On the Soap Box: The Michael Bay Generation (Is Filmmaking Dead?)

So I'm reading this thread on a message board about movies, and I see someone say "Oh, that movie's boring.. I could barely stay awake through it." Something I've seen repeated several times, about this film in particular.

Is it boring? Not really, no. It's quite engaging, actually. But it does two things that seem to be anathema to the average moviegoer these days:

1) It doesn't have boobies or explosions.
2) It actually makes you put the pieces of the plot together yourself instead of just handing it to you on a silver platter.

The film in question? The recent spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

I refer to this phenomenon as the "Michael Bay Generation". Although Bay is not directly responsible for the phenomenon, his films are the most obvious example of it. Like a lot of entertainment genres these days, including television, reading, and gaming, people seem to want the "spectacle" more than the "art".

Case in point: Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Total box office take worldwide, over one billion dollars. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? Fifty-six million. It seems that people just don't want films like this anymore.

Let's examine TTSS for a minute. Surprisingly short at barely two hours, I fully expected it to be quite a bit longer. It's a spy thriller taking place in and around British Intelligence (MI6) during the Cold War in 1973. It features an absolutely stellar cast, including Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Ciar?n Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, and John Hurt, all of which turn in spectacular performances. Gary Oldman is looking at an Oscar nomination (his first, surprisingly) for this role, and it's well deserved.

The "problem" with the film, according to the Michael Bay Generation, is that it's a true spy movie. The way spies actually work in the real world. This isn't James Bond's MI6. This is a bunch of guys talking about sources of information and deciding how to act on it. It describes the recruitment process, and how normally uneventful spying really is. Sneaking into an office and making off with a folder full of information instead of parachuting into a villain's lair and killing forty-seven people using a watch with a laser in it. One of the most tense moments in TTSS is literally a character trying to distract the people around him so he can stuff a pile of paper into his briefcase. And it works because it's so brilliantly edited and acted, you really feel the tension that the character feels, and you know that he (and you) will just die if someone suddenly pipes up and says "Oy, what you doin' there?" The character almost has a nervous breakdown afterwards, and you really believe it.

So there's no big explosions or fight scenes. I think there's a total of maybe four gunshots throughout the entire film. Exciting, in the Michael Bay sense? No, definitely not. Gripping and enthralling through story and acting? Absolutely.

And yes, no boobies. There's only a few mentions of sex throughout the entire film, and it's seen through the eyes of a very jaded and somewhat bitter middle-aged man who's dealing with his own issues. So no "Bond girls", either. The one woman we feel even the slightest bit of concern for throughout the film is brutally murdered right in front of us.

Another thing that TTSS does is make you think things out on your own. It's a spy movie, after all, a real spy movie. I knew going into it that the plot was probably going to be extremely complicated, so I was prepared for it when it turned out to be exactly that. Yeah, a lot of it gets explained at the end, but the pieces are always there if you look. It's a film with a lot of different threads going on, and they don't really start to come together until the film's climax. And even then, it's not all just handed to the audience.. there's still little pieces you need to think about on your own if you want an answer.

It's a really sad thing that a film like this will simply be labeled as "boring" (along with other "boring" films like The Godfather, I suppose), and will probably disappear into the bargain bin, and will force Hollywood to stop producing them. It really is an exceptional piece of filmmaking, and if you have it in you to appreciate good films.. not "spectacles" or "event films", but just really good films, then you owe it yourself to see this one.

Source: http://jedi2016.blogspot.com/2012/02/michael-bay-generation-is-filmmaking.html

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