Transformers 4 — How a Franchise Destroyed a Filmmaker | Anatomy Of A Failure

i guess this is really happening a man me who's worth over 20 billion dollars is now being being chased by cia assassins in the middle of a robot uprising carrying what is in essence a tactical nuke [Music] the transformers movies may have never exactly been setting the bar high in terms of quality but the point where the franchise finally fully hit rock bottom was in its fourth installment 2014's transformers age of extinction see past criticism aside i will say that the initial trilogy of films did pack some redeemable qualities that made them at least partially watchable but age of extinction not so much to put it simply this movie is so unbearably hollow and boring and overall just so not so great that it manages to transcend even time itself you sit there watching it for days on end and when it's finally over you then realize that it's actually been only two and a half hours if i had to name one core source behind all that unbearable not so greatness i would argue that source to be the one and only inventor of the three b's director michael bay oh my god the thing about michael bay is that his career as a filmmaker very much parallels the transformers franchise his earlier movies weren't exactly cinematic masterpieces but they did pack some redeemable qualities that made them at least watchable but starting with age of extinction every blockbuster he's made has been an unbearable show and if there exists one specific back to the future like cosmic turning point event where we lost michael bay for good it's this movie right here and that's what i want to focus on today to use age of extinction as a case study in order to identify michael bay's core flaws as a filmmaker and how the growing success of this franchise made those flaws grow so strong that they ended up consuming him all together to be very clear though all joking aside the point here isn't to make fun of michael bay or whatever i'm sure you can find plenty of stuff like that elsewhere the point here is to recognize his main faults as a director so that maybe those faults can be fixed not that i think he's gonna be watching this because based on his instagram he clearly has better things to i'm thinking about a do wicked-ass action scene but it's just you know maybe if we put this in the universe the universe will find a way to respond i don't know also speaking of i have something serious of my own that i need to put in the universe and talk to you guys about as well which is um well it's a you know what we'll get to it later on anyway here are the main problems with michael bay as a filmmaker and how those problems manifest themselves in age of extinction here is how transformers and age of extinction specifically ruined michael bay [Music] firstly michael bay as a director wields this signature goofy superficial tone that in this movie has grown so strong that it's actually preventing us from establishing an emotional connection to it the best exemplifying example of this is the case of our main texas hero katie yeager basically katie yeager is a humble inventor who buys this big batch of old junk in a last-ditch effort to make ends meet because not only can't his daughter afford college even his house is being taken from them and i know it's been sucky around here lately but we're gonna be fine sweetie you just gotta keep believing okay but then kate's life changes when the old rusty truck he bought turns out to be an injured optimus prime who he chooses to help instead of selling out to the government for a reward forming this incredibly strong bond between them to the point where they're both willing to sacrifice for each other when the other is at their most vulnerable all of which at face value feels very powerful that's only at face value though because in reality michael bay's excessively carefully goofy tone ensures that none of that actually feels like anything first off kate isn't as much an inventor as he is a stereotypical mockumentary level parody of one we don't see him invent anything that matters we don't see him build anything that isn't a joke so it just brings the beer near you all we do see is that he has this absurd super funny obsession of being an inventor that i invented simply ahead of their time something should never be invented no i don't that's backwards thinking i'm still gonna patent this look i know you have a conscience because you're an inventor like me i mean that's what great inventors do i promise you one day i'm gonna build something that matters i'm an inventor this could be a game changer for me if i can apply that technology to my inventions we never have to and the reason why k doesn't need to invent anything is because even though this movie implies that he is struggling to make ends meet michael bay's signature tone also makes sure that it's not actually a real problem for him or for us to actually worry about that patch of old scrap kate bought at the beginning it's not like he ever tries to engineer it into something in a desperate final effort to make his investment turn a profit it's just more unimportant junk laying around the house that he might or might not eventually get to what is all this crap people send you and as for losing the house it's not really presented as a proper obstacle that could really happen but instead more as just another joke sir do you want to see the property sure and i'll crack your head open like an egg i told you this massive offense and as for kate's relationships like with his daughter test same thing the main gist of the relationship is that kate wants tests to be a good girl who doesn't spend time with boys but we don't go into it any further than that this is a non-dating household okay you don't date i don't date that's it we don't dive into why kate has developed a distaste for boys as a whole we don't see tess spend time with his boyfriend shane and set up things like his car and the chase in factory building before later on they all suddenly just appear basically kate hates boys just because that's what dads do and because it's really funny than what he has to go on a journey with a boy who says he likes to bone his daughter this is illegal she's a minor we're protected by the romeo and juliet laws statute 2705-3 and then finally there's the bond with optimus which is never formed we never see kate work on a truck all night as his last remaining hope of making money we never see him discover that it's a wounded optimus prime we never get a moment where he really considers selling optimus out to the government for a reward that can solve his problems but then chooses not to it's not like he ever gives any of his own parts to fix optimus instead all of that is either just cut out or made into a joke or both you guys have never seen a truck like this before get in here and if it ends up being an alien then you win 25 000 you don't win money i've seen the commercials they don't say that that's not a guarantee my autobots can repair me what about me as we know that optimus then reveals himself to save kate's family it feels like nothing because kate has done nothing to earn this action from him when they go on this whole journey together as best friends even though there was never a real friendship established between them it's just pretty weird and i know that's just one example but if you watch the movie you'll see that the same mentality applies throughout nothing feels like anything because everything is a joke we have a crooked ceo who changes his ways for the good of humanity but then still keeps saying stuff like just hit him just hit him we have a bald daredevil boyfriend who's willing to do anything for the love of his life except for the times where he suddenly isn't you ready yeah yeah yeah okay whoa okay i surrender i surrender what'd you do how'd you do that i have no idea look michael bay has always had this carefree tone in his movies in some form yes but in the past it's been reserved enough that we could still at least on some level care about the world and the characters like with sam and the autobots for example and i just wish that he would go back to that his movies can be fun but not everything in his movies has to be funny because if you lay down a proper emotional anchor and then just make that anchor into a joke there's not much emotion to be found in it but before we go on guys uh i can't push this any further i have to talk about this now because i i need to ask you for help so basically in order to keep making these videos i need microsoft office and right now in the karakosian store it's a hundred dollars for a year which is a bit more than i can afford at the moment because of something that's been going on in my life so i was wondering if if you guys could maybe paypal me some money to what wait now i'm in the indian region microsoft store and the price is much lower and i can actually afford it and i'm also getting cheaper subscriptions all kinds of cheaper deals online what is going on who has saved my livelihood like this oh guys it must have been this magic blue bun that one being surf shark to almighty vpn that makes dreams like this come true they're sponsoring this video with a special black friday offer of 83 off with four extra months for free by using code film so if you want to find better deals online if you want to protect your personal online data if you want to see all the content that streaming services divide behind various geolocks check out the link in the description and get surf shark's magic blue bun for yourself it'll help out the channel as well but anyway yeah that was about it okay bye [Music] secondly as michael bay's clout as a director has grown it's gone to the point where he does whatever he wants with plotting characters regardless of whether they fit together or altogether make any sense the plot here for example is less one united motivation driven story and more a bloated nonsensical myth of all these different stories and motivation so far apart from each other that they just end up cannibalizing each other essentially the initial plotline is that after the chicago war of the third movie the government led by the cia guy has begun hunting what remains of the autobots to ensure that nothing like chicago ever happens again which again at face value is not only comprehensible but also pretty good our world will never truly be safe until all of them are gone i'm trying to defend the nation from alien war we've got a taste of what that looks like and we're not gonna tolerate just think of all the american lives we're going to say the war will be over but the further we go the less comprehensible this plotline and the motivations driving it become because despite all the cia guys talk about saving human lives and winning wars the movie never establishes that there is or will ever be a war and that's because the screen time is now being spent on the second plot line where we have this intergalactic bounty hunter transformer lockdown working with the cia guy to capture optimus prime in other words we have a guy hunting transformers because he doesn't trust them trusting a transformer enough to hunt with them we have a guy with a motivation of finding optimus prime to save human lives in reality trying to find optimus prime just so that he can hand him over to another transformer which fits together about as well as water and fire that fell down to earth from space also did i mention that we have an intergalactic bounty hunter transformer for some reason working with the cia [Music] what is that that's my asset [Laughter] well the reason lockdown is here to capture optimus prime is because their intergalactic creators are pissed that optimus fights on earth have been tipping off the universe's balance all this species mixing with species it upsets the cosmic balance the creators they don't like it which is totally understandable and could very well work until suddenly turns out that lockdown is paying the cia guy with this bomb that turns all material into transformer metal and then it's like so the creators have an issue with optimus interacting with humans because it tips the scales of cosmic balance but at the same time don't see any problem at all with giving humans what essentially is a transformer nuke okay well the reason lockdown gives humans the nuke is because we also have this evil company plot line where this questionable ceo is gathering transformer metal which they can use to build anything we can change anything into anything except of course for the times that they can't why does he keep looking like megatron why can't we make anything what we want to make the way we want to make it again this plotline of murdering transformers to use their metal to build anything for huge profits could work great until we then see that all they're actually building from the transformer middle is just more transformers without any established reasoning as to why they're doing that or why they need a transformer army when there is no battle for them to fight with that army and so on so on but it doesn't matter anyway because the only reason that happens is that we also have a plot line of megatron being reborn with a new form and taking over that transformer army to attack the earth in the third act so what i'm getting at is that michael bay's obsession of doing everything just results in this incomprehensible mess of incompatible plotlines fighting and sabotaging each other for any bit of extra screen time there's a great quote by the writer of these movies where he basically says about the process that first michael bay comes up with all this cool he wants to do and then it's the writer's job to cram all that cool into one story whether it makes any sense or not and it's the same with characters michael bay doesn't worry too much about what the course of his characters are and instead will just make them do whatever he feels like even if it means destroying that core we have these new autobots intended to be different in both looks and personality who all just end up being the exact same classic michael bay character the rash so who's the stowaways oh hey cut the crap before i drop a grenade down you throw let's try to use violence as a last resort and this comes with the cost of all these characters being ruined like happens with bumblebee bumblebee used to have a pretty clear personality before but here he has suddenly turned into this chat like hothead who picks a fight with a model of a transformer just because a voice on a television says that model is better than him as if this reality actually took place on xbox live design was decrypted and let's face it and i just wish that michael bay would find someone who dares to stand up to him and say no no we can't sacrifice basic story logic so that you can do everything you want no we can't ruin our characters just because you feel like they should act differently than who they are no michael bay you can't just take movies from three separate mcu faces and cram them into one [Music] the third core issue with michael baioff today is that he's gone to the point as a filmmaker where he genuinely does not care what you think about his movies which carries a multitude of very destructive issues the best exemplification of this here being the third act where we suddenly go to china right away the very obvious thing to point out is that we suddenly go to china all of a sudden the movie is being literally driven forward by this amazing superior chinese heroes i'll follow you anywhere you're amazing even to the point where total random strangers in elevators fight are bad guys for us because that's just how chinese people are i guess and altogether this film becomes just pure chinese propaganda we gotta call the central government for help the reason this happens is because they need chinese money to fund this film to increase its chinese box office potential which isn't that unusual but the reason it's so much worse than usual here is because michael bay doesn't even try to keep it organic to the movie he'll go to china he'll let china dictate how their people in government are portrayed he'll let china walk right over the film if it means one more dollar to the budget and box office which showcases the fact that michael bay has lost his integrity another thing that happens here is this all-out war against megatron's new army which happens not because it's been in any way built up to or tied to what we've done before but mainly because the movie just decides that that's what's happening now i sense the presence of megatron he infected it with his evil nasty chromosome name the body the snappy name of galvatron but that's just megatron ksi oh they'll manipulate them into going after the sea and it's pretty clear to every person who knows anything about filmmaking that you can't just add in a brand new villain to serve as a momentary third act opponent michael bay does know it too but he just doesn't care doesn't matter how the explosions and the dinosaurs and the bay him come to be it only matters that they're there which showcases the fact that michael bay has lost his enthusiasm and altogether the third act is full of these bigger and smaller moments highlighting the fact that michael bay has lost his passion for filmmaking as a whole we have this moment where kate goes to take cover behind an empty wall when yeah suddenly a random person has magically appeared in a shot right beside him and it's not some crew member accidentally in the background it's not a coffee cup that you won't notice until you read about it on twitter no this is a random person right in the middle of the shot and any sensible director who looks at this would go okay we can't use this shot but michael b he just doesn't care another thing you know how the main goal of the third act is for heroes to drive the transformer bomb across this bridge and out of the city before megatron gets it well after all that is said and done turns out that optimists could fly this entire time because they need that to set up the sequel which just begs the question of why didn't optimists just fly the bomb away in the first place and again we're not talking about some minor plot hole here this is something that makes everything we just saw pointless and obsolete just because the care and attention was more on the next movie than the movie being made right now we have bombs that inexplicably begin tracking location we have heroes who stay behind to pluck a bridge even though there are no more threats left to pluck it from we have bad guys who want to kill our heroes for reasons nobody knows but who the cares anyway right not michael bay and look yes michael bay has always been a confident filmmaker you know name one other director who has shown multiple scenes of his own dogs boning on screen but i think this is the point where he got out of control he knows he's making trash he has no aspirations to stop making trash and he's not afraid to let us know that movies nowadays that's the trouble sequels and remakes bunch of crap and again i'm not saying this to be mean or whatever this fact is he is very successful i'm saying this just with the hopes that maybe if michael bay learned some humility if he learned to actually care about what people think about his movies and listen to feedback maybe that would allow him to regain his last passion and once more become an actual filmmaker like he in the past used to be maybe potentially i don't know [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Filmento

Views: 1,694,008

Keywords: transformers, age of extinction, michael bay, transformers 6, transformers 4, lockdown, optimus prime, filmento, transformers movies, video essay, screenwriting, next transformers movie, dark of the moon, shia labeouf, megan fox, upcoming movies, 4k clip hd, 2020 bad movies, official trailer, bayhem, what is bayhem, bumblebee, dinobots, dinobot charge, grimlock, autobots, decepticons, mistakes, review, thanos

Id: A57FPcLD_1I

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020