I want to see Decepticons and Autobots duking it out on the National Mall in Washington DC. That’s the kind of absurd scale I demand from a Transformers 3. But the National Parks Service is having none of it.
Michael Bay’s latest ode to incoherence and engine grease is set to shoot in DC, but it looks like some of their plans may be curtailed by the snobs at the Park Service.
From the Washington Post:
Bill Line, Park Service spokesman, said the producers “have asked to do some things that simply are not done on the National Mall,” among them staging a “car race” along the Mall’s gravel paths and flooding it with artificial light in order to shoot at night.
“A lot of this could be more appropriately shot in a Hollywood studio,” Line said. “The National Mall is not an area in which Americans come to see high-tech action movies being shot.”
Bullshit, Bill Line! This is exactly what Americans want from their national parks. Also, the National Mall is fucking boring anyway – it’s just a big long lawn. A couple of giant robots would definitely sexy that up.
But more than that, big action movies, like it or not, are part of our American heritage. It’s the culture that we export the most to the rest of the world. Why not use our National Parks to celebrate that?
And as a moviegoer I just want to see spectacle, and the idea that the Transformers movies are finally getting out of generic spaces (even the Los Angeles stuff in the first movie was highly generic) and setting action scenes in famous locales – as any giant-sized movie should – fills me with some hope. I’m going to have to sit through Transformers 3 no matter what happens, so I’d at least like it to have some decent scope. And the National Mall can provide that.
By the way, is it too late to convince Michael Bay to make the Washington Monument into a Transformer?
So loosen up, Bill Line! Let my Autobots be free!