh are cast aside.

Mayhem reigns and eventually casts a swath of destruction through Sam's life across two sequels.  It's no accident that the romance Sam sought in the first film is destroyed by the third one.  We should not want these Transformers, Bay is telling us.  We should not want these films.  This lead to his most audiacious move in the third film, replacing Megan Fox with a lingerie model.  Bay must have wondered what more he had to do to let the audience know he's in on the joke.  It was a move that should have provoked outrage, and then the realization that the action genre is so superficial that it simply doesn't matter who runs around screaming "Optimus!"  Alas, the film was successful enough that Bay's clever intentions seem to have been lost.

Accordingly, that has led Bay and Kruger to up the ante in this latest outing.  The theme of the Transformers being destructive to mankind has been taken from subtext to text.  Even the ostensible "good guys," the Autobots are not heroes.  They despise mankind and are currently hunted by them.  Optimus Prime's first speech in the film is a violent threat directed at all humans.  He's flabbergasted that humans would "betray" them after all they've done.

And what have the Autobots done except bring an interstellar war to the doorstep of a race that has no stakes in the battle?  What has mankind done except have the audacity to build cities where the "good" and "bad" robots alike do immense battle without any concern for collateral damage?  Optimus Prime is the herald for Armageddon and he and his disciples regard mankind as ungrateful because the Transformers haven't been greeted as liberators for a conflict for which they are completely responsible.  Sure, they always justify it as trying to stop a hidden weapon, or to vanquish a greater evil, but at the end of the day it remains their fight and their fight alone. 

And that's when it hits you - Transformers: Age of Extinction is all about the Iraq War.

It is as pointed and liberal a criticism of neoconservative policy as you will find in a modern action film.  Suddenly it no longer seems quite so inexplicable that this is the first Transformers film to not feature extensive cooperation from the U.S. military.

The subtext of the film is clear - Transformers are evil. Thus, Transformers movies are also evil and destructive to film.  The Earth depicted in this series of films is justified in wanting all Transformers, good and bad, vanquished forever.  The same goes for the soulless films that bring their exploits to the screen.  Michael Bay must have smiled as he concocted this plot with his screenwriter, certain that if making Optimus Prime the villain wouldn't at last destroy this franchise and set him free, taking on a hot button topic like the Iraq War would.

“I'm, like, a true American.”- Michael Bay, from a GQ interview.

Let's not mistake that criticism for anti-American sentiment, because Bay's other masterstroke is that the real hero of this film is a true patriot through and through.  Kelsey Grammer plays a CIA agent who's made a secret pact with one faction of Transformers.  With this, he gets their cooperation in hunting down all remaining Transformers - Autobot and Decepticon - and then mining them for spare parts to build machines that mankind will control themselves.  Grammer's character has more common sense than any human featured in these films yet.

It's here that Bay and Kruger again confront the audience with the superficial filmic conventions they are used to embracing.  In any other film, Grammer's character would be a sinister badguy, someone whose death we cheer.  Instead, time and again, he's the only character with any sense at all. He's mobilized a task force to hunt a dangerous insurgent (Optimus Prime) and was savvy enough to make this other race of Transformers realize the contract benefits both of them.  He's hunting Optimus Prime because he knows that the longer he's out there, the worse it will be for national security, heck, even global security.

The movie proves him right.  From the time Optimus is turned back on, all he does is cause carnage and destruction while he and his cohorts regroup to be better effective at causing mayhem and chaos.  Two entire cities are lain to waste needlessly, a point driven home at the end of the film.  One might try to justify all of the carnage as the work of the badguys coming after Optimus, but the movie's final shot makes it clear that Optimus could have flown off of the planet unaided at any time he wanted.  Everything terrible that happens in this film is on Optimus Prime's shoulders.

Doubters of this theory might retort, "But if he's the hero, how does one rationalize him seemingly selling out for a stake in Stanley Tucci's billionaire character's company?" Is it "selling out" to earn a living by utilizing your assets in return for compensation?  Grammer's character Attinger is a sly meta-commentary on the parade of classy actors (John Malkovich, Jon Voight, Frances McDormand and Tucci and Grammer themselves for that matter) often mocked and derided for appearing in films like this.  Attinger has devoted his life to his country. His passion is patriotism, but that unfortunately doesn't pay the bills.  It's no different for actors who are artistically fulfilled by the rich independent films that pay little.  No one in Hollywood would begrudge any of those fine performers the compensation of a paycheck role, and thus, Attinger's "paycheck role" should not be treated as an indictment against him.  We do not judge Grammer and Tucci for lending gravitas to this film for a fair price, nor do we condemn Attinger for his deal with Tucci's billionaire.

It's telling that when Grammer's character dies, it's not in a confrontation with a human protagonist, such as the one played by Mark Wahlberg.  His end comes from a cold-blooded shot from Optimus Prime that takes him out of commission.  Tucked amid the total destruction of Hong Kong, it could have been a tiny act of violence, but the human scale of the brutality here at last brings into focus what a monster Optimus Prime is, acting above the law and summarily executing a man whose only true crime was trying to protect his nation from a proven threat. 

Optimus Prime is a false god, unworthy of being cheered as a liberator, or worshiped via the ubiquitous toys found in every store. This is a film designed to make every patriotic American want to burn their Optimus Prime toys in solidarity, then buy more to burn them again.  For a while, it seemed that Bay was content just to destroy the genre of superficial blockbusters, but three movies clearly taught him that the merchandising will keep this series going forever.  How does one defeat that? By destroying the symbol that fuels the legend.

What Bay and Kruger do here, they do for the good of future generations of film.  Alan Moore in his prime could not have achieved such a pointed deconstruction of the toy-to-movie form of entertainment.

The treatment of women is different this time out too.  One of the most uncomfortably leering scenes in a PG-13 film was the "check under the hood" scene in the first Transformers where the camera oogled Megan Fox with such force it's a wonder her clothes didn't melt.  Her abs and cleavage were so prominently featured throughout the film that it was possible to draw them from memory.   Her entrance in the second film was perhaps even more sexist, and her Victoria's Secret replacement fared little better.

By comparison AOE's Nicola Peltz, is practically covered in a burka.  There are no bare middrifs, barely any cleavage, no bending-over shots and perhaps only a fleeting moment or two where Bay's camera admires her from behind.  Moreover, she's time and again pretty much the only character with any real common sense.  Her father, Cade, likes to think he's laying down the law, but for the all the overprotective vibes he puts out, it's pretty obvious if he was left without her, he'd starve within a week.  Cade makes such terrible decisions from his first moment on screen that the movie seems to be testing how far it can push it before you realize your sexist impulses and star worship have led you to embrace the wrong character as the "hero."

The story between Cade and his daughter can't help but evoke Armageddon.  The girl has been secretly dating an older guy against her father's "no boys" rule.  It starts off seeming like a replay of Bruce Willis's Harry Stamper and his rage at finding out one of his workers (Ben Affleck) is dating his daughter (Liv Tyler.)  By the end of the film, Harry sacrifices himself so that Affleck's character can live and look after his girl.

Towards the end of Age of Extinction, Bay gives us a moment designed to evoke that same passing of the baton, with Cade diving back into battle after telling his girl he loves her and telling her boyfriend to take care of her.  The boyfriend (the wussiest alpha male ever to wander into a Bay film) raises no objection.  But Peltz's character doesn't take this shit.  She immediately tells her boyfriend and Bumblebee that they're going back for Cade.  Much is made of this, for when Bumblebee returns to battle, Optimus Prime shouts "I gave you an order!"

Not only does Wahlberg's lunkhead Cade not have to sacrifice himself, but he's saved entirely by the only person who's given good advice the entire film, his daughter.  The connection couldn't be more clear.  Peltz is essentially Penny and Wahlberg is Inspector Gadget, the hapless fool who thinks he knows what he's doing while the person he's technically responsible for is the one who really knows the score.

Who knew Michael Bay was a feminist?  Or maybe he just likes Inspector Gadget. Either way, there's no other conclusion to draw than this film being an apology for Armageddon.  Michael, consider your contrition accepted.

To return to the film as a whole, the excess isn't cranked to 11 here, it's spun all the way up to 22.  Of course the movie verges on three hours - it's supposed to be a relentless assault on our senses.  The only way the comparison between this film and Alex DeLarge's reconditioning could be more pointed was if the Imagine Dragons soundtrack included Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."  Bay stuffs us full of pixels and pyrotechnics like a disciplinarian father forcing his son to smoke an entire carton of cigarettes after catching him smoking.

Transformers: Age of Extinction is anarchist filmmaking at its finest and the most subversive studio film released in decades.  Every moment necessary, each scene part of a rich tapestry that film scholars will be analyzing and debating for centuries. I give this film four thumbs up, because in true Bay-like excess, why only give two thumbs when you can give four?

Does Hollywood not care about scripts that are bad and unoriginal?

Last week, I said on Twitter that it's a logical fallacy to believe that since "every movie released this summer sucked, was a remake or both, so I guess my writing doesn't need to be good or original."  A couple people asked me to defend that, saying that "Hollywood" clearly doesn't seem to want new or good scripts.

No one sets out to make a bad movie.  Bad movies happen sometimes because plans go awry, sometimes because missteps were made in the translation from script to screen, sometimes because the cumulative effect of too many opinions and compromises eventually crushes the film.  This is obvious, but I feel like I should state it because it seems like some people making the above argument might actually believe that there are some executives deliberately looking for bad scripts.

You can never forget that this is a business - a very expensive business.  We can waste time complaining about that and getting into a lot of high-minded arguments about art vs. commerce... Or we can just accept that as an immutable reality of the film industry and try to understand why things work this way.

A studio has to release a certain number of films a year that do a certain amount of business so that they can keep their bottom line healthy and thus, continue to stay in business.  As with any business, it's about releasing a product that will produce profit.  That also translates to releasing products with market appeal.

To put it more bluntly, Hollywood is giving you what you want.  Or at least what the best information available to them leads them to believe you want.  They don't release bad movies to piss you off any more than Ford would produce a car that suddenly ejected you from your vehicle without warning.

I'm not saying that this reality means they should get a free pass from criticism or Monday Morning Quarterbacking either.  If bad product comes to market, you as the consumer should absolutely let your voice be heard.  Even better - don't spend your money on said product.

The problem sets in when there's a film that everyone seems to consider terrible, but it makes an insane amount of money.  Look at Transformers.  There are plenty of people who are quite vocal in expressing their belief that Michael Bay makes very unintelligent films that are nothing more than boobs and pyrotechnics.  Some people might even argue that his movies are among the worst ever made.  In the case of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I might even agree with them.

But look at these numbers:

Transformers - $319 million domestic gross/$709 million worldwide
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - $402 million domestic/$836 million worldwide
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - $352 million domestic/$1.1 billion worldwide

Someone saw those movies.  And on a worldwide scale, each film was more successful than the one that preceded it.  Why wouldn't you continue that series?  Because some people on the internet talk shit about Michael Bay?  Sorry, that doesn't fly in the business world.

So let's say you're the guy sitting in an executive office at a competing studio, trying to set the slate for the coming year.  This is a business of home runs and you've just seen Paramount and DreamWorks hit a massive home run with Transformers.  They figured out what the audience wanted and they gave it to them - so it's on YOU to find that same audience.

This is why you're going to take note of the fact that Transformers had massive awareness as a brand and an audience hungry for new material even some 15 or 20 years after the cartoon was last significant.  It only makes sense that you would explore other popular brands to exploit in a similar manner.

And if it just so happens that your studio already OWNS such a brand (let's say He-Man), it would practically be malpractice NOT to put such a project in development.  Or maybe you'd rather explain to shareholders eager for their own Transformers-sized hit why you're sitting on a goldmine.

So why is there such unoriginality?  Because you, the consumer, have told Hollywood that there's gold in them thar' remakes.  So long as reboots, remakes and re-adaptations rake in the cash, you're sending the message that's what you want.  It's not like all the powerbrokers in Hollywood sat down together like a meeting of the Five Families and decided as a whole to produce these films.

It's not any more complicated than that.

Let's talk a little bit about the issue of quality.

So you've greenlit He-Man and set it as your big tentpole for Summer 2014.  You've got a few other big movies lined up for that year, but this is the one you see as your crown jewel.  You've probably got several other big movies on the slate during the intervening years between now and then and so as much as you're shepherding each one as its own individual property, you've also got to be cognizant of their importance to the whole.

It's very unlikely that in summer 2012, you'll take a look at the tentpole that's about to go before the cameras for release next year and decide, "Maybe if we delayed everything another six months we can make this even better."  Delays like that cost money.  What if the actors and director are already committed to projects that would start shooting at that later date?  If you delay six months that means you lose your big release for Summer 2013, so what is going to plug that hole?  Can you move something else up?  Would moving another project forward by six months compromise that project?

I could continue in that vein, but I think the point is made - at a certain point, movies like this become too big to fail.  You can't stop the freight train, you can only hope to get it under control.  There will always be unexpected problems, whether they're production problems, or they're simply the result of a complicated script that needed more time in development.

"Films aren't released, they escape," is an old saying that pretty aptly describes this.  There's a property and a release date, and with rare exception, one simply cannot afford to miss that release date.  Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels once said, "The show doesn't go on because it's ready. The show goes on because it's Saturday."  That's pretty much how it works in the movie business too.  That's also why it's incredibly remarkable that earlier this year, Paramount delayed the release of the second G.I. Joe movie from June to next March.  A delay of that sort on such short notice is pretty much unheard of.

A lot of this might be met with a resounding "Duh!"  My purpose in writing this is not to offer a pardon to those "bad, unoriginal" films, but to explain them.  Moreover, the preponderance of such product should never deter you, the writer, from pushing yourself to write new and original ideas.  You should never look at something like Wrath of the Titans and say, "Well, that sucked so clearly Hollywood just wants to make shit."

Companies stop making products when said products cease to be profitable.  That's a fundamental principle of every business. Why pretend that there's something wrong with that mentality when it comes to the movie business?

Bad movies are a fact of life, but good movies still happen.  Though the reboots and remakes may be more visible, there will always be a need for new ideas.  Even Transformers was a new idea at one point.  You can decry the business realities that make franchise films a commodity, or you can look at the big picture and try to figure out how to make your work part of the solution.

But you can't just stick your head in the sand and pretend that the current studio output is part of some active effort to quash original ideas and render quality irrelevant.  It's not only naive, it's a completely unproductive and unhelpful attitude to have.

Because at the end of the day, the problem isn't that Hollywood that doesn't care that so many releases are remakes and films of questionable quality.

It's that YOU don't care.

At least that's what the box office numbers often tell us.

Transformers - The Dark of the Industry

It comes this week - the latest Transformers film. You know it's going to suck. I know it's going to suck, and yet I can't shake the feeling that in a moment of weakness, even the most cynical viewer is going to rationalize, "Well, if I'm going to see it, I might as well see it on a big screen. And they're really pushing the 3D hard on this, claiming it's nothing like we've ever seen before. I mean, James Cameron is hyping this and that guy's ego is so huge he almost never hypes a project he isn't directly connected to.'

"And hey, AMC has half-price showings before noon. What could it hurt?"

I beg you, don't listen to that voice. I hear it too. There's a part of me that keeps thinking, "Well, I'm probably going to tear this thing a new one, so it would only be responsible journalism to be informed about it. But I'd better see it in 3D just so I'm coming from an informed place if I put the lie to Bay's hype."

And then I remember the $6 (half-price screening, remember) I spent on the previous Transformers film and how halfway through the film, I couldn't remember a less pleasant experience in the theater since a forced viewing of WR's Mysteries of the Organism in film school. And THAT film featured a nearly-ten minute sequence of an artist making a plaster cast of a well-endowed man's erect member. At one point, the scene cuts from an excruciatingly long medium shot of the process to an extreme close-up with an angle that could have only been taken from between the prone subject's knees. The gentleman's urologist likely has never gone in as close for an inspection as this camera did.

And even then, the experience of enduring that sequence was only slightly less uncomfortable than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. At least it was over in ten minutes or so. (Though other parts of this film were still excruciating to get through.)

So as you're tempted to catch a few hours of air conditioning this week, do yourself a favor and remember just how bad the previous Transformers movies were. If you keep going to the theatre, it'll only encourage them to make more.

If you're so motivated, post in the comments your reasons for attending or skipping Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Friday Free-for-All: Transformers dancing to Thriller

This has to be the most random video I've seen this week - Transformers dancing to Thriller.



I'm sure I'm not the only Generation One fan who's bitter that Hod Rod gets to lead the dance number over Optimus Prime.

Friday Free-For-All: Most bad-ass Transformers scene

Since I've been talking about effective and ineffective uses of music this week, I figured it was only appropriate that I post the most badass moment EVER in Transformers lore. The music really sells this moment.



And here's how Boogie Nights appropriated that song:

A Year at the Movies - Part 2

Continuing where we left off yesterday, here's June's films. As with before, all films in red are ones I saw on DVD, and ratings are out of four stars.

June

The Hangover (***) - The trailers didn't inspire a great deal of faith in this being much more than a low budget one-joke comedy, so I skipped out on seeing it the first weekend, and then never had an opportunity to catch it after the word of mouth spread that this was actually pretty good. Just for bringing back the low-budget, R-rated ensemble raunchy comedy as a viable genre, it deserves high marks. There's a point in the second act where the pace starts to lag a bit, but the film weathers that. The premise of three guys trying to piece together what happened at the bachelor party the night before even as they search for the missing groom proves fertile ground for comedy. Verdict: Should have seen it in theatres.

Year One (*) - Wow. I like Jack Black and Michael Cera, so I assumed that the vastly negative reviews couldn't have been all right. When I finally watched it, I couldn't believe it misfired. If I was brought into save this turkey with a rewrite I would have no idea where to begin. Verdict: Glad I waited for DVD

The Proposal (***) - I have come to detest both green card hijinks and the trope of people racing to the airport at the end of the movie in my romantic comedies, so this should have landed right in my crosshairs. However, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds elevate this formula romantic comedy with their fun performances and Betty White steals the movie. It's a decent date film, but I don't feel like I missed out by waiting a few extra months. Verdict: Glad I waited.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (no stars) - Worst Movie of the Year. Period. Two and a half hours of Bay-hem. I'm not sure where to begin with this. There's the ludicrous notion of Sam dying and saving Optimus Prime via a pep talk in robot heaven, the completely dropped storyline that is the inexplicable hottie-who-is-really a Decepticon, the fact that one scene perfectly illustrates Bay's Madonna/whore complex to such a degree that I actually feel sorry for Megan Fox, and the overriding issue that never before has two-and-a-half hours of action felt so boring and directionless. It's amazing to me that co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (with an assist from Ehren Kruger) scripted both this and the summer's best movie in Star Trek. Saddest of all, I expected most of this and went because I figured, "If I'm gonna see it, it might as well be on the big screen." From now on, I think I'll be satisfied with my 42-inch plasma. At least I only had to pay half-price for this one. Verdict: Wish I'd waited for DVD.


July

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (***) - It's been about five months since I saw it and little of the film has stuck with me save for the death of a beloved character. I recall walking out satisfied, though. Verdict: Money well spent.

Funny People (**1/2) - I really wanted to like this one. It features what is probably Adam Sandler's best performance in a long time as a comedian facing his own mortality. It even gives Seth Rogan a chance to stretch himself. Unfortunately, this film is really two movies stitched together and the second film isn't nearly as compelling as the first. The problem with Judd Apatow being so successful is that no one has the clout to save him from his own worst instincts. For more on my thoughts about this, check out this entry. Verdict: Should have waited for DVD.


August

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (no stars) - Scholars will spend years debating which of Summer '09's offerings was truly the worst: this, Transformers, or Wolverine. Like those films, this script was clearly a victim of the Writer's Strike. It's so terrible that it almost crosses into "watchably bad" territory, something that Wolverine and Transformers could only dream of. In the end, I pretty much expected this is what I'd get but I went for two reasons: 1) it was family night at the movies and I wasn't paying, and 2) the presence of Rachel Nichols. (Side note: Nichols is also featured in this summer's best movie, Star Trek, as a green cadet whom Kirk romances. Like the TF scribes, she double-dipped in the best and worst.) For more of my venom about this, go here. Verdict: I didn't even pay and I want my money back. Wish I'd waited for DVD.

District 9 (***) - I'm looking forward to viewing this again to see if it holds up. Despite my nitpicking, I did enjoy this film, which starts as a mockumentary about a man sent to relocate aliens to a new ghetto and turns into something much more. Verdict: Money well spent.


September - I saw nothing in theatres and DVD has yet to catch up to the film's I elected to wait on.

October

Zombieland (***1/2) - It's not without its flaws, as I said here, but Zombieland is a fun ride with enough wit and originality to keep you entertained. If you missed it in theatres, catch it on DVD and don't let anyone ruin the cameo for you. Verdict: Money well spent.

Paranormal Activity (***) - I enjoyed PA, but I don't have much to say about it afterwards. It's greatest strength is probably its atmosphere and the natural performances of the actors. This is the sort of film that needs to be seen opening weekend in a crowded theatre, where the suspense feeds off of the tension of an entire crowd holding its breath. I've got issues with the very final seconds of the film, but damn if it wasn't tense in the moments leading up to that. Verdict: Money well spent.

November

The Blind Side (***) - As I've said before, I've got a hunch I'll find this film forgettable in a few years, but it entertained me while I was there. Verdict: Money well spent.

December

Avatar (***) - I'm left with some mixed feelings over this one. There's no denying Cameron's technical achievements. After a few minutes, one completely accepts his CG aliens as three-dimensional characters. Unfortunately one can't always say the same for his human players as it would be generous to say that Giovanni Ribisi's corporate sleaze and Stephen Lang's Col. Shoot-em-up approach two dimensions. One also wishes that that the story was as innovative as the visuals. The first act is burdened with some clunky exposition and the second act is very reminiscent of Dances with Wolves. The third act is the Ewok climax of Return of the Jedi done right. Unlike in Star Wars, here the concept of an indigenous people defending their homeland from a technologically superior force actually gets pulled off in a plausible manner. The story kept moving despite the long length and I was entertained, but I can't help but feel that the film will seem less remarkable as the technology becomes more commonplace, as opposed to earlier Cameron masterworks like Terminator 2 and Aliens. Verdict: Worth the $12 plus the extra fee for 3-D.

Sherlock Holmes (***) - Robert Downey Jr. is the reason to see this reinvention of Sherlock Holmes, as his performance elevates a script that's (understandably, to a degree) overburdened with exposition. The trap one can fall into when writing Holmes is that his long monologues of deductive reasoning very quickly can turn into on-the-nose exposition. In the hands of a lesser actor, two hours of this would have been hard to take. Another weakness is that since obviously the filmmakers aren't going to mix a Holmes movie with a vampire concept, it's clear from the start that the supernatural elements are a feint to be eventually debunked. Had the film taken the approach that Holmes didn't believe a word of this rubbish either, then it might have worked to show the story through his eyes with both him and the audience aware that the real mystery is what the supernatural elements are meant to hide. For me, it wasn't fully successful and also suffers from a rather unwritten role for Rachel McAdams that turns out to be little more than a feature-length tease for the next picture. Still, Downey's on a hot streak and is enough to redeem this film's faults. I wouldn't recommend anyone take any lessons in scripting from this film, but I wouldn't tell you to stay away either. Verdict: Worth the $12

So the tally comes to:

Worth the $12 - 14
Money well saved/Glad I waited for DVD - 9
Wish I waited for DVD - 6
Should have seen in theatres - 2

So I saw 20 films in the theatre and only wanted my money back for just over a quarter of them. On top of that, of the 11 movies I saw on DVD, only 2 of them were good enough that I wished I hadn't waited. That means nearly 80% of the time my instincts were right about what was so bad that it couldn't wait 4 months and save $12. On top of that, most of those movies I saw in the theatre and wanted my money back for were ones I was sure would be bad when I went in.

The long and the short of it is, I think I'm going to be seeing a lot more of 2010's films on DVD than on the big screen, at least so long as the quality of the offerings remains the same. In the meantime, I still have several 2009 movies I'm waiting to grab on DVD. A look at my Netflix queue reveals the following films should be reaching my Blu-Ray player in the next few months:

Inglorious Basterds
Extract
The Hurt Locker
The Final Destination
Terminator Salvation
Coraline
This is It
Jennifer's Body
Sorority Row
The Stepfather
Couples Retreat
The Invention of Lying
The Informant!
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Where the Wild Things Are
2012
500 Days of Summer
The Time Traveler's Wife

I will be stunned if more than two of those earn the "Wish I'd seen it in Theatres" ranking.

G.I. Joe and the Apocalypse

Since I started this blog, I've had an unofficial policy about not spoiling recent movies. I'm aware that not everyone sees movies the first weekend they're out, and I do my best not to ruin too many surprises for me readers when describing them. Of course, this sometimes leads to situations like after I saw My Bloody Valentine, where I sat on a column with heavy spoilers for so long that it was no longer relevant.

However in the case of last weekend's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the movie is so utterly terrible that it's impossible to "spoil" it. It would be like saying that it "spoils" the Zapruder film if I warned you ahead of time it featured footage of President Kennedy's murder. No... it's worse than that. It would be like saying I "spoiled" Two Girls, One Cup if I warned you what you'd find by clicking that particular video link.

(Sidebar: Hi Mom! Thanks for reading. Please do NOT Google "Two Girls, One Cup" and definitely make no attempt to seek out the video. And I don't mean this in a joking, "Ha ha, you don't want to see this" kind of way. Trust me, you REALLY don't want to see this.)

I'd revert to popular internet vernacular and call this film an "abortion" but that would be an insult to Dilation & Curettage. This was apparently "written" during the writer's strike and it really, really shows. I'm at a loss where to begin. For me, the utter nadir is when our heroes come across one of the dead bad guys and conduct a rather unusual interrogation. Since they can't question a dead man, they pull out two large probes, stab them (imprecisely, I might add) into the man's cranium and then somehow are able to use this to probe his recent memories. The explanation offered is that the brain takes longer to die than the rest of the body, which... do I really need to go into all the reasons why that's dumb?

It's lazy exposition at its worst. The script needs the characters to get somewhere, but there's no plausible and easy way to do it. This is hack writing designed to take the story from A to B. Nothing more. It's the sort of moronic work that can earn a script a PASS all on its own.

There's virtually no character to speak of, made worse by the fact that cinematic terrorist Stephen Sommers (he has Van Helsing, The Scorpion King AND Deep Rising on his resume, what would you call him?) has stocked the film with some of dinner theatre's finest waiters. Every character is a one-dimensional action figure. Some were cast for their figures, some for their ability to do action, and I'm guessing others like Dennis Quaid and that guy from Oz whose name I can't spell were some how duped into the production by being told it was a PSA for the military. But seeing as how even the good actors in this movie turned in bad performances, I'm going to just blame the director and the script. So Sienna Miller gets a pass from me... this time.

I will say this. The President of the United States is played by Jonathan Pryce. You know, that British guy who used to do the Infiniti commercials? And no, he makes no attempt to put on an American accent. There should have been at least a throwaway line about Faux News demanding to see President Infiniti's birth certificate.

I texted my friend after I saw the film, calling it "Team America without the marionettes and the irony." By coincidence, I had just rewatched Team America last weekend, and I figured that comparison came to mind mostly because of that fact - until I saw at least a half-dozen review that made a similar point. Everything Team America makes fun of is in here. The montages, the ridiculously manufactured "tension" between the new guys on the team and the older members, the ludicrous bad guy who's impossible to take seriously due to his lame outfit and horribly hissed dialogue. Honestly, I've seen serials from the '40s with more credible villains.

The bad guy's motivations are weak and all over the map. Destro essentially wants to sell arms to two sides by developing tech for the America military, then stealing it and using that nanotech to destroy Paris because.... you know... I'm not really sure what his goal is. It has some to do with taking over the world and using that same tech to breed armies of totally loyal soldiers. There's also the fact that by the end of the movie, we're shown that this main attack was all a distraction so that Destro and Cobra could replace the President with a lookalike. All of this could have been interesting, but all these points are thrown into the plot in such a haphazard fashion that there's no coherence to the big picture. Try to explain the plot afterwards and you'll come up with all sorts of loose threads.

Take the Baroness for instance. She's Duke's former fiancee, turned to the bad guys after blaming Duke for getting her brother killed while on a mission. However, as we find out, her brother survived and became Cobra - who then turned around and used his nanoprobes to brainwash her to become the evil Baroness. There's no real justification for why Cobra would want to mess with his own sister's head and turn her evil. It's writer fiat so that Duke can have the angst of going up against an old flame, and so the Baroness can fight through her programming and have a moment of redemption.

I never watched the G.I. Joe cartoon, but given the little information about it I know, I bet that some fans are freaking out about all the liberties taken. Somewhere, I'm sure there's a blog titled "G.I. Joe Raped My Childhood" which might lead one to believe that the bad internet reviews are just coming from unbalanced fans watching the film through nostalgia colored glasses. I'm not one of those, and I'd never say that a movie "raped" my childhood even if I was. I think that's a stupid statement because it's not like the original shows ceased to exist the moment this movie came into being. Also, "jokes" like that tend to trivialize rape, and rape is never funny. Unless it's happening to Rush Limbaugh. Then it's hilarious.

(For those of you keeping score, rape is no laughing matter, but abortion jokes are hilarous. And yes, this is about the point where my trusty assistant Al "What are YOU doing here" Borland would hold up a sign and tell you to address your hate mail to Tim Taylor in care of Tool Time.)

In any event, my point is that this isn't a bad movie because it makes changes to the source material - it's a bad film PERIOD. It's got a lousy script, bad directing and CG so poorly integrated that I thought I was watching unfinished shots at several points. Yet it made $56 million this weekend. Not as huge as some other juggernauts this summer, but still, that's a lot of suckers that got taken for their money. It's big enough that unless this film drops off in a huge way next weekend, nothing will happen to stem the tide of toy, comic book, and game adaptations.

Take Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's the only movie I've seen this year to rival G.I. Joe for the title of worst film of the year. (And I've already admitted to seeing My Bloody Valentine in this column so chew on that nugget a while.) Terrible writing, terrible acting, a plot that barely holds together, a running time over two and a half hours and a whole lot of explosions - and it's the biggest film of the year! It's made over $800 million worldwide. True, action always travels well because there's less dialogue to be dubbed, but even just domestically it's made nearly $400 million!

How could this be? It can't be ALL teenage boys going to ogle Megan Fox in between explosions. (And besides, with the internet obsessively covering all things Megan Fox, surely these horny boys could find much more provocative pics and video of Miss Fox and, ahem, "enjoy" them in the privacy of their own home.) I have a hunch that when Megan Fox's Jennifer's Body comes out soon, it'll be lucky to do a quarter of Transformers' box office. It can't be the running time - teens have short attention spans and hate long movies. It can't be the story because.... there isn't one. And if visual effects alone drew a crowd, Watchmen would have been a much bigger hit.

What does that leave? Easy - brand recognition. Studios buy projects with pre-awareness in the market, such as comic books, novels, remakes of other films. There's no originality because movie marketing is based on getting people into the theatres by showing them exactly what they will get. Notice how trailers reveal 90% of the movie's plot these days? That's because studies have apparently shown that viewers respond better to trailers that tell them everything. It's all about giving the audience exactly what they know and expect.

Transformers wasn't bought because Paramount and Dreamworks were banking on all the hard-core fans of the toys and cartoons who were now 20 years older. They bought it because people know what Transformers is. This is the same thinking that has led to Candyland and Viewmaster to be developed as projects. Audiences truly are about to get the entertainment they deserve.

At the moment, original ideas are scarce in Hollywood and that has led to a bleak spec market. Take heart, readers, everything happens in cycles. The streak can't last forever, and anyone who thinks that Viewmaster is going to lead to an interesting movie, let alone a hit movie, is seriously delusional. The bubble will burst and the audiences will soon be hungry for fresh ideas, not reheated leftovers. When that happens, the market will pick up again and the smart writers will be ready for that with fresh scripts and bold new ideas.

Here is what we, as writers, need to do to bring about that golden age. First, we have to stop seeing this crap. We need a full-on boycott of all these regurgitated leftovers. Then, we need to push ourselves and write material so original and innovative that it can't NOT be sold. If we're lucky, these projects will find an audience and the pack mentality that drives Hollywood will soon be chasing original ideas and not ghosts from the 80s.

Forgive the rant, but seeing the crap that passes for entertainment (and especially the fact that it's inexplicably popular and profitable) really has me concerned for the future of film.