You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction.’ It is a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.
Here is all you need to know about Transformers: Age of Extinction:You Don’t Have To See It.
I’m pretty sure that’s not in the Bible.
The fourth installment of the Transformers movie franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction(2014), dropped this Friday, June 27. It has done well at the box office, becoming the first film this year to break $100 million in its opening weekend, and dwarfing the returns of competitors like 22 Jump Street (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014). Directed by Michael Bay (again) and written (such as it is) by Ehren Kruger, it features Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, the heroically hunky everyman hero. Shia LeBeouf was unavailable, as lately he has been fully occupied with losing his shit.
Yeah, the critics don’t seem to like the movie very much – it’s currently coming in at 17 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest rating yet for a Transformers film. I didn’t like it, either. In fact, I hatedhatedhated it, for all the reasons that every other critic mentions. Very original, I know. Actually, my original angle for this review, originally, was to gripe about the film’s lack of originality. You see, it’s very important to me that as many people as possible know that I listen to NPR while driving my Subaru to the farmer’s market, and I was going to tie in my theme with the subject of the latest TED Radio Hour episode, What is Original. However, maybe I’m maturing as a critic, because I’ve concluded that it’s just not fair to expect a film like Transformers (2014) to be original. I mean, it was loud, senseless, clunky, and almost THREE HOURS LONG. But, as Stephanie Palmer wrote recently, summer blockbusters aren’t usually intended to be original. Rather, they’re designed to minimize risk and maximize profit. Fair enough.
I also thought about making the best out of it, as Charlie Jane Anders does in her review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2011). After all, when life gives you poop, make poopjuice, right? No. Nope, in fact. It doesn’t matter that this is an action figure movie designed to appeal to adolescent males, I just can’t muster the good will to hold my nose, wink, and keep my tongue in cheek.
You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate Transformers: AOE. It’s a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.
By vulgarity, I don’t mean expletives, I mean excessive tastelessness. Shiny, five gallon buckets of Dom Pérignon tastelessness. Bay is a master of landscape cinematography, and it shows since almost every shot in the movie is a landscape onto which a CGI robot will be projected. For example, after the prologue (dinosaurs), we’re introduced to Yeager. He’s just a regular guy – he drives a rusty blue pickup, he’s dirty, he wears tight T-shirts (yeah, his biceps are dreamy), and he cares about his teenage daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz). He’s also a single dad and a small businessman, struggling to make ends meet with his barn-based cassette tape and film projector repair shop/ROBOTICS ENGINEERING LAB. While establishing Yeager’s down home bonifides and cat-saving prowess, Bay treats us to endless shots of cornfields, soybean fields, and field fields. I haven’t seen so much lingering on a cornfield since Field of Dreams (1989) mated with Children of the Corn (1984).
Similarily, the viewer endures an excess of shallow, inarticulate references to the concerns of the day. Posters and billboards in the background allude to our national discussion of immigration policy, while mean Kelsey Grammer and his très chic CIA deathsquad reflect our trepidations about government surveillance.
Violence certainly has a place in storytelling but, like its predecessors, Tranformers (2014) has an excess of violence. Mr. Bay, where is the blood? We see countless buildings ravaged by rockets and errant robots, but where are the human bodies falling from the 55th story, blown out or jumping to escape the flames? Likewise, those same rockets strike countless vehicles, robots slice cars in half, space magnets lift tour buses half a mile into the air only to drop onto elevated trains full of commuters. I’m guessing Paramount couldn’t afford to break off some of that $210 million budget to cast a few hundred thousand dead bystanders. To be fair, I could ask that same question of Godzilla (2014) or Pacific Rim (2013)(and I do).
Was that one of those driverless Google cars?
It’s not like this so-called family film shirked from depicting violence and death entirely. In one disturbing scene, a government agent holds a gun to Tessa’s head while she pleads for her life as Cade looks on, helpless; later, we see Cade’s affable best friend Lucas (T. J. Miller) burned to death, leaving an obscene smoldering effigy that Cade and Tessa…absolutely do not react to. Maybe they’re just like the film’s young audience as the exit the theatre – numb to death.
Bay doesn’t just excel at bloodless mass murder or at getting actors to stare skyward at imaginary robots, he’s also good at casual racist caricature. Early on, our white male protagonist has to defend his home from a real estate agent who is not a black woman who is also large, she’s a Fat Sassy Black Woman. Later we’re reacquainted with Brains, a small robot with a cybernetic afro and dialogue co-opted from a minstrel show. We also see Orientalist cliches, including Every Asian Knows Martial Arts and a Wise (Robot) Samurai.
While the film passes the letter of the Bechel Test, women don’t fare well, either. Bay’s camera often lingers on the female character’s bodies. Lucas’ introductory scene begins with his verbal sexual harassment of two women crossing the street separating him from Yeager. This harassment goes unrebuffed by Wahlberg’s character. Boys will be boys, I guess.
Yep, that looks about right.
Sophia Myles plays a geologist, Darcy Tirrel; while she’s the first main character to be introduced, she spends the remainder of the film playing The Watson for Stanley Tucci’s Steve Jobs character, Joshua Joyce, to explain Transformer tech to. During the climatic battle (I think it was the climatic battle, it’s kinda hard to tell), she marks Joyce’s development (now he’s a friendly capitalist!), saying “I’m proud of you.”
Bingbing Li plays Su Yueming, Joyce’s Chinese attaché. She wears tight pantsuits, knows Kung-Fu, and can drive a motorcycle. While initially she rebuffs his creepy-boss advances, she relents in the end and they sunset into the credits.
Tessa exists a perpetual protectorate for Yeager. For example, an hour and a half, i.e., midway, through the film, Yeager boards an alien prison ship to rescue her. While Tessa is hiding from her captors, a masculine green alien prisoner wraps a slimy green tongue around her bare leg. As the tongue gets longer and longer, it starts to reach for her genitals. I was reminded of the infamous tree rape scene in Evil Dead (1981).
Buy a Chevy.
As Rebecca Phale at The Mary Sue notes, the most disturbingly misogynistic scene is also the most subtle. On the aforementioned prison ship, Hound, a horribly erratic and violent Autobot voiced by John Goodman, murders an alien – essentially, a walking vagina dentata with an unfortunate sniffle – because it is “too ugly to live.” He punctuates the act by calling the corpse a “bitch.”
Buy a Chevy!
And so on. I intended to discuss the plot, but there wasn’t one. I was going to use phrasing like “soul crushing,” but I will decline in the interest of originality. How about “a long, loud, and dreary exercise in post-postmodern nihilism,” has that been taken? I will say that you, reader, are free to not see this movie. By all means, see a summer blockbuster, but hold out for one that shows more respect for women, minorities, and your ears.
Buy a Chevy, goddammit!
OK Mr. Bay, I’m done, I’m broken, just leave me alone and I’ll buy a fucking million pack of Bud Light.
For a while on my blog, I had the pleasure of highlighting various men who were espousing impressive feminist rhetoric in the Hollywood landscape. Today, I do not have that pleasure. Actor Shia LeBeouf, who worked on the Michael Bay franchise, Transformers, with Megan Fox, spoke to L. A. Times about how the vibe on the set of the newest Transformers is different and why. The reason is because Megan’s replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, doesn’t have a problem with Michael Bay being a total douchebag.
This is the quote:
Huntington-Whiteley is equipped for Bay’s brusque shooting style in a way that Fox (who in the media likened her director’s on-set behavior to Napoleon and Hitler) was not, according to LaBeouf.
“Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women,” LaBeouf said. “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There’s no time for [LaBeouf assumes a gentle voice] ‘I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.’”
Huntington-Whiteley, on the other hand, must have arched her back just right when Bay shot her in a Victoria’s Secret ad in 2009, because months after Fox’s trash-talking peaked, the director cut the actress’ character, Mikaela Banes, from the third Transformers movie and replaced her with the newcomer.
“Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background, and she’s comfortable with it, so she can get down with Mike’s way of working and it makes the whole set vibe very different,” LaBeouf said.
First of all, it’s hilariously stupid that Shia equates feminist thinking with the Spice Girls. It’s a braindead and belittling comparison. Second of all, where it says “woman-empowerment [stuff],” I’m guessing the magazine redacted a more offending word — shit or bullshit. I wish they hadn’t, because it would have been a more honest reflection of Shia’s true feelings.
It’s surprising that Fox never trashed him too, given his apparent contempt for the concept of female empowerment. “It’s summer. It’s Michael Bay’s style.” So…during the summer and when around Michael Bay women should just throw out their copies of The Feminine Mystique and do their best pouty lip? You can have a sexy character without being degrading to the actress. I’m guessing the vibe on Jennifer’s Body and Jonah Hex, both films where Fox plays a sexy vixen, was pretty different too, different in that she wasn’t treated like another slice of ham on the directors Lazy Susan.
Where Shia says there is no time for “fluff” and Bay “lacks tact,” what he probably means is, Bay says things like, “Megan, in this scene I want you to stick your tits and ass out,” then she would get pissed off, tension would arise on the set, and everyone would blame Fox. That’s my guess. While I’m sure that type of “direction” wasn’t written into the script, she must have had an inkling of Bay’s “lasciviousness.”
It’s been reported far and wide and openly admitted to that Michael Bay made Megan Fox wash his Ferrari in her bikini while he video taped her as part of her “audition.” That’s not great for Fox, but big money and big career opportunities don’t come around often. This is what makes Hollywood a complicated place for some women. Where do you draw the line? Obviously, Megan Fox had enough. But that’s rarely the way it’s framed in media.
This article is claiming that Megan Fox was “cut” from the film because she “trash-talked” her boss. It sounds more to me like Megan Fox walked away from Transformers because she was sick of her sexist boss. Most media outlets want to frame her situation in a way that makes it look like “see what happens little girls when you back talk”. When in reality, she spoke out against a man known for offending the women he works with and basically for being a sleazy, power-happy misogynist.
Would it be a stretch to call Megan Fox a trailblazer? She really took a beating from the media, who’s response to her unabashed honesty was to call her dumb and difficult.
Megan Fox deserves props if she really walked away from Transformers, and I respect her for speaking out about her boss, although, I think publicly trashing people who you plan to keep relationships with (your boss) is not the best approach. If she had worded it more carefully in interviews, it could have had a very different impact. For instance, she could have talked about the dynamic between playing a sexy character and how her director takes liberties with her because of that. And how it’s complicated to be a pin up girl, but to also want to be treated like a full human…or something along those lines. But there is no play book on “How To Deal With a Sexist Boss While Working in the Public Eye.”
She has, however, expressed ideas similar to this that rarely get reported on. One of my favorites is when she was discussing sexism in Hollywood:
“I’ve worked with people who have been difficult to work with, but have been male, and there is never a complaint made about them. There is never an issue made about them. I have friends who are actresses, who if they go to work one day and they show up on set and they don’t have a smile on their face they’re tagged a bitch and that is really unfortunate. But I can’t single-handedly change that process, but I’m trying.“
With that said, Megan Fox is in a upcoming movie calledFriends With KidsstarringJon Hammand Kristen Wiig! I can’t wait.
“It’s a wad of chaos puked onto the big screen, an arbitrary collection of explosions and machismo posturing.” –David Cornelius, eFilmCritic.com
“Will insult your intelligence, hurt your eyes, and offend your sense of decency until you worry that your skull might explode while your brain trickles right out of your ears.” –Tricia Olszewski, Washington City Paper
“A perfectly dreadful sequel that’s the filmic equivalent of a 150-minute waterboarding session.”
–Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing
“Put in your earplugs and grab the aspirin. Enjoyable for the [sic] only the easiest to please 10-year-old boys; this deafening, tiresome epic is a skull-splitting hot mess for everyone else.”
–Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com
And, my personal favorite: “Only an a*****e could have made this film.” –Rob Humanick, House Next Door
I share these snippets to illustrate, if you weren’t already aware, that this movie was clearly made for, and marketed to, young fanboys who like to watch shit blow up. But what else do they like to see? If you guessed “Megan Fox dry-humping a motorcycle,” you are correct.
In a recent interview, Fox told reporters, “Women in movies, in general, are sexy—especially in Michael’s movies. And if you want to make movies that people want to see, that’s part of it. That’s part of the formula.”
The director, Michael Bay, also chimed in. Referencing the shot of Fox sprawled across a motorcycle in hot pants and biker boots, he says, “We got that first shot out of the way, just to get it out for the young boys … and moved on.”
So, according to Fox (and Bay), making movies people want to see entails objectifying and exploiting women. And what’s worse, Fox goes on to say that making these Transformer films and gaining so much exposure (for her hotness) has opened up many doors for her—she’ll soon star in one film opposite John Malkovich and another film penned by Diablo Cody.
This rhetoric reminds me an awful lot of other excuses actresses have made for the roles they choose. Katherine Heigl famously called Knocked Up a sexist film, and then went on to star in a slew of women-friendlier movies, such as The Ugly Truth and 27 Dresses.
And Elizabeth Banks often finds herself in the same predicament: “‘You can go be in a female-driven indie and make two cents and maybe get an Independent Spirit Award, but then you can’t pay your car lease,'” she says. “‘So Vince Vaughn makes movies, he needs a girl to be in it with him, it might be me.'”
I understand and sympathize with actresses in today’s Hollywood climate. Studios continue to argue that actresses can’t open movies, that any successful women-centered film (Sex & the City, Mamma Mia!) is merely a fluke, and that they don’t find it profitable enough to continue greenlighting movies that exclusively focus on women.
I get that it’s a rough climate out there for young actresses especially, but I’m not exactly sure what the solution is. We need more women filmmakers, obviously. And we especially need women audiences to stop seeing every single ridiculous incarnation of The Proposal and He’s Just Not That Into You. While I don’t want to play into the blame-the-victim ideology, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for these actresses to take themselves a little more seriously as actresses and a little less seriously as male fantasies.
Making blatantly misogynistic films clearly pays the bills for them, but at what cost to women as a whole?
Despite its abysmal reviews,