Hey folks, Harry here... For the past few days, Yoko and I have been playing host to a lovely lass from Vancouver with reel cool dreams, by the alias Midol Girl. She decided she wanted to write about TRANSFORMERS and I figured... ya know, we can't have enough female writers to set us boys straight, instead of all the male ass-slapping in our jingoistic locker rooms here at AICN...

Ain’t It Cool News: Tuesday, July 3rd 2007

Michael “Cocky” Bay, My Little Ponies & Why Bumble Bee is Better off as a Camaro

By: Midol Girl

Transformers the toys were too armed with more nerdy nostalgia for 20- something year old males then I could comfortably begin to even pretend to wrap my head around. I myself was a huge gigantic “My Little Ponies” fan around the same time my brothers were adding the Autobots and Decepticons to their Christmas wish lists, correction- to their Christmas, birthday and their just because “I’ve been so good” wish lists!

I found these fully articulated “sentient machines” extraordinarily frustrating to say the least. I had a hard enough time getting Barbie’s skinny little cigarette jeans up to her disproportionate hips and over her sticky little rubber legs, let alone sitting there during playtime, which should equal “fun time”, manually reconfiguring a piece of jumbled plastic parts into a (in my mind) boring innocuous form like a car or aircraft.

Not to trash the robotic dump tracks or anything, which I’m not sure existed? If there wasn’t, there should have been. They should have come with little garbage men that hung off the backs too, and miniature little trash cans that would double as air-fresheners when they’d turn into robots. That’s beside the point though, which was to say that these toys really truly could capture the imaginations of little boys literally all over the world. Of course I’m sure some little girls too, who most likely are far more technically advanced than myself (it takes me a good five minutes to find the power buttons on the new Macintoshs out there) but, let’s be honest here. It’s mostly boys who like these things and relish in the excitement of opening up a fresh new package with a little “robot in disguise” inside and gleam when they unfold the little inserts (tech specs) which detail all the exciting characteristics of the toys. The toys, that will soon occupy millions of minutes of their time, both in battle play and for years to come in collecting.

Who then would not be better to direct a movie about these toys then Michael Bay? A Hollywood film director critic’s say, “only does movies for teenage boys”. Bay’s response to that;

“I make movies for teenage boys, Oh dear, what a crime!” (Wikipedia quote)

With a career’s early beginnings stemming from stereotypical “guy” media ventures such as directing rock videos, beer commercials and even videos for the Playboy channel it’s no surprise that he moved on to do high box office grossing films such as Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001); Both films nominated for “Razzie” Awards (awards given out for crappy movies and lame directing etc.) because, lets face it. Who mostly goes to big Hollywood movies and takes their sometimes very apathetic wives and girlfriends to them? Teenage boys and men (essentially the same thing). I’m Joking! Now I’m lying, I was only half-joking. In all seriousness…

I went into the movie Transformers with a good understanding of Michael Bay’s cinematic style, one he’s often been negatively criticized for. Cutting to quickly, not making time in scenes for dramatic “moments” of stillness or for having too much stillness in the form of jarring “slow motion” sequences that seem to come out of nowhere and end abruptly. Bay’s also been attacked for using a lot of blatant sexism in his work. The latter I really have zero tolerance for, but I’ve noticed that chauvinism and it’s meaning in cinema has been blurred these days.

What one used to think was the objectification of woman for instance; a “babe” in a bikini holding a gun, is now considered by some as a form of “sexy empowerment”. That said, I went into Transformers expecting every woman to have long hair, a “nice rack”, a tan and technical babble to make the geek boys pitch tents in their pants- and that’s what I got.

I personally think the way to empower a woman on screen is with really good storytelling. By showing the events occur from her perspective once in awhile and having her intelligent decisions be motivated by her need to solve a problem with or without a male side-kick to provide opportunities for her to showcase her skills in all their geeky glory.

Transformers was everything I bewilderedly knew I was going to get, but so hoped would surprise me by not being the cheesy, thin robot-storyline meets “hot chicks” and explosions Michael Bay cliché that I expected. I think he tried to be cool, modern and “non-sexist” by having a “hot” blonde New Zealand woman as a government advisor/ code breaker but he fell short at his attempt (kind of like a lot of the movie’s sub-plots). She herself had to get a guy to do most of the work for her, and the hacker who was (despite his nerdy computer skills), basically just an idiot who was in the movie simply for more bumbling fattist “comic relief” that wasn’t really funny at all. This movie was full of bad attempts at humor. Don’t even get me started on the little robot piece of shit that transformed from a boom box!

The only human character that I could stand to watch for more then a few seconds was the lead guy Shia LaBeouf, and he redeemed a LOT of scenes that could have been super duper lame-ass. You can thank his brunette teenage boy crush, arm-piece of a bad actress for pretty much nothing in this movie. The whole love storyline didn’t add anything to this movie. But I guess a lot of Michael Bay fans (knowing them) would call him “gay” (which to Bay would most likely be as painful as someone dipping his face in lava) if he didn’t show a horny heterosexual guy with only one thing on his brain trying to get a girlfriend in the film.

That’s the other thing too, the way the women were dressed, hair styled, lit and shot was so cheesy and blatantly just there for “eye-candy” that it didn’t matter what kind of smart, gutsy dialog was written in the screenplay behind them. Michael Bay’s love for Playboy seeped out of every camera position and cut, and totally drown the women’s motivations to be credible, and mine to take them seriously.

Enough of the crappy stuff! What’s the good you ask? That makes me touch back to the little boy Transformers nostalgia factor I spoke of earlier. Transformers was chalk full of it and I loved it! Yes me, proud mouthy young female critic who was whining earlier how I preferred “My Little Ponies” to Autobots & Decepticons. I loved every freaking second of the robots in disguise and out of disguise on screen. I loved the way they moved, talked and transformed, and yes I even loved that Bumble Bee was a Camero.

A lot of geeks out there are righteously pissed that their beloved black and yellow VW Bug bee was changed to a slick striped speed racing GMC. I wasn’t, especially in this kind-of a movie. If Michel Bay is going to continue to be Michael Bay in all his glory, and let’s just let him go ahead with it because is box office numbers speak to the smiles he’s giving people- many who may be simply laughing at him and his oh so obvious hormonal “boy” choices , but still laughing right? And really? Who wants the peace-loving beetle mixed up in all of that redneck nonsense anyway? It wouldn’t be the little Volkswagon style to kill and fight in a war over a planet, so lets leave him out of it and let the cocky Camaro do the macho dirty work, and Michael Bay too.

Quite frankly I find his movies entertaining and exciting. If I were to skip out on the Hollywood movies that offended my female sensibilities I would never been seen at a movie theatre, let alone writing about and critiquing film on the WWW.

When I got to Michael Bay movies, the gray matter in my scull gives me plenty of warning that I’ll be pausing for head shaking and eye-rolling, if the camera isn’t already doing that for me. Would it hurt to throw in one static shot Michael? Just one? Maybe next time, and yes there will be a next time I will like most of you lining up and paying to see it.