Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Continuing with my complete repertoire of "Transformers" movie reviews—there are three and I ran out of patience after two—for the next couple of "Take Out the Trash" Days.

 

Can Steven Spielberg convince Martin Scorsese to direct a "Transformers" movie? How about Greta Gerwig? I'd like to see an Aaron Sorkin-scripted Transformers movie (Transformers: The One About the Thing). I must be going through Post-Barbie Depression.

 

"Boys With Toys"

 or

"We Just Dropped Ten Tons of Dead Robot in the Middle of Nowhere."

 

As I recall, my three biggest beefs with the first "Transformers" movie was a) it was your basic racial bait-and-switch movie where the story of a repressed class is sublimated by having the story told through the eyes of a bankable star not of that class, b) the action sequences were ultimately boring and c) Michael Bay made every woman look like a hooker.

Other than that, I didn't mind it as some things were done quite well, indicating that Bay might actually become a filmmaker some day, as opposed to being a well-organized ring-leader and money evaporator.

But Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen* shows no such progression, and is quite a deal worse than the original. The problems with the first film have not been resolved, and the filmmakers have moved on to ignore more weighty problems like coherent writing, clear visual story-telling, or having a point besides making money and providing jobs for friends.

By now, the five-story high Auto-bots have become known to the military (thanks for noticing) if not the public at large, and should be working arm in cog to ward off alien attack, become an early, early warning system, vaporize garbage or at least become part of the motor pool. But it appears their job is to sit in one those ubiquitous governmental underground bunkers, stay out of the way of lucrative weapons manufacturers and kvetch about the government in charge. In other words, they've become part of the legislative branch with the major difference being that they actually go into battle themselves.**

And their nemeses, the evil Decepticons? They're doing much the same thing, except oiling their wounds, going back to the drawing board and plotting revenge. It would appear they have a long-standing grudge against Earth and its inhabitants, which is why this pan-galactic epic battle seems to be centered here, rather than some other arm of the Milky Way. Maybe we really are the Center of the Universe...and it attracts trouble.***

Speaking of self-absorbed monomania, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, with more beating of breast and patting of wallet by his braying parents (Julie White, Kevin Dunn) who were a welcome relief last time, but are now just wacky walking punch-lines.

Then there's the only reason fathers are taking their children—Megan Fox who's achieved a reputation as a Hollywood hottie and probably did a lot of practicing having a cold trying to get out of her contract-mandated participation, and might have done if she were a better actress. Fortunately, she's not required to do much outside of your typical Almay or shampoo commercial, until the latter part of the film where she's required to run in front of large gasoline explosions. I'd be worried for her as her mascara doesn't appear to run at all, but she doesn't lose so much as a false eye-lash.

The movie is built of the spare parts of a lot of past Studio franchises, and as with most out-sourcing a lot of the pieces don't fit. The Decepticons have a tier-structure (the Decepticon Overlord at one point even says "And you will, my apprentice"), a magic bling must save the day, Sam has trouble saying the "L" word, and there are magic scribblings that they have to go to an expert (John Turturro returning to good comic effect), in order to stop the evil erector sets from setting off a device hidden in the Pyramids that will stop the sun (I'm not sure what that would be but I suspect it's some triangular Maytag ice-maker). Take Transformers, strap on "Indiana Jones," plug in "National Treasure," screw on a pneumatic "Star Wars," some "Gremlins," program in some "DaVinci Code," stir a few thousand times to make it incomprehensible and drop it with a huge clank on Independence Day.

Ultimately, it's a big mess with Bay setting up a swooping crane shot for every line of dialog, and the screenwriters setting up their expositions over explosions so you can't hear all their mumbo-jumbo. The only time the movie comes to life is an extended sequence on campus when Sam, possessed by a piece of the evil Decepticon-maker freaks out in a classroom and goes all "Beautiful Mind" scrawling encryption's on his dorm-room wall, while also avoiding the predatory come-on's of a sorority sister, who's actually a Decepticon in drag. At that point, the movie becomes giddy and fun with complication piled on complication and LaBoeuf displaying some of the manic energy that makes him interesting to watch.

But that's ten minutes out of two and a half hours of a loud, obnoxious version of "Rock'em, Sock'em Robots." And that's the bottom line of this mess. It was made for the necessities of the Studio making it, not for any artistic need to tell a story. Just as the Studios plan a few years ahead to make "tent-pole" franchises to strategically shore up dividends in the Summer and Christmas, this movie was constructed of sequences dictated by locations cheap enough to shoot in. That, unfortunately, is how the Bond producers have been manufacturing movies for the past two decades: having run out of Ian Fleming titles, they check to see where they can save the most money and set their movies there, and write the script around the location (Hitchcock would utilize locations for material as well). The problem is there's more to a screenplay than "location, location, location." The Bond series perked up only when they had Fleming's "Casino Royale" to provide that film its spine and heart.

But there's no point and no inspiration to Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen, there is only contrivance, and the makers were scraping the bottom of the scrap-heap to do that. The old "Transformers" series used to kill off characters to encourage kids to buy their new lines of toys. One can imagine the day when Revenge of the Fallen will overcrowd the dumpsters of America, as well.

* Reviewer Jim Emerson had the foresight to alphabetize it as "Transformers: ROTFL"

** Hey kids! There are new Auto-bots based on Smart-cars, but instead of speaking French, they're street-cred hipsters and are as annoying as a weekend with Jar-Jar Binks. In fact, these characters aren't only annoying they're vaguely racist (!!??), but then there's a major disconnect with this movie about its audience. It's aimed at kids, but amid all the cussing and humping dog jokes, I could see more than a few parents putting their heads in their hands at the questioning up-turned faces of their kids. It's also aimed at the kids who played with "Transformers" in the 70's and...haven't yet evolved. They were the ones "huh-huh-huhing" at off-color humor. Hollywood has yet to learn that the AICN crowd are a fickle bunch and won't necessarily "open" a movie for you. But then, a goodly number of current directors are fan-boys themselves.

*** At one point at an attempt at depth one of the characters says of the robots: "If God made us in his image, who made them?" Hasbro, Einstein! And probably in China.

Morbius

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Bore-Me/Us

or

I Was a Vampire Jesus

Sheldon Cooper : I have a question about Batman. Batman is a man who dresses up like a bat. Manbat is a part man part bat hybrid. Now, if Manbat dressed up as a man to fight crime, would he be Manbatman;?
Leonard Hofstadter : No, he'd be Batmanbat.
Howard Wolowitz : But wouldn't Manbatman just be a batman that was bitten by a radioactive man?
Howard Wolowitz : But Batman is a man. You're talking about a man who would have the powers of a man. That's just Manman.
Sheldon Cooper : Well, isn't Manman just Man?
Leonard Hofstadter : Well, what if Manman dressed as a bat?
Raj Koothrappali : Well, that's just Batman.

Leonard Hofstadter : No, if a man dresses as a bat, that's Batman, but if Manman dresses as a bat that's Batmanman.

"The Big Bang Theory" "The Viewing Party Combustion" Season 9; Episode 21

Semantics. There have been so many super-hero movies now, that things are starting to blur a bit. Not just that you can't tell a hero from a villain these days, but the characters (despite ©/®™ considerations) are starting to all feel the same, variations on a theme. Even if something feels completely revolutionary in the comics, they get so watered down in the movies, they don't feel too different from everything else.

 

Not that Marvel's "scientific vampire" "Morbius" was all that revolutionary. When he first appeared in the first series of "Spider-man" comics (No. 101, Oct. 1971), he was the product of a seeming "market need." Marvel created him because they wanted to use "Dracula" (but didn't want to use "Dracula" so much as an original, marketable character)—the comics code authority had dropped their ban on vampires*, while, at the same time, vampires were "big" on the daytime "soap" "Dark Shadows." Writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane created the character as a villain for Spider-man, and, after transmorgriphying into his own comics and as a compatriot/villain, for such Marvel properties as "Blade" and "Ghost Rider." The character has gone through the usual continuity confusions of "is he a hero or is he a villain" as well as some changes in appearance, powers, and ret-conned history. He's always been Dr. Michael Morbius, brilliant scientist, who in attempting to cure himself of a lethal blood disease, turned himself into a "living vampire" without the usual superstitious tropes, sort of like Spider-man, but only if you replace spiders with bats. Or DC's Man-bat, but with vampirism. Or compare him to Marvel's Jekyll/Hyde appropriation, The Hulk, with the emotional on-set trigger.

 

See what I mean about the lines getting blurred? (And we haven't talked about the movie yet!)

So, Columbia Pictures/Sony has been doing "Spider-man" movies for quite awhile. So much so that they have pretty much run through Spider-man's best villains. IGN has made a list of the best 25. #19 is Morbius. Pretty damn low on the list.**

 
Still, since Venom has his own series of movies, CP/S (in association with Marvel) has decided to make a series based on that Spidey character not at the top of anybody's mind, Morbius. Like Tom Hardy in the Venom films, they've cast great character actor Jared Leto in the title role.

Unlike the Venom series, they failed to make it entertaining.

Morbius starts with a prologue of how Dr. Michael Morbius (Leto) flies to Costa Rica to trap some vampire bats—with his blood as bait—so that he can do blood studies on their DNA to improve human blood, all of which is explained in the next sequence (they evidently did the Costa Rica side-bar first because all of its swooping helicopter shots provide a bit more action and brings in Leto faster), where young Milo is in a Greek hospital, being tended to by Dr. Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris) for his blood disorder, requiring "an oil change three times a day."
Prognoses are not good for his survival, as he is introduced to young Lucius who is rotated in replacing another patient who has passed. Young Michael calls him "Milo"—he's called all the kids in the next bed "Milo", which tells you exactly what he thinks the new kid's chances are. The two become conveniently fast friends, but Michael is transferred out when his repairing Milo's dialysis equipment inspires Nicholas to study the sciences. Good luck with the next guy's being able to repair your faulty equipment, kid.

Michael does become brilliant, winning the Nobel Prize for his work synthesizing artificial blood. He works for Horizon Labs, where he does his blood research; Lucien/"Milo" has become quite wealthy in his own right and the two have maintained their friendship. Michael tells "Milo" (now in the form of Matt Smith) that he may be on the brink of discovering a cure for their rare blood disease, but, the process can only be done off-shore as the procedure is undoubtedly illegal and Michael will be the initial test subject.

With the help of Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius CRISPR's particular bat-blood DNA with a sample of his own blood and has it injected into his spinal marrow. As he's the first test subject, he, of course, doesn't have any knowledge of the side-effects that one usually finds dominating 2/3 of pharmaceutical commercials. And, for sure, he's never seen one that informs "Some side effects include vampirism, blood-sucking, echolocation, fingernails for claws, and great pecs." But, that's what he gets, as well as a pronounced 'roid-rage every time his batty-sense is tingling. Or hungry (at one point, he even says—Hulkily—"I'm starting to get hungry. You don't want to see me when I'm hungry."

That's bad news for the anonymous mercenaries who are evidently guarding the boat—the "Murnau" (snicker)—all of whom get eviscerated with Morbius performing one-way blood-transfusions on them. Morbius, satiated, comes out of his vampire funk, and seeing the somewhat less than sterile conditions on the boat...and seeing Dr. Bancroft knocked unconscious (it's what pissed him off) calls in a "May-day" and jumps ship, the "Murnau" being lost.

Well, the FBI is called—in the forms of Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson—and before long, Morbius is on the run (or should that be "on the fly?") for the notorious "vampire murders" and Morbius has to contend with that, his dependence on his artificial blood mixture (which seems to have a lessening efficiency) and his ol' buddy "Milo" who's pissed off that Dr. Michael doesn't share and finds his own way to fang up and become a villain as that, seemingly, is his nature. One wonders why. Is it because he's rich, pampered—despite having a debilitating disease—or because we saw him get beat up that one time? Explanations are less than forthcoming, but, then, neither is the acting. Everyone seems to go through the motions of portraying "hero," "mentor," "rival," "love interest" but the script and the performances based on it feel devoid of anything beyond the rote requirements of the roles. There's just no inner life to any of them beyond going through the motions and hitting the marks.

One can say the same for the direction...except for one little sequence in a hospital corridor where—the conceit is—for energy-saving reasons, is lit only by lights triggered by motion-detectors. As someone walks along, the lights for the upcoming block comes on, the one behind turns off. Director Daniel Espinosa makes very good use of it, ramping up the suspense for the inevitable fake-out and jump-scare. 

 

One wishes the rest of the movie had as much bite.

* "Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited."

 

** The higher-ranked ones they haven't used are Kraven the Hunter, Hobgoblin, Spider-Slayer, Scorpion, Chameleon, Jackal, and Morlun. Except for Kraven, they all feel like you've seen them before...even though you haven't.