Sweat hang in the air. Everything is glistening, waiting for the plot, the explosion. Cue dynamite. Violence. Men with excess testosterone; vixens in silhouette. And a Michael Bay production comes screaming across the sky, and, this summer, nothing will ever be the same again.
Well, he’s a little early this year. Blockbuster maven and all-around critical punching bag Michael Bay is back with a “small” (budget: $26 million), personal project called “Pain & Gain,” about bodybuilders and the American dream. Despite having one of America’s most recognizable directorial styles, discerning audiences mostly abhor Bay’s movies. This week’s Love | Hate explores the director’s body of work, columnist Sebastian Torrelio adding to the critical hate while columnist Tony Huang attempts to see through the residue.
I was dragged to “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” not going to lie. A buddy of mine was a big fan, and although I found “Revenge of the Fallen” basically irredeemable, I went anyway. And lo: first shot, buttocks ablaze with glory, Shia LaBeouf somehow a hotshot– cut to sports cars and men in suits. And then giant robots, special effects, the whole deal.
Yet despite my initial eye roll, it occurred to me that this was almost too perfect a commercial movie. It had everything a studio executive could dream of: girls, guns, effects, and to top it all off, a few wisecracking comedy relief characters lurking around. It was pure unadulterated shallowness and yet it wasn’t unwatchable: it was the money’s worth, pretty much the American dream of going to the cineplex and trying to not get ripped off.
Rewatching the first “Transformers” and some of Bay’s early work, it becomes ever more evident that his films are exactly how he intends them: He is the ultimate producer as director, the great demographic panderer, and he makes an art out of it. If Steven Spielberg fixates on fathers, Martin Scorsese on Catholics and Quentin Tarantino on movies, then Bay is resolutely devoted to adolescence.
Forget demographics – purposefully or not, Bay conjures the exact warped world of the high school male, confused, stereotyped and fervently not self-aware. He makes what Harmony Korine would if Korine had more conviction: not exactly satire, but something so deeply ingrained in Americans that it can’t help but be revealing.
So call it a guilty pleasure, call it vulgar auteurism. Either way, as far as American directors go, his style is unusually of the essence – and “Pain & Gain” seems exactly the film that he was meant to make. It gives him a chance to stretch his literal muscles, so to speak: to again bask in the crude yet distastefully alluring visions of America seen through Ray-Bans, to jab at, if accidentally, the embarrassing imprints in our collective ID.
Email Huang at thuang@media.ucla.edu if you’re on the “love” side.
In 1993, before his film career, Michael Bay shot a commercial. It featured a man, obsessed with history, who tried to answer a $10,000 radio trivia question asking who shot Alexander Hamilton in his life-ending duel. Because of the peanut butter in his mouth and the lack of milk at his desk, he failed to answer in time, leading the audience of the world to ask itself the all-too-famous question: “Got Milk?”
Thusly, the first “Got Milk?” ad launched the most profound commercial campaign of the last two decades, and the most profound minute of Bay’s career ended. For Bay has a habit of starting things, whether it’s milky goodness or an entire film genre now practically defined as “Michael Bay.”
We can trace this back to the set of his first unfortunate feature, “Bad Boys,” a buddy-cop action film starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, who both improvised much of their scenes and dialogue. Add on the classy stunts of blowing things up before, during and after the intense scenes, and you have a classic “Michael Bay.”
What resulted is a legacy of overly theatrical, rarely funny, loud and unnecessary motion pictures. But it serves to show what Bay can impressively bring out of his script and actors. The most remarkable part of “Armageddon” is not its cast of notable talent, but so much chaos in about 150 minutes that the man responsible should apologize. What holds the “Transformers” movies together is not the giant robots, but the relief that Megan Fox’s car poses provide.
It’s a stretch to call Bay untalented in the same way it’s hard to call minimalist art easy to recreate. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” grossed about $350 million. “Pearl Harbor” won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Sound Editing. Both are destructive pieces of hilariously bad writing, yet that almost makes them artwork all the same. Though far less so than minimalist art.
Will “Pain & Gain” break the mold? Obviously not. But will it serve to provide an entertaining getaway of sweat and absurdity to those willing to sit through the lack of plot? Probably. Plus, Dwayne Johnson is in it. And admittedly, I like “The Rock.” Godspeed, Bay.
Email Torrelio at storrelio@media.ucla.edu if you’re on the “hate” side.