« Assumptions | Main | In Retrospect » The Case for Michael Bay06 Jul 2007 10:38 am I haven't seen Transformers yet, but since I have a reputation in the blogosphere as a leading Michael Bay apologist, I thought I'd note that to truly glimpse the man's skillz, you need to look at his earlier short-form work: Genius. Compare that to the disappointing "Elevator Love Letter" video. Comments (25)
Wow, I wasn't aware that anyone dumb enough to like Michael Bay movies was smart enough to know the name of the person who directed them. 
You are a blood traitor to the liberal elite. Tarring and feathering commences at sundown. Actually, this movie is well-suited to Bay's talents, such as they are, since he's made a career out of loud, fast, brainless toy porn for pubescent boys. If I were producing a Transformers nostalgia flick, I would accept no substitutes. Giving him the green light to make a historical epic about Pearl Harbor, on the other hand...
That's a great ad, but most of the credit goes to the young man's great facial expressions.
The best review of Transformers post-review came from my friend I saw it with on Monday who called it "Shockingly Good."
The movie is "shockingly good", which isn't to say that it is more than passable entertainment. I'd say that the goodness in the film flows mainly from Shia Labeouf who does a good job with a pretty cliche role, managing to wade through some very bad dialog and creating a fun and interesting character along the way.
Michael Bay still owes me $10 and 2 1/2 hours of my life back for The Rock.
Michael Bay directed that commercial? That's maybe my favorite commercial of all time. It is almost certainly his best work. I sometimes wonder why Michael Bay gets more grief than other action directors. His movies, in general, don't suck any worse than those of--well, what's another action director? And why is Michael Bay more famous than all of them?
The really amazing thing about that ad is that you can figure out where the characters are in relation to each other -- they're in an elevator together, the boy's on the left, the girl's on the right. That spatial coherence in itself sets this off from any of Bay's feature-length work.
As a former co-worker of Mr. Bay's back in the heady days of the early 90s, I can attest to his skills at comedy directing. While he was sometimes made fun of at Propaganda Films for knocking off many of David Fincher's photographic innovations, he was also known to have a very keen eye for comic timing. He directed most of the "Got Milk" series, for instance, and would indulge in a healthy amount of self-parody in some of his commercials. It's a shame that he doesn't seem to value this part of his skillset and direct a pure comedy (Bad Boys comes closest, and to me it's his best movie), but I suppose blowing shit up is more fun for him (as opposed to his over-30 audience). "Transformers" has one sequence, early in the movie, between a boy, a girl, and a car, which illustrates Mr. Bay's talents to a tee. Unfortunately, then the A-story kicks in, and its ludicrousness (even beyond the idea of a society of robots being surprised that it's betrayed by a group calling itself THE DECEPTICONS) lost me in a haze of logic holes.
As someone who had Elevator Love Letter as his wedding song, I'm a bit relieved Michael Bay had nothing to do with the video, even if it would've been better that way. That would've been a weird thing to find out now, considering my hatred for The Rock.
It's unamerican to not like The Rock.
Anyone who hates "The Rock" is a commie. Transformers was alright, but damnit, Michael, stopping moving the camera in every freaking shot...Die Hard 4 was a superior summer action movie in every respect. (I actually quite liked it)
The Transformers! More than meets the eye! Transformers! Robots in disguise! Transformers!
Was any one else irritated by the remark in the 'transformers' regarding the stupidity of Iranian scientists?
You like Michael Bay?!? My God, you have bad taste in movies. (Probably in music also, but to be frank I have never heard of any of the bands you mention since my pop music knowledge pretty much peters out by the early '90s.) Michael Bay is to movies what Barry Manilow is to music. Have you ever seen (and liked) a movie that was not a popcorn CGI "epic"? I'm not particularly elitist--my favorite work is by the giants of Hollywood (i.e., mainstream) movie making: Ford, Hawks, Wilder, Wyler, Capra, Sturges, Cukor, to take a few at semi-random. Granted, movie making today is vastly degenerated from Hollywood's golden era. For example, an example of a successful hack back then might be Michael Curtiz, who spent several decades directing whatever Warner Bros. gave him like an assembly line. Yet he turned out many wonderful and enduring pictures, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Flynn) and the immortal Casablanca. An exanple of a successful hack today: Michael Bay. Will anyone be discussing his work (at least positively) in 60 years? Sorry for the rant, but you remind me of a more literate version of the hordes of IMDB posters who think LOTR (or fill in your favorite recent action movie) are the greatest movies ever made and refuse to watch anything in sublime B&W.
Good Lord, the Stars video is horrid. . . . It looks like it was shot in the early nineties.
so what's 'Bad Boys (2)' like? They put it on sale over here after it being mentioned in 'Hot Fuzz', which I didn't like very much. Also mentioned and synergetically milked was 'Point Break' which I found hilarious.
Fuck transformers. Gobots rule.
Bad Boys II is horrendous, nearly unwatchable. It's seriously like two and a half hours long, which is reasonable for some sorts of films but just not tolerable for an action comedy. The pacing makes it impossible to care about or follow, and the whole premise (the Klan smuggling drugs or something) is pretty absurd. Really disappointing, as I think the first Bad Boys was pretty close to perfect as a work in the genre in the genre.
The action sequences in Transformers are truly spectacular--probably the most seamless CGI I've witnessed, and hella excting. The trouble comes when the characters open their mouths. Sure, the focus in Bay's other movies isn't exactly on deep character development, but the dialogue was lean, the scenes well paced, and the characters cleanly drawn. I mean, the funny banter scenes between Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage in the Rock are what makes it great popcorn...otherwise it might as well be Godzilla or The Last Action Hero or some other soulless big budget flop noone cares to rewatch. So it is distressing that many of the scenes in Transformers come off as false, clunky, and in some places cringe-inducing. Maybe its the lack of big stars? Jerry Bruckheimer? Again, the robot fighting is awesome enough to compensate for that deficiency, but he better not make it a habit.
I agree 100% with what Alex just said. However, it also must be said that one of the requirements of the genre is a smoking hot female lead, and Transformers delivers this in spades. This is the only area in which TF was superior to DH4
"I mean, the funny banter scenes between Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage in the Rock are what makes it great popcorn...otherwise it might as well be Godzilla or The Last Action Hero or some other soulless big budget flop noone cares to rewatch." I admit that The Rock is watchable in a guilty pleasure sort of way. But it IS Godzilla or The Last Action Hero, or any other bad expensive flop you care to mention. The reason it is watchable is, as your post demonstrates, is because Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris are actors on such a high level (and on a different plane from, say, the merely good Matthew Broderick or the extremely limited Sylvester Stallone) that they are almost always watchable, even in a piece of dreck like The Rock (for perhaps the greatest ever perfomance in a clunker, check out the magnificent performance of Gene Hackman in the equally drecky The Firm). These guys, and the small number of people like them, cannot make a bad mmovie good, but they can make it relatively painless (and somewhat enjoyable) to watch, when it would be unwatchable with merely good actors.
The Rock is only watchable up until the point Goodspeed and whatever Connery's character is named make it back to Alcatraz, after which it ceases to be. This is taking into account the car chase is absurd, it's still fun. Bad Boys II just made me angry.
"You like Michael Bay?!? My God, you have bad taste in movies ... Have you ever seen (and liked) a movie that was not a popcorn CGI "epic" See, the problem isn't that Michael Bay makes popcorn CGI epics. The problem is that Michael Bay tends to make bad popcorn CGI epics that find you checking the time on your cellphone halfway through. "Granted, movie making today is vastly degenerated from Hollywood's golden era." And then you cite Michael fucking Curtiz? The guy who made the popcorn non-CGI epics of his day? There's nothing wrong with summer action movies. What I object to is boring summer action movies, which Michael Bay cranks out with depressing regularity. (And FWIW, The Adventures of Robin Hood is vastly overrated. Like a Michael Bay movie, it's nice visually, but you'll be checking the time on your cellphone halfway through that movie too.) ----- Much like Spielberg, Bay isn't an idiot. There are always a variety of fun touches in his movies. But as a storyteller, like Spielberg, he reliably misses the point of his material.
Comments closed July 20, 2007. |
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Heads in the Sand
As a serious Micheal Bay detractor who was expecting the rape of my youth in the Transformers, the movie was pretty entertaining. "The Hours" this isn't, but I have to give a silent applause to Bay. Easily his best movie to date, he took a difficult subject for a major motion picture and did pretty well with it. There wasn't a whole lot of plot, but I can't think of a movie since the original Matrix that had as many jaw-dropping action scenes.
Posted by Derrick | July 6, 2007 10:50 AM