So, I was halfway through watching TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN in a theater in Toronto when my wife called me. My father-in-law, who had been ill, was not doing well and she really wanted to leave for Los Angeles to see him. RIGHT…NOW!
Sensing the urgency in her voice, I left the theater in the middle of the film. This was last Wednesday. I just got back last night. The good news is the my father-in-law is doing much better. The better news is that I didn’t have to watch the rest of TRANSFORMERS 2.
Okay…that’s a cheap shot and lazy writing. As long-time readers of this space know, I’m a stickler for story logic. I hate when things happen in scripts because the writer wants or needs them to happen, and not because the story has earned the right for that event to happen. Even up to the halfway mark, TRANSFORMERS was so rife with unexplained events, illogical plot points, bad characters development, and by-the-numbers dialog that I had started squirming in my seat. Before my wife called me I literally couldn’t wait for this movie to be over. Characters were doing things and acting in ways completely inconsistent with what was happening around them, all for the sake of the joyride that this movie was supposed to be. I felt like if the writers didn’t care what was on the screen, why should I?
It was on the plane to Los Angeles that I got to thinking about the movie in greater detail. It dawned on me that TRANSFORMERS might be something more than just another bad movie. The writers were the same guys who wrote the new STAR TREK, one of my favorite movies of the year. What the…? How could they have written both?
Were they really this bad and STAR TREK was one of their broken clocks (under the idea that even a broken clock is right twice a day)? Maybe STAR TREK was polished (uncredited) by better uncredited polishers than TRANSFORMERS? It’s possible.
I then looked at the talent behind the camera. Michael Bay. Steven Spielberg. Don’t these guys know how to tell a story? Of course they do. I’m spitting distance from nobody. Don’t they know at least as much as I do about structure, character, and story logic?
And then I started to think, what if the illogical action, the unmotivated character turns and reactions, even the awful and unfunny comic relief characters…what if they were the herald of a new sensibility in storytelling? I’m not kidding. What if TRANSFORMERS 2 is actually a NEW FORM OF STORYTELLING?
I remember watching MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING and marveling at how concise the setup was: Scene 1, Julia Roberts says that she has a deal with a friend to get married if they’re both single at the age of 30; Scene 2, Julia Roberts goes home and gets a phone call from said friend saying that he’s getting married and wants her to come to the wedding; Scene 3, she’s on the way to the airport to break up the wedding. Back in the old days there’d be 10 minutes or so spent on establishing the Julia Roberts character; what she’s like at work, the state of her love life, her life as a single woman. And after a few scenes you’d hear about the deal with the friend. And a few scenes later she’d get the phone call. And a few scenes later (after some agonizing) she’d be on the plane.
But here was all of that story development delivered one, two, three. I was elated! It felt to me as if the filmmakers were saying “Hey! We’ve had 100 years of cinema. We all know what’s going to happen, so let’s just get there and have some fun.”
Could the braintrust behind TRANSFORMERS be doing the same thing? ”Screw the logic! This is the biggest action movie of the year. DEAL WITH IT!” Perhaps the seeming willful abandonment of logic is not laziness but a new paradigm of storytelling? Let’s call it “rollercoastering.” When you get on SPACE MOUNTAIN, you don’t need to know how the damn thing works. As a matter of fact, you want the rollercoaster to do wildly unexpected things that seem to defy the logics of mechanics. I’m upside down! I can’t see the track!
Perhaps TRANSFORMERS doesn’t have logic because the filmmakers felt it doesn’t need logic. People are going to this particular ride for the lights and special effects around the rollercoaster car, not the track beneath it. And certainly, TRANSFORMERS isn’t being punished at the box office.
Perhaps logic in an action movie five years from now — having seamless story structure in a $200 million dollar SFX extravaganza — will be the exception and not the rule. Or there will be a new category of action blockbuster for those who crave the thrill and care less about story. Actually, there already is a category of movie like that. Porn. Another cheap shot, I know.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see how other big-budget blockbusters handle storytelling moving forward from this point. Is TRANSFORMERS the start of a rollercoastering trend — a new paradigm of storytelling — or just a bloated, poorly written movie that is the right movie for the right audience at the right time?
I don’t know, but I’ll be watching to see how it pans out. Bottom line is that my father-in-law is doing better, and one of the storytelling conventions that hasn’t been beaten out of me is the happy ending.
– Jeffrey Alan Schechter
Watching the film with MMM turned on, you are treated to countless seamless transitions from the film to a variety of additional information, all in context. More than “pop-up videos”, the film shrinks down to a picture within the picture and director Zack Snyder walks on and offers commentary on what’s going on. He’ll often pause the movie (playing behind him on single and double screens) to point out interesting and amusing production details and anectdotes. And when he’s done, the picture-in-picture readjusts and you’re back to watching the movie once more.
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