I am not, nor do I
understand who is, a fan of Michael Bay movies. The few I have seen are just
awful. South Park summed it up best with the Imagination Land episode that
included Michael Bay. Explosions and special effect shots do not a story make. I
had walked away from any project of his years ago. Well that was until the other
night.
I fell into a Michael
Bay movie that stars Sean Bean and with the man crush I have I decided to sit
through it to support him. Plus I really wanted to see if he made it out alive
since he seems to die in every movie. Surprise...he doesn't live.
The film was The
Island and it was bad, scary bad. It will easily make this month’s scary, but
not intentionally, film list.
The premise is that
there is a global catastrophe and survivors are found and live underground in
some super high tech shelter. The survivors are all adults, there are no
children and they are all dumb as a bag of hammers. Here they live, work and
play with the hope of winning a lottery. The winners go to the “island” which is
some quasi-Eden to live a happy joy joy
life. Well guess what, it is all lie. There is no island, these people are
clones that are used for organ replacement by the rich/famous people who pay for
the service. However, the world doesn’t know that these are actual living
beings, until two of them escape and show the world what is
happening.
Why is this scary
bad? Well the usual Bay elements come into play that make all his films drek. We get the introduction of various characters that
just disappear as the film progresses. They get an intro and we think they are
critical to the film, then they just go away. They aren’t killed off or
anything, they just seem to disappear.
The textbook spinning
camera is disgustingly bad. There is a tight zoom on the hero (and heroine if
there is one). Then the camera spins around them for some damned reason. It is
in all his movies and it is just awful.
We also get the
ridiculous action sequences. I can suspend disbelief for a lot, but when there
are gigundus explosions, vehicle wrecks and parts of
buildings collapsing; how is it possible that the main characters walk away with
perfect hair, make up and maybe just a small bloody
cut on their face or head? This is just awful. There is a civilian and/or
innocent bystander body count in the hundreds to thousands that is comical.
Horrendous damage to property and humans while in the vicinity of the main
characters, and they walk away looking 90% unscathed.
Then plot is pretty
lame, but nothing a good director or descent writer couldn’t fix. That does not
happen. The movie is just a mash up of various bits taken from: The Prisoner,
Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Coma, and some Blade Runner just to name a few.
There really is not much originality here and it shows badly. This is not
uncommon with Michael Bay stuff. You know going in that this is a blow'em up movie. Yet, there is always an attempt at more
than that in the story. An attempt that is always a bucket of scary bad
fail.
Like all Michael Bay
films this is terrible. It is scary that he keeps getting dump trucks full of
money for his awful movies. Worse is that people keep going to see them for
enjoyment, and often times say they are….(Urp! I just
threw up a little)…good.
Quick aside
As I enjoy Jason
Statham and Vin Diesel how can I judge so harshly? Simple there is fun action
and there is bad action. Fun action is Pitch Black. Bad action is Armageddon or
The Rock. See how that works.
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