Like it or not, Michael Bay isn’t going anywhere.
Despite the amount of hate, disdain, and ire aimed at the movie from seemingly every corner of the Internet, Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction took in $100 million at the box office its opening weekend, once again validating, at least in terms of sheer numbers, that something in the “Transformers + Michael Bay = gold!” equation is working. Now, box office numbers are certainly not indicative of quality, but what’s interesting to see is that a poor score on Rottentomatoes.com may not mean anything either in terms of predicting a film’s box-office success or failure.
Critics hate this movie, like they seem to hate all Michael Bay movies (check out his filmography on Rottentomatoes). The hate is so pervasive and unanimous that it seems a critic would be running the risk of being booted from the club if they were to find a positive attribute to discuss about a Michael Bay movie, particularly these Transformers movies. But are they totally off base in their collective disdain? Not really, but, like anything else in life, it does depend on one’s point of view.
These movies have their audience and it isn’t necessarily comprised of “Transformers fans” (which, in itself, can be an incredibly broad range of people). A guy I know, who is not what I would call the average Transformers fan, was away for a few weeks on military orders. The night he returned, the first thing he did was pick up his wife and kids and drive straight to the mall to see Age of Extinction. He did this before unpacking, before having dinner, and before spending some quality time with his kids — seeing this movie took precedence over any of that; he simply could not wait. The appeal of it for him was the action and the spectacle of it all. When I asked him what he thought of the story that drove the action, the question was met with indifference. The story did not matter — what did matter was the visual onslaught these movies provide. Adrenaline mattered more than contemplation.
This reaction to these movies has been a common one since 2009’s Revenge of the Fallen, a movie seemingly devoid of narrative structure due to the fact that it was filmed during the Hollywood writers’ strike, so even though there are writers credited, Bay was basically going it alone without a core writing team. The result? Insane, pummeling action sequences strung together with the thinnest thread of narrative cartilage. But, the truth is, for many people queuing up to spend their money on a ticket, the story is secondary to the action sequences. So it could be argued that Bay knows his audience and makes these movies for them, not necessarily for the people who like to think of the Transformers property as “theirs” and know better than he what the movies should be about.
The movies have been financial juggernauts that have been incredibly successful worldwide, and they are becoming increasingly successful in certain Asian markets, which is of no small significance (it’s currently the highest grossing movie ever in China — think about that). They’ve “transformed” (please forgive me for that one) the brand from a fondly remembered toy line from the ’80s into an international brand that has done nothing but raise the property’s profile exponentially worldwide. No other movie this year has generated the amount of discussion AOE has in just one week, so there may be something to that old adage of there being no such thing as bad press.
“All boats rise with the water,” as the saying goes. Thanks to the movies’ financial success, the Transformers brand has expanded to give fans an impressive assortment of figures and characters in both non-movie Generations and Masterpiece lines. It’s been awesome to see what Hasbro and Takara have been producing for the comic-, video game-, and cartoon-based lines. Would any of this have been possible without the movies proving the brand is financially viable? Perhaps, but… perhaps not. We’ll likely never know for sure, but I’m willing to take bets.
These movies keep the brand and property very much in the public consciousness, which is vital for any franchise’s longevity. Thanks to the financial success of the movies, and, by extension, the movie toys, the brand as a whole has thrived. That’s a tough thing to reconcile when you watch these movies and are convinced that Bay is getting it all wrong. But what, exactly, is he getting wrong? The basic premise of Optimus Prime and the Autobots vs. the Decepticons is still there. This is just one team’s take on the same story we’ve been treated to for 30 years now.
For a lot of fans, The Transformers as a narrative endeavor existed in the ’80s, so that’s what they’re familiar with, and that’s what they expect to see adapted for the big screen. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that expectation because we all bring certain expectations to the movies with us. While Grimlock, for example, has had a few distinctive looks over the years, there’s just one look many fans want to see, and it isn’t the one we got in Age of Extinction. So this raises the question of who’s really at fault here? Is it Bay’s team who are only too happy to redesign everything in order to make it their own, or is it the fans who have these characters so pigeon-holed into one idea that anything other than that represents a failure? Maybe it’s both?
One of the great things about the Transformers property is that it has existed and thrived in a variety of media for 30 years, beginning in comic books, followed shortly after by a cartoon, then an animated feature-length movie, and then ultimately followed by several more comic book titles and several more animated series. There is so much Transformers material out there that we are afforded the luxury of being able to choose which interpretations matter to us, and these movies are just one interpretation among many.
But, for some reason, a movie seems to carry more weight, so it generates more discussion, or, in the case of these movies, more pointed shouting. The thing is, though… it doesn’t have to. If Bay’s Optimus Prime is disagreeable, then another version can be found at the local comic shop or on Transformers: Prime, for example. If Optimus Prime isn’t your cup of tea at all, there’s Beast Wars and More than Meets the Eye — two series where Optimus barely shows up at all, and in the former he’s unconscious the whole time. Essentially, we have options. It doesn’t have to be Bay or nothing.
The point is these movies exist. And they’re going to continue to exist as long as they persist in being the financial juggernauts they’ve been. So, to be a Transformers fan these days, this means we have to find a way to live with Michael Bay and his team’s take on the story. This is where the idea of “Stockholm Syndrome” comes in — it means objectively realizing these movies actually have had a positive effect on the brand even though they may not be the movies we want to see. When I look to my shelves and see such a diverse array of characters and interpretations of those characters, it’s not a difficult leap to realize one thing here was made possible because of another. Despite all the finger-pointing and nay-saying that a Bay movie may generate, in the end, they do more good than harm. I’m learning to embrace them. Not as great examples of Transformers fiction (that would be IDW’s More than Meets the Eye), but as mechanisms that allows the property room to breathe and grow.
Like it or not, the movies have been beneficial to the property, so instead of spending our time in the quixotic act of raking Michael Bay over the coals for having the nerve to release, yet again, another Transformers movie, maybe we should be at least acknowledging that they have had a positive influence on the franchise, despite what the critics have to say.
They may not be the movies we want, but they’re the movies we deserve right now.
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