Without Michael Bay, Transformers Is No Longer the Anti-Marvel – The American Spectator

There’s a new Transformers movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Although reviewers diverge on the specifics, they generally agree that it sucks.

To some, Pete Davidson — the voice of Mirage — is “hilarious” and doing what “may be his best work ever,” while others find his wise-cracking “awful.” All note the increased diversity of the human cast, although whether these actors have a “flesh-and-blood vitality” or “very little life” depends on who you read. One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that this is definitely not a Michael Bay Transformers film, and, for that, I grieve.

Bay’s five Transformers films, released between 2007 and 2017, were not great movies, but they played a valuable role in our Marvel-saturated filmscape: Their excesses and ridiculousness helped illustrate how absurd our mainstream blockbusters are. They functioned as Marvel satire. And as we stare down Captain America 4 and Avengers 5, I will miss Bay’s counterbalance. Rise of the Beasts fails because it tries to split the difference between the human-centric, Travis Knight–helmed Bumblebee and the metal-combat orgies of Bay’s work — and, in so doing, disappoints all.

Bay once said, “I make movies for teenage boys.” In many ways, that’s obvious: There are beautiful women, fast cars, wild action sequences, and sophomoric jokes. (John Turturro, while chasing a pyramid-eating Transformer, once exclaimed, “I am directly below the enemy’s scrotum.”) Bay’s films are refreshingly honest because they take the common elements of blockbusters — leads with sex appeal, product placement, endless sequels, plot incoherence — and, rather than try to disguise them or keep an ironic distance, revel in the grotesquerie of it all. 

So, while Marvel asks us to pretend that Scarlett Johansson wears skintight leather as a natural costume choice for a strong, independent woman, Bay has Megan Fox leaning on a car making double entendres about “going faster.” Ant-Man shills for Heineken while Loki does a Hyundai ad, but Mark Wahlberg chugs a Bud Light during a movie that is effectively one long car ad.

Marvel pretends that its time travel and multiverse are scientifically sound, but with each new timeline and archenemy, it’s becoming clear that the franchise will milk us for all we’re worth. Bay never stops to explain his inconsistencies. Over five films, the human cast is shuffled with hardly a word, Transformers keep being resurrected, and each film adds a new time Transformers intersected human history. By the fifth, a Transformers dragon fights alongside King Arthur, and Bumblebee fights Nazis.

Marvel acts as though it’s telling human stories on a big canvas, but it is the farm scenes, the “human moments,” that feel out of place. Bay unabashedly privileges outrageous action sequences. That’s how we end up with Optimus Prime taming and riding a metal T. rex into battle like a horse. The plotting is incidental to making the action sequences of your dreams.

But for all the mind-numbing, literally robotic action of Transformers — which I wholly acknowledge — the films retain Bay’s auteur style and, thus, reveal glimpses of his humanity. By contrast, Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, oversees movies that are too market-driven, audience-tested, and formulaic to ever move, surprise, or fascinate their audiences. They feign artistic aspiration, but they lack spontaneity and personal flair.

This trend of homogenizing, soulless culture driven by profits rather than creativity goes far beyond action movies. As Alex Murrell argued recently, in many industries, everything looks the same: Our cars are monochromatic with identical designs, the blocky mid-rises follow you wherever you go, and everyone wants an “Instagram Face” like Kim Kardashian. Efficiency is achieved — but at the cost of individuality, beauty, and character. Marvel is good business, but Bay offers good art in the sense that his films reward closer attention.

Bay’s contradictions and complexities can surprise you. His view of women seems shallow, but he has Rachael Taylor playing a female STEM whiz and Laura Haddock cast as a highly credentialed professor dragging along Mark Wahlberg, a wannabe inventor. The dialogue can seem cut and dried, but then you get something wacky: “On this planet, we have a saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’” “I also have a saying, ‘I don’t care.’”

One reviewer for the Washington Post joked that if your reading skills are good enough to finish his review, then you aren’t the Transformers’ target audience. To my mind, though, it takes some maturity to admit that you just want to see Optimus Prime duel with one arm against Megatron and Sentinel Prime, and anything more than that is gravy. Bay’s films may not have been great cinema, but their unironic outrageousness made life in our cynical, superhero-filled world bearable. As Joni Mitchell put it, “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.” 

Ben Christenson writes from Virginia, where he lives with his family and pet menagerie.