Michael Bay might just be the purest example (if you want to subscribe to it at all) of the auteur theory. He may even invert it, since he not only makes the film he wants, but it’s precisely the film the studio wants. He is both shaped by industrial forces, and shaping them, making American cinema even louder, flashier, and explosionier in order to compete with his extravaganzas.
As a director, Bay’s confidence is well-known and unparalleled. Many have said he’s essentially perfected his own product with Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. Now he has no choice but to homage himself. If he paid tribute to himself, it would be a film that is simultaneously personal and product, an explosion-riddled extravaganza that folded in on itself … and probably took time and space with it, but that’s just the risk Bay would have to take to make the biggest summer blockbuster ever.
What would it be about, you ask? How could Bay homage himself? Easy — well, except for trying to describe the sheer mayhem which only Bay can wield, like a manic kid with a Spirograph.
The film would begin in WWII. The Germans have come in possession of a mysterious vessel. It appears to be an ordinary metal box, but intelligence reports that within is a substance that gives its users unspeakable gifts and powers. An operation is plotted, carried out, successful. The Germans, the artifact, and the users are all destroyed in a magnificent explosion that tanks fly out of.* This is the first 30 minutes of the film.
Fast forward to the 21st century, where Marcus Merrick, a LAPD cop on the edge, is preparing the biggest drug bust of his career. The LAPD manages to seize $200 million of heroin belonging to a famous drug kingpin named Ramon Guzman. But much to the amazement of the LAPD and Merrick, it’s not heroin. The substance looks like heroin, but tests as something that is chemically out of this world. Mysterious government forces swoop in, remove the substance, and the case stays off the books. Merrick is left disgruntled, embarassed … and curious. He goes home to his hot girlfriend, Tiffany, who threatens to leave him if he doesn’t stop brooding over his drug bust.
Meanwhile, Rafe Goodspeed, a cocky naval aviator, is engaging in a routine training exercise outside of Pensacola, Florida. Something goes wrong with his aircraft, and he crashes into the sea. While he’s underwater, struggling to get free of his aircraft, he sees a vision. There’s something under the water. Something huge and glowing. He is rescued and makes a full report, but his vision is dismissed as the result of oxygen deprivation. He goes home to his hot girlfriend, Kaylee, who threatens to leave him if he doesn’t stop brooding over his plane crash.
Goodspeed and Merrick refuse to take the official version of events. They began to investigate. Eventually — and by that, I mean they bump into each other at a bar — they meet and pool their resources. They realize they have to work together despite their different personalities of rule-breaking, cockiness, and general badassness. With the help of Kaylee, who has a history degree, a high-ranking father, and a laptop, they discover the substance is an alien drug, but it’s not just any alien drug. It gives the users the power of a god. They can run faster, see farther, hit harder, and regenerate from any injury. The user can even re-grow their own organs. It was first found by Nazi scientists during WWII, growing and thriving on a meteorite that landed smack in the middle of Berlin. Allied forces thought that had destroyed all traces of it … but more just keeps coming from space. Worst of all, it seems to be drawn by evil intentions.
Merrick realizes that it found its way into the hands of Ramon Guzman not accidentally, but deliberately, and that it is already on the streets of L.A. To complicate matters, Guzman has kidnapped Tiffany, hoping to lure Merrick to him. Goodspeed realizes that a faction within the U.S. government, led by Brigadier General Francis Gould, is well-aware of what is growing within the Gulf — a supply that will never, ever run out, fueled entirely by the Deep Horizon oil spill — and they intend to use it for their own world-dominating ends.
But how do they stop the flow of space spice, and defeat Gould’s faction who would use it for their own ends? By stealing a space shuttle. (“I hope I don’t have to hotwire this thing!”) Accompanied by their SWAT team, they load it up with missiles and the most powerful bomb in the civilized world. They fly over the Gulf, releasing bombs, and destroying the alien substance before zooming to Washington D.C. to destroy the Washington Monument, where Gould has his base. While en route home, Kaylee taps into shuttle communications and tells Goodspeed she discovered that the source of the alien substance is the moon.
Low on fuel, they fly to the moon, where they discover shards of an alien civilization and the gateway to Earth. If they can destroy the gateway, they will ensure they place a bomb, the most powerful bomb in the world, in the moon’s deepest crater. As they are placing the bomb, something goes wrong. The bomb has a safety device which has malfunctioned, and someone has to stay behind to set it up. The oldest, hardest, and crankiest SWAT team member steps up, and reveals he is Jerry Lincoln, the father Tiffany never knew. Since Merrick is the man in her life, he must return to her, and Lincoln will be the father he never could be by saving Tiffany and all of Earth. As the space shuttle flies back to Earth on its own fumes, Lincoln detonates the bomb, blowing up half the moon. (The half that doesn’t control the tides, obviously.)
All seems well! Merrick and Goodspeed are hailed as heroes. As they celebrate beside a pool, enjoying an all-American barbeque, and watching the sunset play over wheat fields, gazing at the surviving half of the moon, we pan over to North Korea, where one tiny fragment of the alien substance lands near a military base.
Aerosmith’s “Livin’ on the Edge” will play us out to credits, while we realize we’ve been in the theater for roughly four and a half hours, and can’t hear out of our left ear.
