Viking Night: Michael Bay May Phase IV
The Island
By Bruce Hall
May 24, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But before we continue our travels together, I’d like to clarify something. When I set out to do this, it wasn’t for the purpose of doing just another “Michael Bay Sucks” longform rant. The Internet is full of those already. Some of them are quite good, and most of them are horrifyingly accurate. In this case, though, I wanted to take a sincere look at the man’s work, and draw my own conclusions from the experience. I haven’t seen any of these films in a very long time, and while my opinion of them has remained relatively consistent over the years, I wanted to go deeper than the usual Bad Bay diatribe.
Brett Ratner is also considered a… ”controversial” director, in much the same way as Bay. The critical difference, of course, is that people come out in droves to see Bay’s work. Ratner also occupies that critical no-man’s-land between acceptable box office and popular outrage - but his batting average isn’t even close. As I’ve already said, even people who enjoy Bay’s movies tend to hate them, and I’ve already figured out the reason why. The trick is to put as much effort into intentionally making a bad film as other people put into making great ones.
This means prudently putting as little effort into the screenplay as possible, while making sure to accentuate top-notch special effects, kinetic visual storytelling and appealing stars. It works the same way as fast food, hard drugs, and binge watching Japanese game shows. It feels trashy, you don’t understand it, and you’re fully aware that it barely qualifies as entertainment. It’s stupid, and almost unbearably so. But it’s so... seductively stupid.
Have you ever had a purely physical short-term relationship with someone you don’t entirely respect, simply because you can’t believe such a preposterous person exists? Obviously, I have, more times than I can count. But for those of you who don’t live the punishingly erotic life of an Internet film critic, I can see how such an experience might be worth having.
But not... remembering.
Do YOU remember the plot of Bad Boys (hint: there isn’t one)? Of course not. But I’ll bet you started giggling as soon as I mentioned the name. Bingo - that’s how McDonald’s does it. It’s how El Chapo rolled. It’s also how Super-Mecha Daidai Trivia Face-Off got on the air. And it’s why Michael Bay has as much money as Steven Spielberg, but Martin Scorsese can’t be in the same room with him without getting hives. That’s good work if you can get it.
So, this week, I picked a Michael Bay film that I recall more fondly than most of his previous work. I remembered watching The Island when it first came out, mainly because I am a big Ewan McGregor fan. And... like most of America at the time, I might have been a little fascinated with Scarlett Johansson. As I said in my review of The Rock, this is how Michael Bay draws you in. He attracts quality talent, no doubt with the charms inherent in that beaming lion’s mane of his. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see Mark Renton and Rebecca from Ghost World in a futuristic sci-fi thriller reminiscent of a Gattaca/Blade Runner mashup? I’d give that a chance even if Brett Ratner made it.
That said, I believe I implied that The Island is a futuristic sci-fi thriller reminiscent of a Gattaca/Blade Runner...yeah. Good. That it is, with a charismatically docile guy called Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) being our lead Echo. It’s the year 2019, and Lincoln lives in an architecturally sterile community where every aspect of his life is monitored and benevolently controlled. He has an unlimited supply of fresh clothes, a toilet that tells him the sodium content of his piss, and terrifying nightmares about albino shark-men, night after night.
I know. If ONLY. But not all is as it seems, since if it were, there’d be no reason to watch.
The upsides are the matching designer tracksuits, all you can drink Aquafina, and the way (almost) everyone is physically attractive and under 50. It’s as though someone mixed an Orangetheory with the police station in Minority Report and made it the whole world. Downsides are the omnipresent, black-clad security squads, and a mysterious “lottery,” whereby random winners are transported to a wondrous place called The Island. Apparently, The Island is so great, it’s even BETTER than living in a weirdly socialist, concrete and glass health resort filled with meathead gym-cops.
And... I guess there’s the part where they regulate what you eat, how much you sleep, and give you a hard time about your nightmares. Lincoln starts out having a bad day, but immediately attracts the attention of another resident by the name of Jordan Two-Delta (ScarJo), simply because they’re the main characters. It turns out the reason everything looks like the made for TV version of THX-1138 is because this insular community is all that remains of humanity. Some sort of biological disaster has befallen the earth, and everyone has a strictly regulated role to play in this blue tinted utopia.
Lincoln seems to be the only person who has a problem with all this, though. He wonders about little things like why everyone must dress the same and what’s the deal with Tofu Night? He probably also wonders why all the residents have the apparent intellectual capability of a child, except the gym-cops and the placidly sinister guy who runs the place, Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean).
This is where I remember the movie starting to lose me. The basic premise of the film is obviously derivative, and I’ve already mentioned examples. Lincoln is the lone dissenter in an antiseptic dystopia who finds his equally sexy female equivalent. They nurture each other’s curiosity and thirst for variety in life. They question authority. We’re clearly supposed to be imagining them having sex. I would commend the acting in this film as being generally worthy of the talent, but there’s an odd scene near the middle of the story between Lincoln and Jordan, when they first teamed up to tackle a mutual threat. McGregor and Johansson both seem confused, and the level of tension is about as convincing as the wedding vows between a bride and groom six decades apart in age.
It felt a little like a reshoot scene, barely rehearsed and hurriedly shot before someone realized one of the actors had gained five pounds. Still, both characters’ good natured innocence makes them seem like the smartest children in a room full of sixth graders. And if you step back with that in mind (as you are clearly meant to), you start to see the first act of the film in a different light. But if The Island fails to live up to the genre that inspired it, it’s only partially because it (mostly) drops its big narrative reveal far too early. Unfortunately, the story’s goal is not to find any insight into what separates us from animals.
Instead, for about half an hour, we get to see what Michael Bay’s version of Logan’s Run might have looked like (hint: slick, sexy, with music from a video game trailer). Then, it tries to be a horror movie for about ten minutes, before finally diluting itself into every other Michael Bay film you’ve ever seen. This means that yes, somehow there are eventually car chases, a 30- minute string of teal and orange explosions, a moment of realization in the rain, a handful of dutch angles, and the world famous “shit just got real” spin shot - from a goddamn helicopter.
That’s right, you walked into the dealership to buy the red car in the window, only to find out that they only have green ones, and windshield wipers are extra. The first 30 minutes of The Island dance around a handful of interesting (if well worn) ideas, before dropping them in favor of a string of action set pieces. The rest of the film is a generic Michael Bay flick featuring Steve Buscemi, some urban design concepts from The Fifth Element, gratuitous crane shots and helicopter flybys, as well as Ewan McGregor’s mildly off-putting American accent.
I do applaud Bay’s (somewhat feeble) attempt to tackle weightier content. Even if it does fail on almost every level, we’re talking about a guy who managed to turn the Pearl Harbor attack into a black comedy. Do we have any choice but to grade him on a curve? In fact, I guess we should be doubly proud, because the screenplay was co-written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. They, like JJ Abrams, have deep creative ties with Mr. Bay. In fact, you may recognize those names as part of an elite fraternity of men, who have taken great pains to ensure that every action movie from now on is full of action beats and clever music cues, while remaining utterly devoid of plot.
This also means I wasn’t playing when I implied that the Bay/Spielberg coaching trees share the same patch of ground. Make of THAT what you will.
So, what can I say, other than if you’re worried about the lunatics taking over the asylum that is our society, rest assured the process began many decades ago. And leading the charge was Michael Bay, and his merry band of collaborators. The Island is, even to this day, among the “smartest” films Bay has ever made, and if you look at the box office, you’ll see he was soundly rejected. Clearly, after seeing his first attempt at intellectualism receive a resounding middle finger from audiences, Bay solemnly swore never to waste time on pointless things like “plot” or “character development” ever again.
Yes. I am saying that in a twisted way, we ASKED for those Transformers movies.
On the upside, do you remember what I said about The Island feeling like a horror film for about ten minutes? Those were actually ten relatively effective minutes, taken out of the context of the film (IN context, the whole premise behind the film turns out to be rather inane, even by its own logic). Therefore, I propose that Michael Bay call it a day with the whole “giant robots fighting ninja turtles” genre. I’d like to see him try his hand at a horror/buddy/action/comedy/musical. Not only would this cater to Bay’s greatest strengths, but it would represent a return to form for the man behind one of Vanilla Ice’s least memorable videos (for what THAT’S worth).
I even can see him beating Eli Roth at his own game. And to those who sarcastically say that Michael Bay has made nothing BUT horror films so far, my answer is:
You ain’t seen nothing yet.