Transformers: Ostatni Rycerz

Under Michael Bay’s direction, Transformers has gradually crystallised into a supremely atypical contribution to the current line of franchise blockbusters. All of the other films based on comic books or toys take heed to offer adult fans a spectacle that, though childish at its core, is supposed to give the impression of being grown-up and serious in its overall execution (from the screenplays and casting to the style of promotion). Conversely, Bay serves up the exact opposite – ultra-unserious, openly irreverent and ridiculously overblown spectacles packed with affectation and kitsch. Even though this is indeed largely due to his bombastic, egomaniacal and macho nature, this is not some sort of desecration of the original franchise’s original form, but rather a faithful return to its roots and a reminder of what those who were weaned on the original series no longer want to admit. While the comic-book producers are rewriting history with new reboots that erase all of the inadequate aspects of the earlier incarnations, Bay’s Transformers seems to make a point of accentuating all of the haphazardness, degeneracy and problematic aspects of the 1980s that the nerds have already blissfully erased from their memory. But that’s actually how Transformers used to be. Only the question remains of whether Bay’s grasp of the franchise, which accentuates all of those residual ills, represents continuity with conscious subversiveness or whether Bay simply and fundamentally personifies them by coincidence. ____ There has been much discussion about how unfortunate acting icons and prominent character actors, like Sir Anthony Hopkins in this case, are forced to demean themselves (in return for a generous payday) in Transformers movies by cartoonishly making faces and delivering absurd monologues. That fits beautifully into the image of Bay as a desecrator of all values, but again, we can also see this as part of the franchise’s heritage. Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles took turns at the microphone for the first animated feature, while giant robots danced to Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid” and the movie’s most epic moment was underscored by Stan Bush’s cheesy rocker “The Touch”. ___ Bay can be seen as both a mainstream John Waters and a Hollywood version of Czech trashmaker Zdeněk Troška – a perverted admirer of conventional vulgarity and consumerist gluttony, but also a self-proclaimed promoter of traditional values. As in Troška’s case, in Bay’s works the authorities and scientists take the form of hysterically incompetent jacks-in-the-box, while the arrogant earthy heroes seemingly save everything, but are also portrayed as equally ridiculous, aggressive and sociopathic characters who treat each other with disdain. We associate Bay’s films with rampant ridiculousness, but are executed with an almost obsessive degree of craftsmanship. It’s thus all the more surprising that the coarseness and vulgarity of the preceding films is not present this time, at least not in such an obvious form. This surely has something to do with the fact that, for the first time, the screenwriting has caught up with, or even surpassed, Bay himself. From one instalment to the next, the series goes more against the grain and becomes gaudier and more absurd. Previously, it was enough for Bay to employ his own whims – whether shots of the Transformer’s testicles, the appendage reaching around the car and hitting a soldier in the face, or the malevolent objectification of Megan Fox in the first film, which successfully degrades the only positively depicted and active character in the whole series simply by how she’s captured on camera and how the other characters react to her. This time, however, the screenplay finally cast off the shackles and comes up with a phantasmagorical alternate history of the Transformers that is so wonderfully boorish that not even Bay can vulgarise it any further. Thanks to the screenplay, the film breaks away from the run-of-the-mill globetrotting nature of blockbusters, where photogenic exotic locations are supposed to bring the desired wow factor to the action. Instead of moving through space, it goes against the flow of time and, what’s more, does so without the shackles of reality and causality. Whereas Avengers: Endgame used this technique to express sentimental reverence, Transformers sets out like Monty Python to disparage (Stanley Tucci as the overwrought Merlin is extremely reminiscent of John Cleese’s acting performances). Paradoxically – judging by the reactions – viewers are willing to celebrate Tarantino’s playing around with historical figures and periods and to have fun with alternate histories like Iron Sky and even Wonder Woman, but for some reason they unreasonably demand realism and seriousness from Bay and his movies about giant robots financed by a toy company. ___ Under Bay’s direction, the ultimate perverse power of the blockbuster emerges in a work that devours itself to the point of being execrable. Except that Bay’s fifth Transformers is no mushy turd, but rather a turd with flawless structure, density and shape. Yes, it’s overblown, bombastic, megalomaniacal and silly, but thanks to that and the extent of those essential qualities, it is also perfect and beautiful. As it explosively blasts through the boundaries of corporate product, the fifth Transformers is the most unrestrained and, at its core, the most original blockbuster of the new millennium. Though there is some truth in the notion that Michael Bay has only been making variations of the same model throughout his career, we see in the level of craftsmanship of the scenes here that he is still stratifying his experiences while outdoing himself with new challenges. Much has been said and written about Bay’s editing and camera compositions, but little is made of the fact that, despite the tremendous amount of CGI, he creates the bulk of the action on set, thanks to which his action scenes have such an amazing physical dimension and tremendous wow effect. ___ Michael Bay is actually the anti-Nolan. While the creator of Inception and Tenet offers viewers intellectual blockbusters in which the spectacle is both sensual and cerebral, Bay delivers an overwhelming, bombastic overload of polished and ambitiously executed stupidity, shallowness, kitsch and pathos. The fifth Transformers completely bypasses the viewers’ rationality and values and aims straight for the depths of the unconscious to absolutely satisfy their needs with maximum degeneracy and gluttony. Bay serves us pure blockbuster bacchanalia. (09.11.2020) (mniej) (więcej)

“I don’t know what you’re smoking in that pipe, man.” That's exactly what I missed in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur – a three-headed robodragon! Michael Bay has never known moderation, nor has he ever had any reverence for narrative logic or respect for the limits of good taste, but he ostentatiously mocks them only in The Last Knight. However, he only rarely attempts to mask the imbecility of his ideas with self-parodic exaggeration and a knowing wink at the viewer. It is not enough to show him a drunken medieval wizard. He has to make him say something along the lines of like “I’m drunk” and turn up the bottle. One of the few hints of self-awareness is Cade’s remark about the striptease outfit worn by Viviane Wembly (a name straight out of a Moore-era Bond film), a holder of three academic degrees with perfect body proportions, who is dressed and photographed through most of the film so that we notice her legs, ass and breasts (expensive sports cars are traditionally also the objects of similar fetishisation). ___ The screenplay was apparently based on a recording of a conversation among a group of teenagers about everything that they would like to see in their dream movie. An update of the Arthurian myth with robot knights? Sure. The watch that killed Hitler? Why not? Dinobots breathing fire and vomiting police cars? You got ’em. Anthony Hopkins acting like an adolescent? Of course. This literary jumble was subsequently entrusted to a hyperactive child named Michael Bay, who has enough trouble sustaining an idea and maintaining causality between individual scenes, let alone across a two-and-a-half-hour narrative. Even though I conscientiously took notes throughout the film and paid maximum attention to what the characters were saying and doing, I cannot reconstruct the plot a mere hour (let alone a day) after the screening so that there aren’t numerous gaps in logic and a number of unanswered questions such as “how did character X get from point A to point B?”, “what role did characters Y and Z play in the narrative?”, "what made anyone assume that anyone else would act that way?” I really don’t know what John Turturro and a teenage girl with a robot conspicuously reminiscent of WALL-E were doing in the film, or why a Transformer named Hot Rod attempted to speak with a funny French accent (if we ignore the fact that Bay apparently finds national, ethnic and gender stereotypes funny). I suppose the filmmakers didn’t know either, assuming that the target audience (kids up to the age of 15) would not ask similar questions. ___ At the same time, however, I spent the whole time wondering if perhaps Michael Bay was ahead of his time and made an avant-garde masterpiece, the most technically sophisticated bit of Dadaist art ever, which viewers will admire in a few decades just as much as we admire Man with a Movie Camera today. If The Last Knight can evoke anything other than a feeling of apathy and intellectual defeat (because you have failed in your attempt to find any meaning or order in it), it is amazement at how it looks from start to finish (at least in 3D and IMAX). It remains true that few people are able to direct such epic, uncluttered and breathtaking 3D action scenes like Michael Bay, who can no longer be bothered to take the story into consideration. And why should he? Story is dead, long live the cinema of (purely non-intellectual) attractions! It was astonishing and I was royally entertained, but if I had to watch it again, my head would explode. 60% (22.06.2017) (mniej) (więcej)