The other night, I met a beautiful family at one of my tables. The parents were both young, nice, and attractive. They had two boys, and one of them had a Robin costume on. I walked by and said, "Man, no one told me Robin was here!" The mother laughed, and we discussed her son's love of all things Batman. She especially enjoys how he is growing too big for the Robin shirt and his four-year-old manboobs are starting to stick out. I could tell how much she adored her children, and I was touched by her obvious devotion to her family.
I'll admit, I was a little jealous of the husband. Here he sits with a sweet, gorgeous wife and two badass kids with amazing taste in superheroes. At my age, these could be my amazing boys. This could be my wonderful wife. I hoped, at least, he realized his good fortune.
I was surprised, then, when I saw this guy come in and start hitting on the nastiest woman at the bar. That same night. The woman was wearing a tennis outfit, hoping to look like she just returned from a full day of exercise. However, her cankles and leathery neck wattle told me different. This asshat was ready to throw away his family for a night of sweaty, awkward, pleasure.
I was furious and it took me a while to discover why. I think it's that when someone stands up and makes a vow to love and cherish, he is not only swearing this to his wife. He is swearing it to everyone who has been married or will ever marry. He is now part of a millennia-old institution. As someone who hopes to marry and have a family one day, I am offended by this man's behavior. He will betray his wife and children just to show that he can hook up with a dried-out Bon Jovi groupie.
The anger I feel toward this buttface is the same anger I feel toward Michael Bay. Like a husband and father, the filmmaker is part of a time-honored institution. Whenever someone picks up a motion picture camera, he/she has a responsibility to all filmmakers who have come before and to all those who will come after. Making a film, one promises to produce to the best of one's ability, to tell a story of truth and weight. No matter how large or small the film, the filmmaker works in the same medium as the great John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and David Lean. The filmmaker must take his/her job seriously and not betray the trust that has been given them.
And that's what Michael Bay has done with Transformers: Age of Extinction. He has betrayed the trust of his audience and every filmmaker ever. With it, Michael Bay shows that he doesn't care what critics, audiences, or other filmmakers think. Bay has made decent films like The Rock and Bad Boys. He knows how to tell a story and film a flashy action set-piece. However, over the last three Transformers films, the plots have become looser, the motivation more laughable. As the films have become progressively worse, the box office returns have grown exponentially. Like the father who keeps cheating and never gets caught, Bay has no reason to change his ways. He can make his films louder and stupider and laugh his way to the bank. At culture's expense.
This is not just a bad film; it is an affront to society. Transformers: Age of Extinction is racist, sexist, and xenophobic. One little robot is a miniature minstrel show, speaking in slurred ebonics. When he is freed from a trap, he exclaims, "Gawd almighty, free at last." The audience, primarily African-American, laughed heartily at this joke. I was flabbergasted. I felt like I was in some kind of Twilight Zone alternate universe. Bay makes a horrible joke of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech and the audience praises him for it. I don't have the words.
This being a Michael Bay film, I expected a fair share of low angle booty shots and gratuitous cleavage. I was not, however, prepared for Bay's sexist send-up of statutory rape laws. A seventeen-year-old girl has a twenty-year-old boyfriend. They explain that this is legal because of the "Romeo and Juliet" laws in Texas. Because they started dating before he was eighteen, they can date after he passes into illegal territory. The film champions this couple and the cause of cradle robbers everywhere. Again the audience laughed. Good for the rapey guy! You go for it!
Bay doesn't even care to hide the product placement in his film. During one of the drawn-out robot fights, a Bud Light truck is destroyed. Then, Bay gifts us with a perfectly composed shot of the fallen beer bottles. Man, those look cold and tasty... Mark Wahlberg, for no reason, picks up a bottle, pops it, and drinks. God that's refreshing. Like everything in this film, it is shameless and stupid.
Transformers: Age of Extinction is offensive to me as a man, citizen, and filmmaker. Bay shows great disdain for his source material, cinema, and his audience. And we love him for it. But this can't go on forever. Michael Bay will cross that final line, and his audience will turn on him. The cheating husband will be caught and will find no respite in the saggy arms of a bleach-blond bimbo. Sooner or later, your sins will find you out.
