Transformers: The Last Knight |
  • USA / China / Canada • 2017 • 154m •    • Directed by: Michael Bay. • Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Santiago Cabrera, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Stanley Tucci, Liam Garrigan, Martin McCreadie, Rob Witcomb, Marcus Fraser, John Hollingworth. • Music by: Steve Jablonsky.      Optimus Prime finds his home planet, Cybertron, now a dead planet, in which he comes to find he was responsible for killing. He finds a way to bring the planet back to life, but in order to do so, he needs to find an artifact, which is on Earth.
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Look, let's all agree from the outset that Transformers -- as a concept -- is absolutely asinine. It's a hidden race of super advanced alien machines creepily taking on traits of human behavior and cultural affectation whilst mostly rolling around in the guise of various performance vehicles that covetous douche bags adore. There's no rationale where this isn't a mind-numbing conceit born from a toy line aimed at the aggressive fantasy synapses of immature brains. And that's a perfect sandbox for Michael Bay to build his arena and wallow in with gluttonous ecstasy.
So now that that's established, let me declare the main thesis point for advocacy here of director Michael Bay: He's a genius! That's right, let me repeat that -- Michael Bay is a genius!
Simply because Michael Bay is one of the few filmmakers commonly known by name, it became "cool" to drop his name in loathing as an easy synonym shortcut for hipsters to pathetically bolster their non-existent credibility in cinematic knowledge. In deed, anytime Bay is spoken well of, such faint praise is immediately shot down with hyperbolic aghast and equated to justifying Hitler by his work as a painter, or musing on the songwriting merit of Charles Manson. Now I won't dispute that Bay has an inclination for silly sophomoric humor and vapid glamorization of excess. Nor will I gloss over his propensity to indulge in stereotypes and cliché. But as an artist working in the medium of moving visuals, Michael Bay is nothing short of brilliant. Just because he makes movies with the sensibilities of a thirteen- year-old dirt bike enthusiast, doesn't mean he ought to be demonized as though guilty of atrocities.
To some degree it may be true that Michael Bay caters to simpletons, but he doesn't make simple movies, he creates spectacular extravaganzas with dense amounts of information being presented through the unique language of cinema. And produces self-evident eye-popping results. Unlike the vast majority of filmmakers who take director credit on complicated productions of vast proportion, Bay (quite uniquely) doesn't shirk responsibilities off to 2nd-Unit crews and department heads to autonomously realize aspects or sequences, but rather actually personally dictates an exact vision and micromanages it to his specified fruition. With a wicked efficiency in speed and breadth, Bay generals hugely intricate on set sequences involving multiple and simultaneous camera setups of stunning aesthetic composition involving impressive precision in kinetics, varying frame-rates, pin-point lighting, depth-of-field focus parameters, stunt work, and practical effects rigging -- all with actors performing in frame -- and orchestrates all this "Bayhem" safely. Then without missing a beat carries that energy over to personally lording over every minute aspect of post production; from the incredibly layers complexities of editing, effects, sound design, music, and even marketing. Bay is no gun-for-hire, he is a specific visionary of immense skill set. Although some may be bewildered by the styled nature of its non-stop sensory bombardment -- and regardless as to its vulgar pronouncement, no one can claim it's not often astonishingly beautiful and does somehow express a cohesive whole. That's an extraordinary exhaustive task that only a handful of the most skillfully composed directors in the world could even dare to attempt, and Bay does it on a frequent basis, and does it better than almost anyone ever has.
There is a reason why the often emulated, never replication, bigger than life spectacle that Bay routinely accomplishes has gotten proper recognition and accolade over the years from peers and collaborators such as Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, Jerry Bruckheimer, Edgar Wright, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino; Because they know what it takes to authoritatively command such overwhelmingly gargantuan workload that such ventures require, and the fact that Bay does it time and again with virtuoso vision of auteur aesthetic is a totally impressive feat -- even if you don't care for it.
Opposing the consensus dismissal that Bay is an unsophisticated abomination that merely makes incoherent populace bombasts that lack any semblance of subtly or nuance in pensive development -- I would counter that perhaps the purveyors of that notion also lack capacity in comprehending super sophisticated rapid sensorial exposition. Bay may be stuck in arrested development in his childish proclivities, but that child is nonetheless a supreme savant in cinematic language.
Review by octagonproplex from the Internet Movie Database.
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