A TSOF Exclusive: The Secret of Michael Bay (THE ROCK Review)

First off, let me apologize for the lengthy time between reviews. You may have heard that I was absolutely swamped at work, but that was just misinformation I spread to keep the hounds off my tail. Secretly, I've been working on a piece of investigative journalism so explosive it might blow the lid off the Internet. That's right: a lidless Internet. Imagine.

For years, Michael Bay has been a favourite whipping boy of the lidded Net, with his cocaine-fuelled, spatially-confusing, character-less messes like BAD BOYS, PEARL HARBOR, and THE ISLAND. But there was always one film that could seemingly redeem Mr. Bay from any of these disasters: THE ROCK.

THE ROCK may well be a masterpiece (or at least the folks at Criterion seem to think so), but one was forced to wonder how a man who could construct moments like this could also be responsible for dreck like this. Thanks to my sources in the greater Cali area, I present you with damning proof of how THE ROCK was possible, and perhaps why he has never risen to such heights again:

THE EXPENDABLES befuddles the mind

Once upon a time, Sylvester Stallone was nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting.

This is a scene from THE EXPENDABLES.

Reconcile those two facts, and get back to me. I'm still working on it.

$20,000 Worth of Film Theory Classes Finally Pay Off: My Combined Review of STEP UP 3D and PIRANHA 3D

I don't mind putting words in the mouths of dead men, even if it's a little dangerous, but I feel pretty safe in saying that if Marshall McLuhan was alive today, he'd be losing his shit over PIRANHA 3D. And be tweeting things like "OMGz, @STEP UP 3D ttly rocked my wrld!"

Well, I don't know if he'd be tweeting. The man who once wrote a whole book essentially about how lightbulbs are awesome would probably deplore the 140-character limit. But he'd definitely be buying multiple $20 tickets and gushing to his friends about how his new favourite form of representation was no longer 40-watt tungsten, but 3D film.

Let's back up a minute and let me drop a little media theory knowledge on y'all, just to make sure we're on the same page. McLuhan is known most famously for his declaration that "the medium is the message", a theory that postulates that the specific qualities of a form of representation is what is actually imparted to its audience, rather than any message embodied in the representation. The content is not actually what is being passed on to the viewer - it's the way through which we experience it. This means that supposedly corrupting TV shows are actually the same as such wholesome fare as SEVENTH HEAVEN - they're really imparting the same social programming on the viewer, because we are forced to experience it through the same way.

So if the medium is the message, than PIRANHA 3D and STEP UP 3D are saying the exact same thing: sit down, shut up, and look at these tits wobbling in your face. This is what you came here for.

PIRANHA 3D is pure entertainment, a film that is not concerned with trifling matters like gravity or the relationship between oxygen and the human brain. If it gets in the way of entertaining you, then it can go to hell. That's why there's a three-minute naked underwater ballet scene, Christopher Lloyd shouting every line in his best Doc Brown voice, and Jerry O'Connell screaming "They ate my dick! They ate my dick!" There's no delusions of grandeur here, no attempt to portray some sort of human truth, just a never-ending drive to put crazier and crazier things on screen.

This may be even more true for STEP UP 3D, whose quest for pure entertainment leads it to completely disregard any attempt at coherent storytelling in favour of moving as quickly as possible from jaw-dropping dance number to jaw-dropping laser-emitting-TRON-suit dance number. I'm pretty sure I heard the line, "You and your trust fund can't stop us!" at one point, and while some might see this as lazy scripting, it's actually an attempt to just move to the next viscerally thrilling spin move as quickly as possible. With this line, there's no need for me to see the trust fund kid doing something evil, I already know he's evil because he has been identified as a trust fund kid. Done. Now show me somebody fly through the air while grabbing their crotch. Then show me two people doing it. Then show me a whole crew of people doing it while lasers shoot off their backs and directly into my eyeballs.

The form of 3D is something that has been debated for quite a while now. Some filmmakers are trying to convince us that 3D can be used to accentuate storytelling, draw an audience deeper into the world. CORALINE is a fine modern example of this. These are usually the same crowds that bemoan shots of yo-yos flying towards the camera as "gimmicky" and "trite".

Here's a newsflash, bitches: 3D is a gimmick.

If you want to tell a story in a visual medium, we've got this awesome thing called two-dimensional films. Make one of those. But if I want to see a piranha eat Jerry O'Connell's dick, you better believe I want that dick floating towards me, eighty feet tall and inches from my face. Only then will I truly feel the horror of what's happening. And if you're making a horny-teens-on-spring-break movie, you better believe I'd like those wet t-shirt contests right in front of my eyes while Eli Roth calls breasts "Danny Devitos" in the rear channel speakers. If you're making a movie about the human body in motion, then you should absolutely use all the dimensions available to you. And if you're smart, you'll give me only the barest framework of a story to hang your dance choreography on. I don't give a shit about your story - I'm here for the experience.

The medium is the message. And 3D is telling us how visceral we are.