Commentary: When not having a story is a good thing

So the greatest movie ever hit the cinemas at midnight last night – Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen. I have yet to see the movie myself. But frankly I don’t need to see it to know that it is amazing and awesome. It’s Transformers. That’s pretty much all I need. But some people may need more. To help out I solicited some help from a far away land to explain the awesomeness of Transformers the movie. Who is this help? My brother of course. Nepotism is pretty sweet aint it?

So here is a quick review of the flick and why everyone should go see it.

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Saw a screening of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on the Paramount Lot. There was the line of people waiting who had their names on a list. And there was a line of people who were hoping that people with names on the list didn’t show up so they could sit in. Both were equally huge.

You’ll be hearing a lot of negative things in the next few days about Giant F-ing Robots Part Deux. And I’ll be encouraging you to ignore them. It’s not that what the critics are saying are entirely wrong. For the most part, I agree with a huge chunk of what’s been said. But I think people are missing the point about Michael Bay and his Bayhem.

Because Michael Bay does not make movies.

Michael Bay makes porn.

In the seventies, people thought how revolutionary it would be to film a story where once you cut to the love scenes, you would actually see people having sex. This is like the golden age of the seventies in film where you have Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Friedkin, Lucas (before the dark times), and so forth. But you know what? How many individuals actually sit through the story of the porn movie thinking “oh gosh, I can’t wait till these two get it on, I’m in SUCH suspense?” No one. We fast forward to the good parts. Nowadays, porn doesn’t even attempt a story. For example, a man in a suit enters a house for a business meeting with his partner. The partner isn’t there, but his wife – dressed in slutty lingerie at 2 in the afternoon – is there to greet him. The man in the suit says “great – I confirmed this meeting three times. NOW what am I gonna do?” And then slutty lingerie wife decides to offer him options. BAM! Cut to the love scene. One and a half minutes of story followed by twenty minutes of gymnastic sexual antics.

So what Michael Bay does is make modern day blockbusters following the formula of modern day porn. Skip the story, and get right to the reason we hit ‘yes’ on our On Demand. Sometimes, you’re just not in the mood for a story that changes the way you see the world. You just want some porn. You want The Rock or Armageddon.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like Giant Robot Porn. We don’t really care how we see big robots fighting, because that’s inherently just silly. Kind of like when a hot blond girl in a short skirt who says she’s over 18 can’t wait to get at a man in his forties who oozes Axe Body Spray. It’s just silly. But we don’t care. We just want to see big robots fighting. We want to see Godzilla smash some shit. So give us about ten to twenty minutes of story (which is what T:ROTF gives us) and then give us 2 hours of insane over-the-top-ludicrous-action-that-we-know-can’t-possibly-be-realistic-and-doesn’t-make-sense-but-who-gives-a-crap-it’s-fun-as-hell-to-watch. He basically skips the setup and gets right to the good stuff. Which is what porn does best.

So I had a total blast watching T:ROTF. The audience laughed and clapped a hell of a lot at the end. Judging by those lines I saw, I expect the rest of America will be figuring it out for themselves this week.

Now imagine if Michael Bay made an honest-to-goodness porn. (Or with all this remake madness – what abot a remake of SHOWGIRLS? AND on IMAX?) Now that’ll be worth $14 dollars…

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I think my brother brings up a good point here. Not that Showgirls should be remade in IMAX. Admittedly that would be awesome. I can see the giant ingrown hairs and pimples now. His point being that with this type of movie we aren’t going in to see a great story or anything. We are just wanting to see giant robots kicking ass and taking names. Personally I think there are quite a few games that should learn this lesson or at least be reminded of it. I’m looking at you Grand Theft Auto.