When a friend and I decided to buy tickets to see 1984 at the Playhouse Theatre in London, I was excited, but skeptical. After having been thoroughly impressed by Orwell's novel earlier in the year, and thoroughly unimpressed by the 1956 film adaptation shortly afterwards, naturally I was afraid that the play would not be able to do it justice. I was happily proven wrong.
While I would have a hard time saying the play was on an exact par with the novel, it was certainly able to capture much of what made Orwell's original work so entrancing. The actors, bolstered all around them by the plays's costumes, sets and special effects, were able to convey and instill the powerful sensations from what is a profoundly emotional story. Highlights included the momentous shock which Winston feels when he receives his first note from Julia, or the sensation of absolute terror he experiences during his initial torture and later, in Room 101. It should come as no surprise then that, much like the novel, the play was also able to keep its audience engaged throughout its entire duration; no mean feat considering it lasted over an hour and a half with no interval. The trailer below will give you a good taste of all the above:
Despite facing the relative time constraints encountered by all theatrical adaptations of novels, the play was nonetheless also able to develop 1984's key themes to provide a truly stimulating intellectual experience. While the classic topics of sanity and surveillance were well developed by the play, it was its treatment of memory as a theme which completely enveloped my mind. The dialogue and scene changes really helped to create a distorted sense of recollection which added layers to the characters' musings over the age-old but perpetually relevant question, "Can we truly know anything?"
My friend and I left the Playhouse Theatre mentally exhausted in the best possible way, barely able to discuss what we had just seen as we attempted to finish processing it all. I'm quite frankly stunned that I even had it in me to write this review so soon after seeing the play. Perhaps Winston's exploration of the fleeting nature and consequent significance of memory compelled me to just sit down and write it before it was too late.
It's quite apt that the topic of memory should be so significant to 1984 and my experience of the story's theatrical adaptation. After a brief tube ride home, during which I collected my thoughts and listened to Big Brother over the PA system, I realised I had enjoyed the play so much precisely because of the way it interacted with my memory of the original novel. This is not to say that if you have not read Orwell's work you won't follow the plot or enjoy the play overall, but I would argue that you won't enjoy it as much as if you had read it beforehand. The play was able to bring the story of 1984 to life for me, but largely because Orwell had already made the story so vivid in my mind to begin with.
Now I'm perfectly happy to admit that I love the action films. Don't get me wrong, I can't express how much I appreciate an intricate plot, fascinating characters or a thought-provoking message in a film. That being said, I can still love a film that possesses none of the above and redeems itself purely though good action. It is for this reason that I am often the only person in a given group of people who is willing to defend the Transformers film series. After the most recent installment, however, I fear the franchise may have lost one of its most casual champions. Before I launch into why that is the case, I should say that the point of this post is to help moviegoers decide if they would like to see Age of Extinction or not, and it will not contain any spoilers.
Don't let the critical tone of the previous paragraph mislead you, Age of Extinction wasn't all bad. Like in previous installments, Michael Bay and the film's writers were able to introduce a host of cool new transformers without severe continuity issues. Among these new characters, two are worthy of mention for being particularly badass.The first of these is Drift, a samurai-themed autobot armed with more than one obscenely huge sword. The second of these is Crosshairs, an autobot paratrooper whose metal exoskeleton includes a long, flowing coat to keep him looking sharp while he fires away with his pair of transformer-sized handguns.
I'd buy that coat if it came in my size.
And its not just the robots; a couple of the human characters weren't half bad either. Mark Walhberg's performance as Cade Yeager, the struggling single father and inventor, makes his character far more likable as the human hero of the film than the hysterical Sam Witwicky (performed by Shia LaBeouf) had been in the previous three installments. Additionally, Stanley Tucci's performance as Joshua Joyce, the initially arrogant technology manufacturer, ever so slightly improves the clunky and strained character development Joyce briefly undergoes during the film.
It is a little known fact that Bay
was the original choice to direct Titanic
However, if we have to point to character visuals and actor performances as the redeeming features of a film whose previous franchise installments were saved only by their action scenes, things start looking pretty bad for Age of Extinction. Indeed, the film failed to do the one thing it was expected to do: entertain the audience with some mindless action. This failure can be summed up in a sentence I never thought I'd say: Michael Bay finally went overboard with the explosions. This is by no means a new criticism of the director, and it should not be taken to mean that I think the previous Transformers installments were short on gratuitous explosions. However, Age of Extinction lacked some of the cinematography which made the action of its predecessors far more entertaining. The clip below from the third installment, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, shows what I'm getting at:
At around 0:40, Optimus Prime goes off on one of the best action rampages I've ever seen in a film, given how he effortlessly switches between a variety of weapons to seamlessly defeat multiple enemies. A variety of camera shots are used to help bring this out, such as the long-distance shot at 0:57 of Prime bringing down two decepticons with his sword in quick succession, shortly followed by a close up of him deploying some sharpened brass knuckles at 1:04 to tear open a final opponent. Finally, the background music for the scene, composed by Steve Jablonsky, adds to the impression of power created by Prime and helps make his rampage a minute of epic screentime.
Bet you never thought you could analyze a Transformers film like that, could you? Well you can, and while you might find that only a handful of scenes from the first three installments match up with the clip above, you certainly won't find anything from Age of Extinction which compares. Any potential for good action is masked by enormous explosions. Plus, as much as I like him, Jablonsky fails to deliver a score with engaging tracks. This is pretty bad news considering that Age of Extinction is the longest installment in the film series, with a running time of 165 minutes. As a director, if you're going all in on action as the means of engaging an audience, you better make sure the action makes up for the simple plot, relatively flat characters and time-worn messages. Sadly, the action in Age of Extinction fails to do this, so it doesn't take long for the film to start dragging as soon as you begin watching it.
Bay is no stranger to criticism, and the box office performance of the Transformers series has usually allowed him and the series' producers to simply shrug it off. The series currently stands as the 4th highest-grossing of all time when averaged to its gross per film of $653m. However, Age of Extinction has experienced a slower box office performance than any of its predecessors. According to Box Office Mojo, on the second weekend following its release, the film had accrued a domestic gross of only $175m. The three previous films, on the other hand, had secured domestic grosses of $224m, $293m and $261m, respectively, after the same length of time. Age of Extinction's slower performance become all the more noteworthy when you consider that its $210m budget is the largest of any film in the franchise.
Age of Extinction's slower box office performance is quite telling. The figures suggest that so far more people have been dissatisfied with the film and, crucially, convinced their friends and family not to go watch it than with any of the previous Transformers films. I would agree with those people: Age of Extinction is not worth the watch. What remains now is to see if this attitude will last long enough to have an impact on the film's lifetime performance at the box office.
