To watch a Transformer movie, is like signing with Michael Bay a contract for more than 2 hours of pure entertainment with explosions everywhere in an intergalactic context.
In other words, you know what to expect. The reason to talk about this movie is first, because it’s the number 1 at the Chinese Box Office (Box Ofiice record $134 million) and secondly because it’s interesting to know if there is any evolution in this fourth opus?
Produced by Spielberg and Bay, I have to admit this film stands out compare to the three others since it reaches another level for the action movie expert, Michael Bay. Indeed, this film seems to be divided according severals parts, like the different phases of a creation process.
First, you can notice a justification using self-derision. Well, in this fourth movie with a total new cast, is it still a saga or just a lame mercantile franchise recycling? Who says 4th says 6th? Within the first minutes, a scene “explicitely” closes the debate, since through his main character Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay ironically justifies himself to “warm over a concept doing an umpteenth blockbuster” or critizes his too close shot on the beautiful blond girl with her too short shorts for her good American dad. So, a good self-critic on his work, slided it up with a very honest and lucid way.
Moreover, the subtlety remains in very nice references to Star Wars that I let you figure it out!
By the time the story is settled down, you find the cinematographic language again well knowed from this director but this time, more developed. Obviously, Michael Bay looked for over aesthetic, I mean his own aesthetic, through this movie. This is when it gets mixed up, between space ships shot like J.J Abrams likes to do, the good paramilitary film with all the gadgets and the over the ground shots he loves, you quickly get a stylistic 360 degres. Looks like he wanted to try out everything in only one film.
But don’t be mistaken, he has to his disposal all the equipment he needs to give you a killer punch; helicopters, stuntmen, high wire acts, very “wild” in the Grand Canyon or very graphic in Shanghai first choices panoramic shots. Does he feel obliged to do all this since Spielberg produces the film? Please be my guest to answer. Well, is it even possible for Michael Bay to overdo since it’s his own signature?
Last phase of the film, the total destruction not of Chicago this time, but of the entire Shanghai city and around with scrap iron and shell from everywhere. Thanks to Dolby Digital technology to immerges you into an apocalyptic context. And then it’s a fail!
Unbelievable but true, the film of the over-pace action master suffers length. Well, too much destruction is actually boring: when the umpteenth liner destroys again another skyline building, sad to say but it becomes completely useless boring.
Between the back and forth of the good robots and the evil aliens, it never ends!
So what to remember? First, a self-derision that underlines a level in the director’s career. Stanley Tucci as a caricature of a Steve Jobs from the future is quite genious. Whereas Ken Watanabe, who gives his voice for an Autobots reciting some Haïkus (Japanese poems), sounds like putting sushis in a Big Mac. and finally, Imagine Dragons as a guest for the soundtracks.
