In the wake of the Transformers sequel’s conquest of the global box-office, with audiences worldwide throwing money down to see Michael Bay’s latest incoherent mecha-gasm, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of the modern action movie.
People ain’t asking for much these days, are they?
This isn’t going to be a rant about how much better things were in the Olden Days, when stuntmen were stuntmen and movie stars rode their own horses, dammit. There was just as much of an appetite for cheap thrills then as there is now. It’s just that the cheap thrills made as much sense as the expensive ones.
I mean, does anyone really understand what happened in the second half of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen? Not the “why” of it, mind you – Decepticons are evil and want to blow up our sun, while Autobots would prefer they not. I get that. But the hows of it are incomprehensible things blow up, things fall from the sky, things turn into other things, and somehow Shia LaBoeuf is at the center of it all even after he rids himself of that last Allspark splinter. Only it wasn’t even the last one, anyhow there was another. Anybody remember what happened to that? Because all I got was clanking and screeching and more explosions.
Personally, I like action movies that are made with intelligence, integrity and a sense of invention a little playfulness doesn’t hurt, either. I’d hold up Steven Spielberg’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark, John McTiernan’s Die Hard and James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day as Hollywood’s gold standard, and perhaps John Woo’s Face/Off, too.
Those films have carefully structured stories, well-drawn characters and a clear directorial vision to go with their showstopping action sequences they’re not just checklists of insults and explosions. It’s also likely that “action movie” isn’t the first term that springs to mind when describing them – they’re adventure movies, or thrillers, or sci-fi films that just happen to have amazing action sequences.
That’s because action is a cinematic storytelling component, rather than an end in itself. Used well, it enhances the whole. Used poorly … well, things get messy.
You need examples? This summer, we have Star Trek’s amazing drilling-platform sequence – which flows elegantly through a series of challenges (skydiving, hand-to-hand combat, Sulu’s swordfighting and that race to the transporter room, while Spock tries to save his fellow Vulcans on the surface) with an assured visual choreography that reminded me of Spielberg’s flying-wing sequence in Raiders. And then there’s the (literal) dogfight climax in Pete Docter’s Up, which is both thrilling in its vertiginous complexity and gleeful in its absurdity.
Those sequences are set pieces, without question, and they’re designed to thrill the audience – but they also move the story and the characters decisively forward.
The strangest thing about watching Revenge Of The Fallen was the realization that two of its screenwriters, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, also wrote that magnificent Star Trek reboot – and the clever Mission: Impossible III – for J.J. Abrams, as well as episodes of Alias and Fringe. They also scripted Bay’s first Transformers movie, which wasn’t much better than the current one at making sense of its giant-robot smackdownery, and his 2005 clone-chase movie The Island. So, obviously, it’s the director’s fault.
As evidenced by just about every movie he’s ever made, Bay approaches every individual shot as its own knockout set piece taken on its own, any given frame from Revenge Of The Fallen is a thing of beauty. But he has no sense of how to make those shots work together, either as narrative or as sensation. Bay’s movies are designed for people who want nothing more from a movie than cool shit that gets cooler when it explodes. The good stuff is less likely to explode than the bad stuff that’s as complicated as he allows himself to get. Even Pearl Harbor found a way to end on an up note, remember?
But it’s empty pyrotechnics. There’s no reason for us to invest even the tiniest part of ourselves in the outcome. And I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I kind of like caring about the movies I see. Even the ones with giant robots, starships and talking dogs.
Okay – especially the ones with talking dogs. But I figured that was obvious.
PS. If all the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death has left you feeling particularly nostalgic for the 1980s, drop by the Sirius Satellite Radio Stage Harbourfront Centre this Wednesday night (July 8), where this summer’s Free Flicks series kicks off at 9 pm with Howard Deutsch’s Pretty In Pink, introduced by Erica Ehm and yours truly. I have no idea what they think I can bring to the party, but it’s always nice to be invited to things.[rssbreak]
