Transformers: Dark of the Moon - gross, overfed and offensive

Rating: Null/10 (16 July 2011)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon – another piece of evidence in the trial of Michael Bay. A while ago I reviewed the previous Transformers movie, and I suggested that I was discomforted by Bay's sexual politics – his slightly unpleasant juxtaposing of Megan Fox's arse with shiny cars and metallic technology. Bay has skilfully avoided this in the third film of the trilogy by sacking Fox. Instead, he unpleasantly juxtaposes newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whitely arse with machinery. Does this help? No – instead Bay comes out of directing this film looking like a cross between a teenage boy and a fetishistic sex offender. And that's just the start of why I find Bay offensive...
The film concerns the discovery in 1969 of an Autobot (good Transformers) spaceship on the dark side of the moon. Inside the spaceship lies Septimus Prime, the legendary former leader of the Autobots, and a collection of mysterious columns. The Decepticons (nasty Transformers) use the columns to revive their flagging forces and, having apparently dispatched the last remaining Autobots, plot to enslave the human race.
Good points? Not many – the special effects are satisfying, particularly the mechanical Transformers. There is a degree of Top Gun pleasure in seeing explosions and militaristic technology and if you don't appreciate this then you find yourself appreciating the loving, if adolescent, care and attention Bay has lavished on his presentation of these elements. There is also something compelling about the tying in of the space race with the Transformer mythos – though this, as I will later suggest, is also taken too far and tips over into offensiveness. To give Bay his due – there is more plot in this movie than in the previous two combined.
Bad points? Unfortunately I have a limit on my website server that prevents me from listing all of the bad points of this movie – so I might have to summarise the main ones...
First – the aforementioned sexual politics. This is nothing new – the erosion of the distinction between technology and sex has been a staple of the action movie and it even enhances some movies. Michael Bay uses it bluntly however. He pans provocatively and lingeringly up the long legs of Huntington-Whitely then allows the camera to dwell with as much attention on the lines of a sports car. When used critically or even ironically these kinds of shots can be interesting – but here the enthusiastic fusion of sex and flesh with machinery and metal is just unsettling. When combined with Bay's unalloyed regard for the American armed forces it becomes worrying.
Second – the conspiracy plot. In some ways this makes the movie – the moon landing is a rich source of myth and paranoid narratives – but bay takes it too far. He suggests that the whole space race was a military conspiracy, depicting presidents, astronauts, cosmonauts, NASA administrators as complicit in the deception - he goes so far as to engages the real Buzz Aldrin to play himself. I think it's the scale of Bay's proposed conspiracy that is uncomfortable coupled with a clear lack of its implications. The space race, whilst a component of the Cold War, has always had an idealistic aura much like the climbing of mountains. To suggest, albeit in the context of a fantasy movie, that the space race was a part of a wider, covert military exercise is analogous to his combining technology with sex – the act of juxtaposition is not uncommon, but the way Bay does it makes it offensive.
Third – the battle scenes are interminably long and indistinct. For the casual viewer the sight of one machine fighting another is bound to be confusing – the sight of one machine fighting another for half-an-hour is enough to give you a headache. But again I felt uncomfortable. The final battle, taking place as it does in central Chicago, seems to draw a great deal of imagery from 9/11 – building toppling, people falling, panic, dust, shots of office paraphernalia tumbling from sky-scrapers. Again this is not unusual – but Bay frames these scenes in a prurient, almost salacious way. When he shows a man falling from a building he sticks with him almost to the end. The 3D technology give the viewer a real sense of what it may have been like to fall from the World Trade Centre – but it is tied up in a vision of fantasy spectacle that is just wrong. And as my wife noted – despite all this carnage, Rosie Huntington-Whitely still found time to change her outfit three times.
Amongst all this sex, conspiracy, militaristic posing and inappropriate nods to 9/11, the worst aspect of the movie must surely be that for all the money spent and for all the technology used, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is rather boring. Aside from the traditionally eccentric displays from Johns Malkovich and Turturro, the rest of the cast is bland and unengaging. The leads Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whitely act like they know they're in an action movie and fail to wring and chemistry or believability out of their performances. With Huntington-Whitely this is forgivable as it is her first proper role – with LaBeouf this is simply another performance that falls flat.
So apart from the fact that I find Michael Bay mildly offensive and Shia LaBeouf boring; apart from the fact I found the combination of technology and sex distasteful and the conspiracy narrative to be degrading; apart from the fact that I somehow found the battle scenes dull and perversely distasteful – I'd recommend you to go and watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
But don't forget your sleeping pills, blindfold and earplugs.