“I have traveled across the universe through the years to find her. Sometimes going all the way is just a start.”
This is an extremely Michael Bay song. The opening chord is played by a motorcycle engine. It is decidedly hardcore, full of images of hell and violence. Yet it is a singularly sentimental song, focusing more on personal emotion than the violence it describes. Bay’s feature movies will mirror this focus.
Bay’s video juxtaposes Mr. Loaf’s world of demonic imagery, religious symbols and smoke with a modern motorcycle and helicopter world where men in suits hunt down a lonely transgressive monster trapped in the past.
It is, like all of Bay’s work, devoid of symbolism outside of what can immediately hit you in the face. But here it works to showcase the loneliness in feeling unable to win at love because you can’t change who you are. There is no silver bullet, no secret “that” in the underlying meaning of the song, simply “that” which you cannot do because you will never be able to do it sufficiently. Because you are not the right person, and you never will be.
In other words, this is a fucking great music video. Is it the best thing Bay has ever directed? It’s possible.
Next up: Bay’s feature film career begins
Every Tom Cruise Movie 