Director Debate No. 4: Michael Bay

johnny_ultimate

The fourth discussion on polarising directors. This week: Boom. Michael Bay.

Favourite film: I should note I haven't seen what is often cited as Bay's crowning achievement, The Rock. Of what I have seen, I guess Armageddon is the best, although I use the term best rather loosely.

Worst film: Transformers 2. I can't say anything that hasn't been said, but this is everything I hate about Hollywood in one cacophonous disaster of a film.

There is a rather persuasive point to be made that all films should be taken on their own merits. You can't compare a stupid action film to a David Lynch film, that would be foolish. You compare like with like, and you judge a film based on what it sets out to be, not what it doesn't.

Even on these grounds, Michael Bay comes out a loser IMO. There are plenty of great action and blockbuster directors out there - J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan etc... i.e. directors who excel doing big budget action. Michael Bay isn't one of these, he's simply a bad director putting out awful films. He can frame an explosion on occasion, yes, but as a storyteller he's one of the worst. His conservative American politics (armed forces always solve the problem, even when it involves kicking Obama's adviser out of a plane), sexism, attempts at 'comedy' and frequent cliches are painful viewing. That's before you get to the more deplorable elements like product placement and 'racial humour'.

He's made a handful of entertaining action scenes - even moments of Transformers 1/2 are enjoyable and rousing until they decide to return to the misadventures of Mr LaBeouf and co. But for every fun explosion there's two cheesy music cues (death to 21 Guns and Don't Want to Miss a Thing) and five bad performances (how John Turturro and Steve Buscemi ever got involved probably has something to do with bags of cash). Michael Bay is a maker of action movies, but the problem is he isn't a good one.

So: do you like Bay? Do you find his films deplorable? Are you happy to take them for what they are?

Retr0gamer

The only good thing about Michael Bay movies is Steve buscemi is sometimes in them chewing up the scenery and stealing the show. His films weren't too bad and usually worth watching for some decent action scenes in particular the chase at the start of the Rock is one of the best car chases ever. I also liked the first Bad Boys, the sequel of which was just racist (all cubas are drug manufacturers with explosive solvents in their house? Lets just plough through poverty stricken civilians houses blowing them up with no conseqquences). I think he's gotten worse lately and I just can't watch his films with Transformers 2 being one of the worst films I've ever seen (thanks for ruining that date Mr. Bay ).

redt0m

He'd be alright if he held the camera still for 2 seconds - was watching first Transformers other night, even on simple conversations between two characters the camera is always swirling and panning around them, it is so annoying - and then if he allowed a bit of characterisation, it feels like all his actors are just playthings to him... the man can blow **** up perfectly fine, I think he should just stick to being a Director of Action and Photography or something, and leave the Directing duties to someone who cares... I remember looking forward to The Island, coz of the collaboration with Spielberg production company and all, but we all know how that turned out...

krudler

I like Bay, he knows his movies are loud and stupid, but he does it really well. I agree he needs to pull the camera back and leave it steady more often, the sequence where they land the shuttles on the asteroid in Armageddon is a nightmare to watch, you tell whats going on on what shuttle, I didnt realise who had died until you see everyone together later.

The Rock is awesome though, if he went back to that kind of stuff rather than cgi addled messes like TF2 he'd be better off.

His movies look cool as fcuk too, come on who wouldnt want to live in the Bayverse? constant sunset, blue filters everywhere, big fans with light streaming through them in every office, everything in slo-mo :pac:

bnt

I also have some praise for the first Bad Boys - for the action (such as the "now THAT'S how you supposed to drive!" scene), for letting the two leads improvise dialogue, and the look of the whole package. I also liked the way Julie (Tea Leoni) develops through the film: at the start she's a helpless victim, by the end she's getting herself out of trouble, all the while looking like this:



:cool:

Dman001

Michael Bay does great turn-off-your-brain films to watch on a Friday night, but I mean that in a good way. Sometimes you just want to watch a visually impressive, slightly cheesy and cliched film, and Bay does that great!

Mackman

Bad Boys and The Rock were two of my favourite movies as a teenager. Ill still pop on a DVD of one of them now and then.

Armageddon is one of my guilty pleaseures, but you can see that it was the main turning point for Bay. Its like he's been trying to out do himself with the over the topness, and the explosions, just with everything, with each movie he makes since Armageddon.

Pearly Harbour could have been great, if he chopped off the first 1 1/2 hours off it. Some great action scenes in it. But the whole love triangle bit, why?

I dont think we're ever goin to see another movie like The Rock or Bad Boys from him. His movies will just keep getting more and more rediculous, and worse IMO. I hope not, but thats what i think will happen.

Sanjuro

I've sat here, staring at the blank reply box for a few minutes now, trying to think of a coherent, well-rounded argument as to why I don't like Michael Bay. And the truth is, his films just fill me with rage. He's absolutely one of the worst directors on the face of the planet. He's as bad a story-teller as Stephen Sommers, but for some reason, has a much higher profile.

Even when trying to do something with gravitas, like Pearl Harbour, he ends up turning the film into a mess of incoherent story-telling, gaping plot-holes, the worst kind of melodrama, and action sequences that make absolutely no sense. He's incapable of pointing the camera in the right direction when filming an action sequence (which, I suppose, could be argued when talking about Greengrass, but then he's purposefully going for a jarring style), and recently, relies on slow-mo far too much.

But by far the most annoying thing about his style is the misogyny that runs through his films. He's like a 14 year old with a raging hard-on who's managed to blag his way onto the studio lot and somehow ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal and a crew to help him film.

Phony Scott

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Favourite film: Armageddon is the best, although I use the term best rather loosely.

My favourite (likewise loosely) is Armageddon. I haven't seen Armageddon since it came out, but I do remember it had a very enjoyable, very funny first half which gave way to a moronic second half.

What stood out for me was the idea of low paid working stiffs giving the finger to the man (yeah hugely clichéd as that sounds, it appeals to me), I mean, not having to pay taxes for the rest of their lives? Wish fulfilment at its best for the average audience!

When the action and love story kicked in, I fell fast asleep. I think if push came to shove, Michael bay could do a decent comedy.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

His conservative American politics (armed forces always solve the problem, even when it involves kicking Obama's adviser out of a plane)

I have my conservative side, but this, more than any of the other things you've mentioned, really annoy me about Michael Bay the most, which brings me to what I consider his worst movie:

Bad Boys II:

The level of machismo in this film is insane, but more worrying is the level of authoritarianism which is wholly accepted by the audience.

Like Johnny Ultimate alluded to; the cops are always right, but to further that, the film implies that civilians (as well as the law itself) always get in the way of what is right. The ends always justify the means.

ztoical

Michael Bay is one of those directors who started well with some good brain dead action popcorn films with Bad Boys and The Rock being two I enjoyed but he's just got worse and worse and worse the more films he makes. Armageddon has it's moments but over all was taking things that step too far, the Rock while over the top I still belived. I won't go into Pearl Harbor as there is a whole song about how much it sucked but it was his chance with an historical film to show he could do more then mindless action and he failed...big time. Bad Boys 2 I did and still do enjoy as a I want noise in the background while I do something else type film but it does go on and on and on, the last half of the film were they go off to Cuba just feels so tacked on. Then we get to the Island were Mr. Bays skill for product placement really comes to the for front and it's pretty much full spend downhill from there as we hit Transformers 1 and 2 and pretty sure we can add 3 as well. Up until Transformers I was able to laugh off Bay as a director - yes the product placement was over the top and annoying, yes he can't direct a straight up character scene without tilting the camera and zooming right in or out but they were what they were - with Transformers though his attitude about the project and the fans of the original series just peeved me off. I don't mind directors who aren't massive fans of shows/books/comics they are adapting to the big screen but you should at least respect the source material. There is a balance between playing to much to the exisiting fan base and not playing to them at all and Bay def fell into the not giving a sh!t group but if your going to do that then your film better be damn bloody amazing which Transformers was not. The VG Cats comic review of the film pretty much summed up my feelings of Transformers and the follow up I couldn't even sit through all of it in one go.

I will stick Bad Boys 2 or the Rock on from time to time when I want something I don't really have to pay attention to but any time I here mention of future film projects Bay might be connected with I cringe. A very sadistic evil part of me would like to see a collaborative film between Bay and Zack Snyder so we could see the worlds most insane over the top explosions in slow motion for 2 hours.

Phony Scott

ztoical wrote: »

A very sadistic evil part of me would like to see a collaborative film between Bay and Zack Snyder so we could see the worlds most insane over the top explosions in slow motion for 2 hours.

And the title to this magnum opus? They should call it 'Overkill'. :P

johnny_ultimate

If there's one big director at the moment I resent more than Michael Bay it's Zack Snyder, another director I feel has gotten progressively more inept with time. Their recent films are insulting to even the 15 years old they're aimed at!

It really isn't that hard to film an explosion without obnoxiously pointing the camera at a nearby female's rear end or cranking up the slo-mo in post. Give me some dynamite and a mobile phone and we could probably do a better job.

The Mad Hatter

Phony Scott wrote: »

And the title to this magnum opus? They should call it 'Overkill'. :P

Not without Bruckheimer in the mix.

bonerm

Bay can produce a single second of film as exciting as anyone. I just think it's a pity he's deliberately sacrificed the actual act of storytelling and in particular character development to do so. I can't enjoy his movies simply because they are intentionally so uninvolving. They're like watching someone else play a video game.

I'm still a believer that brilliant ambitious popcorn blockbusters can be made but compare what he does to Spielberg (back when he was still making good blockbusters) and it's like chalk and cheese. Quite frankly it disturbs me that this man has ongoing cinematic success at all as it indicates there is a large number of people out there who have low standards and find his work acceptable (nay entertaining). The irony of it all being that Spielberg himself is backing the guy now and following his formula to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Galvasean

I put my hands up as a Michael Bay apologist, for the most part.

The Rock still stands up as a great action flick and interestingly (and also incredibly rarely for a Bay film) you actually feel for the bad guys. The film actually makes you feel sorry for them. Bay has never since come close to recreating this in his movies. To be honest he probably doesn't want to. Bad guys who are bad to the bone and nothing else put more bums on seats I suppose. Pity.

Armageddon is also very good. The blend between action and comedy is nice. In fact it works better as acomedy with a hint of action than a full on action film with comedy elements.

That surrealist moment at the end where they put teh pictures of the dead astronaughts on chairs at the wedding... probably not intentional, but good golly it was a hilarious end to a fun film!

Pearl Harbour - arguably Bay's worst film. I mean the battle itself was cool and all, but the film dragged on far too long and I couldn't really find myself rooting for any of the characters.Pretty sure I nodded off toward the end and haven'tbeen bothered revisiting it.

Bad Boys I&II: Gotta admit I love 'em both. Yeah number 2 is a bit too long and the criticisms expressed here are not at all unfounded. but as buddy cop action comedies go they are the epitimy of 'just sit back, relax, dont think too much and enjoy!' That car cahse *drool*

Speed boat explosion!!!! Hanger? BOOM!!!!

Transformers I&II: As a long time Transformers fanboy I am a huge fan of Bay's first Transformers film. It's load, it's manic, it's a bit silly... just like the cartoon! In my less than humble opinion he got the tone spot on. Nobody really wnated to see Transformers: the Melodrama. At the same time it wasn't so goofy that you couldn't enjoy it as a proper action film. There is a certain class/dignity to it which is sadly absent in the follow up, which I won't go into too much detail as there is so much wrong with it. What can you expect when you start shooting with no finished script and don't finish editing until the day before the film premieres? That said there were a couple of quality scenes. Unfortunately they were surrounded by so much goofy incoherent rubbish that the pay off is simply not worth it.

Hvaen't seen The Island. I hear it's fun if not remarkable. It's on my 'to do' list.

What do I think of Bay in summary? At his best he is a very competent action/comedy director who can churn out a ripping good yarn that looks very very pretty. In other words, a blockbuster maker.
At his worst he's the filmamking equivalent of a drunken frat boy who gets carried away trying to make everything as awesome as possible and ends up overdoing it and annoying everybody.
All in all, I like more Michael Bay films than I dislike. While I do agree that he is flawed as a director, I also think he is somewhat unfairly maligned.

bonerm

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

If there's one big director at the moment I resent more than Michael Bay it's Zack Snyder, another director I feel has gotten progressively more inept with time. Their recent films are insulting to even the 15 years old they're aimed at!

It really isn't that hard to film an explosion without obnoxiously pointing the camera at a nearby female's rear end or cranking up the slo-mo in post. Give me some dynamite and a mobile phone and we could probably do a better job.

In fairness Watchmen is about as perfect an adaptation as I could imagine anyone making so he's already 1-0 up on Bay (and this is coming from someone who thought 300 was utterly terrible).

mikhail

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

...I should note I haven't seen what is often cited as Bay's crowning achievement, The Rock...

Galvasean wrote: »

The Rock still stands up as a great action flick and interestingly (and also incredibly rarely for a Bay film) you actually feel for the bad guys. The film actually makes you feel sorry for them. Bay has never since come close to recreating this in his movies. To be honest he probably doesn't want to. Bad guys who are bad to the bone and nothing else put more bums on seats I suppose. Pity.

A lot of people will say very nice things about The Rock. I loved it as a teenager. It's a very well paced action movie, with a rounded, empathetic villain and two charismatic performances from Cage and Connery.

I watched it again recently though, and it was ruined for me by a few moments of classic Michael Bay prejudice. There's an extended scene with a gay tailor consisting of a simple mixture of homophobia and Sean Connery Maguyvering

his way out of custody

. I forget the specifics, but I recall an Asian playing a minor character (perhaps a chef?) who is very simply there for one reason only: so you can laugh at his accent. Throw in the military fetish (he shoots helicopters and jets in the same way he shoots beautiful women). I'm not terribly sensitive to the objectification of women in movies (it's too common, in movies and society, for me to get worked up over Bay's own take on it), but that's in there too.

Galvasean wrote: »

Hvaen't seen The Island. I hear it's fun if not remarkable. It's on my 'to do' list.

It's not even fun. I actually found it boring, and absurdly derivative, even visually, of the films it stole from. I find it hard to believe it's a Bay film.

Bay's films can be exciting, but I find his fetish for military hardware, misogyny, homophobia, racism, low-brow humour and fondness of the 360 camera swing too distracting to appreciate his talents.

donfers

some people adore this guy

good on setpieces, poor on characterisation but i guess that's down to the film you choose top direct, he is drawn to the action movie genre and he directs them well enough for what they are

ztoical

bonerm wrote: »

In fairness Watchmen is about as perfect an adaptation as I could imagine anyone making so he's already 1-0 up on Bay (and this is coming from someone who thought 300 was utterly terrible).

Have to disagree [sorry mods if this goes off topic] What he did is pretty much shot for shot panels from the comic to film that is not adapting that just copying the basic layout of the panels without showing any understanding for how storytelling works with comics - contrary to what many think a comic book is not the same as a storyboard and it's not just a case of taking the panals and matching them in live action, they seemed to have just not understood the story at all.

Back on topic I agree with bonerm that Bay's work feels like your watching him play a video game and I can almost feel the sigh when it gets to an annoying slow character building cut scene in between all the action and no amount of button mashing will let him skip it

sprinkles

Let’s face it, Bay does 3 things right; explosions, hot girls, and superbly framed shots of both of those things. His problem, and in turn the problem of the punter, is that he overuses all of those 3 things to create a mess of clichéd set-pieces. And that’s what his films boil down to. A number of elaborately created set-pieces linked together with awful dialogue from cardboard characters or worse… Shia LeBouef.

The 2 exceptions to this are Bad Boys and The Rock but he still developed his techniques in these films. Back then they were fresh and lets face it… looked **** cool. But how many times are we going to see someone getting out of a car, at sunset, with the camera panning around the bottom of the door ending with sun flare over the head of the character. It was brilliant the first time in Bad Boys. Great the second time in Bad Boys and even pretty good the third time in Bad Boys… but ffs, give it a rest at this stage Bay.

He not only needs to take the camera back a few steps, he needs to take a few steps back. From Transformers 2 it’s clear he’s not looking at the overall picture. It smacked of having no direction at all, to the point that he could have farmed out the various set-pieces to other equally bad directors and just stitched them together in the editing room with little or no thought to coherency. It’s as if the films started out with a meeting between Bay, the movie studio and Hasbro (no doubt it did) and they came up with a checklist;

Kids:
New Transformers that will sell as toys
Explosions
CGI battles
Cheesy one-liners
Add to that… 3D this time round.

Dads:
Sex
Explosions
Slow-motion bouncing breasts
Slow-motion bouncing breasts with explosions in the background

Check check check… Then they began putting as much of all that into one horribly long and stupid film and edited it just enough to get that all important PG badge.

And worst of all is his in-your-face sexism. Now, don’t take my complaining about this as a call for no more scantily clad hot women in films, far from it. However the scene with the decepticon college chick, with the camera following her ass for a couple of minutes was not only pointless but incredibly crass, especially in a PG movie.

Sorry for turning that into a Transformers 2 rant but it embodies all that is wrong with not just Bay but with Hollywood as a whole. He needs to go back to making stupid action flicks with explosions and cheesy dialogue but in moderation. The studio’s need to take his budget away from him… just give him a few camera and a couple of gallons of petrol and let him do what he does best! More Bad Boys, less Transformers 2 please!!!

don ramo

he has directed 8 films so far and has made the studios $2.47billion dollars profit, thats must be some kind of record for returns,

id rewatch half his films, mainly as guilty pleasures, but i agree that he is getting worse, T2 was dreadfull, (full of eye candy cgi, but he couldnt make megan fox look that good running around the place half naked,)

at least in armageddon you actually cared a bit when bruce sent ben back up, and then said goodbye to liv in the drilling yoke, would anyone care if the two leads in transformers got shreded, i know i wouldnt, even the new one looks like a plastic sugeon love child, i already want her dead,

but the transformers films were just terrible acting wise, it goes to show how little bay cares for actual acting nowadays, the lead fella cannot act at all, ive seen him in a few films, he is woefull to say the least, i fear for the future of films if this is the quality of actor thats is now considered good in hollywood,

i think if he put a bit of debth into his caracters he wouldnt be hated so much, i think armageddon was just the right balance, of caracter, story and action, bad boys wasnt to bad either, pearl harbor (with no u in it for some unknown reason) was way too much caracter, i think T2 was worse than 1 due to the fact the caracters were so waifer thin in part one, yet it still made a pile of cash, so he put even less efffort into the second one,

ztoical

don ramo wrote: »

he has directed 8 films so far and has made the studios $2.47billion dollars profit, thats must be some kind of record for returns,

I'd be very slow to give Bay 100% of the credit for those returns. He is a studio director in that the studio hire him to make a certain type of film, it's crafted on nearly every level to be a summer blockbuster. Just looking through the crew lists for his films the editors, DP, AD/second unti director are all people with similar CV's of all action films and then of course you've jerry bruckheimer whose pretty much made his career out of the summer blockbuster and who has built Bay's career for him [5 of his 8 feature films were with Bruckheimer]. Bruckheimer picked him to direct Bad Boys based on his music video work and it's been the pattern ever since....studio has a script and they fill in the blanks sorting cast and crew and Bay is brought in to direct.

He has reached a point now that he has enough box office sucess that he could push to develop his own projects and get more room from the studios to do his own thing but I think when we see him to do that we see that he can't really direct anything other car cashes and explosions. He has a number of set pieces that show up in ever film and while other directors get away with having those signature shots in their work they are usually worked into the film in such a way that they don't jump out - with Bay it's a sledge hammer effect 'I like doing this type of shot and don't care if it doesn't suit this film' The people standing on different sides of a wall while the camera swings around is one - worked in Bad Boys 2 even if it did go on for too long but not in the Island but he shoved it in anyway.

The big issue with Bay is that he doesn't go looking for projects that he has an interest in, he wasn't a fan of transformers growing up, he had no real interest in Pearl Harbor so your missing that passion, that attention to detail, you get from directors when they work on something they've a connection with, that they've fought with the studio over. I would be interested in seeing him find a project and develop it himself from scratch, something he has a real passion for and has to push and fight to get it made.

Say what you want about the man but at least he has a sense of humour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXRCf9LbLM0

krudler

Deleted User wrote: »

Say what you want about the man but at least he has a sense of humour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXRCf9LbLM0

Its why I dont get the Bay bashing, he KNOWS his movies are mindless trash, if you want a Friday night watching crap blow up then hes your man.

bonerm

krudler wrote: »

Its why I dont get the Bay bashing, he KNOWS his movies are mindless trash, if you want a Friday night watching crap blow up then hes your man.

Personally I'm not bashing Bay, just the people who flock to his crap movies.

krudler

bonerm wrote: »

Personally I'm not bashing Bay, just the people who flock to his crap movies.

not all movies have to be high art, just entertaining. I'll watch something that doesnt pander to an audience when I'm in the mood, but every now and then I just wanna watch stuff blow up with style If he sorted out the script issues in his movies and made them shorter so they didnt feel so overblown they'd be great. ell I even liked The Island, its the most underrated movies hes done.

johnny_ultimate

krudler wrote: »

Its why I dont get the Bay bashing, he KNOWS his movies are mindless trash, if you want a Friday night watching crap blow up then hes your man.

But just because he knows he's a one-trick film-maker doesn't take away from the fact that his movies are one-trick films. And not a very good trick at that. It's like a murderer admitting to his crime - doesn't make him any less of a murderer. Even the ad above, while mildly amusing, is just Bay clearly accepting a paycheck from Verizon. It's the outright shameless nature of his films and personality - always lingering on a product for longer than necessary, never refusing to stoop to a new low for a quick racial joke - that make them so objectionable in my opinion.

Even the most hardcore cinephile wants a bit of mindless action now and again. But Michael Bay isn't a good mindless action director, or at least isn't anymore. At least he has come out and admitted Transformers 2 is bad, and the writer's strike may have had an effect. But how does he excuse all the other bad films he has made, many of which fall into the same pratfalls Transformers 2 did.

It's more a matter that if I want to turn off my brain, there are much better films to achieve said goal with than Michael Bay ones, and I doubt I'll ever be able to see what the Bay apologists see!

shanesheridan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvhMb4ccm7o

seraphimvc

SPOILER ALERT: Transformers 3 will have a lot of explosions and CGI buildings collapsing. and the movie will be about 45mins longer than it needed.

remember back into the days how you learn to write an essay in LC? at first you were ****, caused' you have too many awesome/bad/good ideas that you wanna fit into the essay. In the end you learnt that in order to write a good essay, you have to stay focus to the title, you can always work around the core idea but you can never put in every ideas that you want. Michael Bay seems like he didnt even graduate from High school. this guy can make AWESOME visuals/explosions but please get him a good script writer(i dont think it works anyway, he will probably fire any writer he doesnt like).

ztoical

krudler wrote: »

not all movies have to be high art, just entertaining. I'll watch something that doesnt pander to an audience when I'm in the mood, but every now and then I just wanna watch stuff blow up with style If he sorted out the script issues in his movies and made them shorter so they didnt feel so overblown they'd be great. ell I even liked The Island, its the most underrated movies hes done.

This thread made me want to re-watch the Island which I did last night and it is a nice action packed brain dead film just like the rock and both bad boys the issue that comes up thou is if you watch it and say Bad Boys 2 very close to each other [like straight after one another like I did] and you start to feel like your just trapped in one big long car crash.

I could watch two films from the same director back to back and see a stylistic approach but still see two different films....even directors that have become very lazy like Tim Burton but with Bay it really is so much a formula that the over all film becomes pretty pointless....the Island set in the future...doesn't matter it will still looks and feels like Bad Boys 2...Transformers meant to focus on giant ass robots, don't worry will stick them in the background so it will still look like Bad Boys 2....it's the same camera moves, it's the same editing, it's the same lightening, it's the same cars blowing up.....it works as brain dead action films that come out once a year during the summer...where it falls down is when he takes on topics like Pearl Herbour, I'm not anal about films being totally historically accurate but that was just taking the piss and Transformers were your taking an existing franchise - you can't just go in and do your usually ABC of film making - can he blow stuff up hell yeah, is he a good director hell no because he doesn't direct, he shots the same scenes each time just with different actors.

bonerm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKa3CJA6oY

Unofficial soundtrack for this thread.

mikhail

bonerm wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKa3CJA6oY

Unofficial soundtrack for this thread.

More like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pM8PrqY5Rg

bnt

The Rock is on TV tonight: RTE Two, 21:30 - a chance to get your Michael Bay fix for the week. It's been years since I saw it, but I remember being impressed by the main bad guy: his demands actually seemed reasonable and based in reality, rather than the ravings of a lunatic, while Cage and Connery have great fun shooting holes in everything.

Sometimes I wonder whether the schedulers at RTE and other stations read these forums for ideas..?

DrumSteve

bnt wrote: »

The Rock is on TV tonight: RTE Two, 21:30 - a chance to get your Michael Bay fix for the week. It's been years since I saw it, but I remember being impressed by the main bad guy: his demands actually seemed reasonable and based in reality, rather than the ravings of a lunatic, while Cage and Connery have great fun shooting holes in everything.

Sometimes I wonder whether the schedulers at RTE and other stations read these forums for ideas..?

Watched it last night.

Strange that ed harris was the bad guy... his demands we're extremely reasonable and he was never gonna use the gas anyway.

was a brilliant film and probably bay's finest other than Con Air. (I have a soft spot for armageddon too).

ztoical

DrumSteve wrote: »

Watched it last night.

Strange that ed harris was the bad guy... his demands we're extremely reasonable and he was never gonna use the gas anyway.

was a brilliant film and probably bay's finest other than Con Air. (I have a soft spot for armageddon too).

Simon West directed Con Air not Bay....Con Air has same main star and producer as The Rock but not director.

DrumSteve

ztoical wrote: »

Simon West directed Con Air not Bay....Con Air has same main star and producer as The Rock but not director.

**** yeah good point...(my bad)

Stylistically though they are verysimilar...

ztoical

DrumSteve wrote: »

**** yeah good point...(my bad)

Stylistically though they are verysimilar...

Cus they are both Bruckheimer productions.

constitutionus

bay is a difficult one to assess.

on the one hand he's an undoubted genius. NO ONE does what bay does better than him. his films may be stupid BEYOND belief but theyre immensly popular with the ticket buyers and tend to be rousing affairs.

dynamic, beautifully shot and combined with a score thatll keep your feet tapping as long with the popcorn munching right to the end, even if it falls apart at some stage or another most people just wont care because theyre along for the ride

the best way to describe him is he's basically the anti arthouse director. you want to see a film about lesbian cancer victims in auswitcz stay the hell away from a bay film as its ALL about how pretty it looks and how much frenetic energy he can get it. basically THE director for the ADD generation.

the bloke has been moaning on about wanting to do a "small" film for ages now but for the life of me i dont think he can do that.

yes he has his flaws.

MASSIVE flaws TBH , in the main connected to his ego. bays biggest problem is bay himself. he's got so much clout now he can indulge the worse of his excesses and theres no one to smack him on the back of the head and say "cop the feck on, thats a stupid idea - stick to the story ! " which is why i'd maintain the rock is one of his best, bruckheimer was there in the backround to reign him in.

revenge of the fallen is a classic example of what happens when bay calls all the shots and though it has some fantastic bits in it (mainly the forrest fight) , overall its a mess and clear evidence that he NEEDS someone to constrain him if you want to get the best out of him.

i do laud his dedication to his crew though, he could feck off to europe or new zealand and get his films made cheaper but he stays in the states and helps the local economy. no matter how good or bad TF3 turns out to be its 2000 jobs in the middle of a recession and more than likely itll bring in 700 million or so in takings so you can see why the industry heads LOVES him.

i understand why people HATE him but TBH its kinda paradoxical as if bay changed to be the director they want him to be he wouldnt be making the films HE makes and like it or not there is a massive audience out there that dont give a monkies about whether a film is oscar worthy or not, indeed they may AVOID oscar films, as all they want is a flashy action flick.

and theres nothing wrong with that.

particularly when you look at how FEW really good ones are out there.

bnt

If I look at Bay's upcoming projects on IMDB, his only Directorial work is going to be on the next Transformers. In terms of Production, however, he was involved in the recent I Am Number Four, and is a co-executive producer (with Spielberg) on the forthcoming Cloud Atlas. This will be an adaptation of the David Mitchell SF novel that skips across time between 1850 and a distant post-apocalyptic future. The cast is currently slated to include Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, James McAvoy, and Ian McKellen. From the description I have, there are six stories from different periods, some of which fit inside the others (shades of Inception?) and are left half-finished until they are "written" at the end.

Sad Professor

DrumSteve wrote: »

**** yeah good point...(my bad)

Stylistically though they are verysimilar...

ztoical wrote: »

Cus they are both Bruckheimer productions.

And there's an argument that Bruckheimer is the real auteur of the films he produces. I think Bay has gotten progressively worse since he stopped working for him.

mikhail

bnt wrote: »

...In terms of Production, however...

Producers can have a big impact on a film, but mostly they're just involved in helping get the money. I don't think a director's record as a producer is, in general, relevant to his track record as a filmmaker. There are a few producers with a coherent body of work - Bruckheimer and Weinstein are two who come to mind - but it's not the same thing.

bnt

mikhail wrote: »

Producers can have a big impact on a film, but mostly they're just involved in helping get the money.

I think you mean an Executive Producer credit, which can go to just about anyone who helps out significantly, I suppose. But my understanding of Producer is of someone who is much more involved in initiating and defining a project, as well as managing the overall process. Put it this way: when they award the Oscar for Best Picture, the Producers are the ones who go up on stage to collect it - not the Director (unless he/she is also a Producer, of course).

(A bit of trivia: Michael Douglas won a Best Actor Oscar for Wall Street, but it wasn't his first statuette. He was one of the producers of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and so his first Oscar was for a Best Picture, long before he became known as an actor.)