Filmonic » Michael Bay

Michael Bay says Megan Fox has a “great part in Transformers 3″

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:34:02 +0000

Megan Fox is known for saying crazy things, to the media anyway, and in recent interviews she apparently referred to Michael Bay as a “nightmare,” and “Hitler”, which isn’t a very clever thing to say to your ‘boss’. However it seems Transformers 2 director Michael Bay couldn’t care less:

“I love her,” the man responsible for the blockbuster franchise told USA TODAY. “It’s just, she’s young. Everyone’s got to give her a break, she only…23? It’s just hard. I’ve traveled around the world with her and she’s just like this world symbol now, you know?”
So he brushes her diatribes under the carpet? “Absolutely,” he said. “She called me (after the Hitler comment) and goes, ‘It’s all bullsh—t, Mike.’ The press, they just like to prey, and stalk, and pounce and find a good little juicy thing. But she’s always wanted to do these crazy comments. That’s just her. She’s great.”
He also said, “She’s got a great part in Transformers 3,” and he said he’s currently working on the script. So Bay’s not planning on getting revenge by, say, killing her off? “No, no. no,” he said, dismissing it. “She gets enough of that already.”

The role of Mikaela Banes in the franchise consists of looking hot and being Sam Witwicky’s girlfriend. She did the truck thing with Bumblebee in the first film, but in Revenge of the Fallen she didn’t really have a purpose. This time around Bay and the writers don’t have a writers strike to battle with, so hopefully they take their time and develop the story and characters. Especially the robot ones.

Michael Bay wants to go “sideways” with Transformers 3

Liam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:09:43 +0000

If you get the right combination of vehicles on the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Blu-ray extra feature “The AllSpark Experiment” then director Michael Bay will appear on-screen and talk about Transformers 3. It’s quite marvellous. Someone has YouTubed the two minute clip which you can watch here.

In the clip Bay talks about where he wants to go with the next film. It must have been filmed a while ago as he mentions that “Paramount are really pressuring me to make Transformers 3 right away”, but we know he’s already started working on it, so it seems the pressuring worked!

Bay mentions some rather surprising but encouraging things. He says T3 can’t get any bigger, so it’ll have to go “sideways” in terms overall scope and action. He says it will develop the relationship between Bumblebee and Sam further, explore more of the robot characters, and it could go darker. Bay also says it has to be more “emotional” which, if Revenge of the Fallen is anything to go by, means we’ll have more slo-mo shots of Megan Fox looking unhappy.

I’m liking the way Bay is thinking, which I never expected myself to say. Whether he will actually deliver though, is something we’ll have to wait for. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was big but it certainly wasn’t clever. They need an actual story for the next film, instead of ‘evil robot wants to blow up the sun’.

Where do you think Transformers 3 should go? Should it be darker? Less explosions? More focus on the robots?

Transformers 3 release date set

Liam — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:46:52 +0000

A few weeks ago Michael Bay had a meeting with Steven Spielberg and Ehren Kruger to discuss ideas for Transformers 3 and to decide whether it would be released in 2011 or 2012. Before Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen burst into public viewing Bay said he wanted to have a break from robots and planned to make a small movie (Pain and Gain) before starting the next one, however from what he posted on his official forum today it looks like he’ll be going straight back into it:

Well its official: We have a great Transformers 3 story. The release date is now July 1st 2011. Not 2012.
Today is Day One. This morning started with an ILM meeting for five hours in San Francisco. Currently I’m flying with writer Ehren Kruger to Rhode Island to talk to Hasbro about new characters.
P.S. Megan Fox, welcome back. I promise no alien robots will harm you in any way during the production of this motion picture. Please consult your Physician when working under my direction because some side effects can occur, such as mild dizziness, intense nausea, suicidal tendencies, depression, minor chest hair growth, random internal hemorrhaging and inability to sleep. As some directors may be hazardous to your health, please consult your Doctor to determine if this is right for you.
Pain and Gain is right after shooting of Trans 3.
Michael

Bay has had a 3 month break which I think is long enough, but then again I haven’t directed one of the biggest movies of the year so I’m no expert on what counts as a sufficient break. Even if Bay wasn’t quite ready yet i’m sure the money was enough to convince him. He apparently made $75 million from the first Transformers movie as he decided to take a % of the film’s total revenues instead of an upfront fee. He probably made a similar stupidly high amount for Revenge of the Fallen and I bet Paramount were busy filling Bay’s swimming pool full of cash as he typed up today’s post for his forum.

Transformers 3 meetings taking place this week

Liam — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:40:43 +0000

Today a post appeared on Michael Bay’s official website that updated us on a few of his upcoming films: Transformers 3, Pain & Gain, and Bay Boys 3.

I spoke to Michael today and he had a little update on his future projects:
- He will be meeting later this week with Steven Spielberg, and Ehren Kruger to discuss ideas for Transformers 3. By the end of the week he should have an idea if Transformers 3 will hit your local cineplex in the summer of 2011 or 2012.
- In the meantime “Pain & Gain” is looking very possible as is Bad Boys 3. Either film coming to a theater near you before or after Transformers 3.

Around the time Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out Bay said that he “would like to take a year off” from robots and wanted to make a small movie before he heads back to the CGI explosion that is Transformers. He described the smaller film as a “dark comedy” that will be an adaptation of a Miami New Times article from 1999 called “Pain & Gain”. The true story is about a couple of steroid-abusing knucklehead bodybuilders from Florida who become criminals involved in an extortion ring and a a kidnapping plot that all goes horribly wrong.

China’s answer to Transformers: Kung Fu Cyborg

Liam — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:07:33 +0000

The Transformers movies have provided a lot of laughter, whether it was the comic relief from the parents, the poor storyline, or the robot testicles. However, where as most people just shrug it off as a fun popcorn flick, others go a step further and decided to make their own movie involving kung-fu robots.

From The Guardian:

Anything Michael Bay can do, Hong Kong film-maker Jeffrey Lau can do better. At least, that’s the theory behind Kung Fu Cyborg, China’s answer to the Transformers phenomenon.
Lau, one of the producers on Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, came up with the idea after watching Bay’s films and noticing that the various Autobots and Decepticons lacked martial arts skills. “I burst out laughing when watching Transformers,” he says. “The effects were amazing but the robots didn’t know how to fight. So I decided our Chinese superheroes should be kung-fu experts.”
Kung Fu Cyborg was reportedly made on a budget of $14m (£8.5m), a third of which went on motion-capture and CGI technology to produce the robot action. That’s an awful lot less than the most recent Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen, which cost an estimated $200m.

So what does a $14 million kung-fu Transformer knock-off look like? This:

Which would you rather see? The Transformers we have now, for Kung Fu Cyborg’s?

Will Transformers 3 be 3D?

Liam — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:29:01 +0000

For Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay filmed three action sequences with IMAX cameras and made a life sized Optimus Prime. Over the past few years, especially this year, 3D has been gaining steam with more and more movies are being made in 3D, and many 3D screens are being fitted all over the place for us to see them, so will Michael Bay go a step further and give us a life sized Optimus Prime in 3D for Transformers 3?

No. No he won’t.

From the Wall Street Journal:

I prefer the flat screen. I’m not jumping to do 3-D at all—it’s a pain in the neck to shoot it and I actually like the flat image. I’ve heard that some people can’t even see 3-D and, moreover, that a major side effect of watching it is feeling exhausted. Can you imagine how you’d feel watching one of my movies in 3-D?

He has a point. Spending 2 hours and 40+ minutes watching 3D robots going at it, while cool, would be enough to shut down people’s brains and souls. Bay also commented on his next project, which shockingly will contain little or no special effects.

I’ve been talking to some big actors right now about something that is totally different. A small dark comedy, a true story, with actors just acting, no effects. I’m done with effects movies for now. When you do a movie like “Transformers,” it can feel like you’re doing three movies at once—which is tiring.
I just want to take some time off. It’s been almost three years that I’ve devoted myself entirely to this world of robots. At some point, enough is enough—and I literally carried this movie on my back. I only finished it in the last week. It was a tough movie for me to finish—especially with the writers strike, the possible SAG strike. At one point, we were the only union movie in America shooting—Hollywood was so messed up from those two events.

Ramon Rodriguez will have a bigger role in Transformers 3

Liam — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:01:11 +0000

Sequels always introduce new characters to keep things fresh, and with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the most prominent new addition was Ramon Rodriguez who played Sam’s room-mate Leo Spitz (Jonah Hill turned the role down). In my opinion the character was a little pointless and his only purpose was to join the gang up with Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and provide a little comic relief (along with the parents, the leg humping robot, the old robot, the twin robots and Agent ‘bare ass’ Simmons himself). At the end of the film he was alive and well so we can assume he will turn up in Transformers 3. Michael Bay recently spoke to the L.A Times and suggested that Rodriguez would have a bigger role next time round.

Director Michael Bay has a third “Transformers” film in mind, and if it plays out as he expects, the next installment would have a more substantial role for Rodriguez. The filmmaker, speaking at his office a few weeks before “Revenge of the Fallen” was released, seemed to have some pride of discovery when talking about Rodriguez.
“I’ve worked with big stars, people like Will Smith, Sean Connery and Bruce Willis, but casting is a weird thing, it takes you places you don’t expect,” Bay said. “We went looking for a sidekick in this movie, Shia’s sidekick, and we find this new kid who really pops on screen. I think he’s going to have a real bright career. It’s great to work with big stars, but it’s always fun to discover people.”

He is part of the gang now so he will probably be involved with whatever lies ahead. Hopefully Bay and the writers give him a reason to be there. They have enough comic relief as it is.

JJ Abrams Talks Star Trek Sequel, Cut Scenes Revealed!

Dave — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:37:02 +0000

A little burst of Star Trek sequel news for everyone, especially since there seems to be a small groundswell of journalistic activity questioning if Michael Bay is really going to step away from Transformers 3 to direct a “smaller movie.” The argument is that Transformers: ROTF stands to make Bay a butt-load of money and that a third film in inevitable. The problem is that pre-production should start in a couple of weeks to make a timely sequel, and screenwriters Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman are busy working on the upcoming Robert Downey Jr action flick, Cowboys and Aliens as well as actively being in discussions with JJ Abrams about Star Trek 2.

That’s right, stepping away from the Michael Bay question, Orci and Kurtzman have expressed interest in running away from the Transformers franchise, but have promised Paramount a draft of Star Trek 2 by this holiday season.

In a video from Collider at the Saturn Awards, Steve Weintraub asks JJ Abrams about his involvement with the Trek sequel…

[Note: You can watch the video embed, directly to the right of the title in the "media box" area, or you can CLICK HERE to check it out at the source.]

If that wasn’t enough to quench your Star Trek thirst for awhile, or if you’re still blaming Orci and Kurtzman for the failings of T: ROTF (instead of rightfully blaming the WGA Strike), check out THIS POST at TNMC that discusses the scenes cut out of the first Abrams Star Trek film, including a whole Klingon subplot…that actually makes a lot of sense.

Transformers: Critics Didn’t Get It

Dave — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:59:07 +0000

As of Sunday, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen has grossed $201,246,000 in the US and an estimated $281,430,013 worldwide. So, why am I writing a review of a movie after it’s been out long enough to make its production budget back? Because with very few exceptions, critics got this film completely wrong.

I sat down to watch Transformers with low expectations. I wanted to see two things: I wanted Megan Fox to sweat, run, bounce, and never-close-her-mouth, I also wanted to see giant robots, rendered in exquisite detail, beat the living robo-shit out of each other.

What was everyone else expecting?

Roger Ebert, critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and owner of one of the most valuable thumbs in the industry gave this film one star, and began his review: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.” Which is all well and good coming from a man who has walked me through Fight Club frame-by-frame and provided a whole generation of movie-goers with solid critical opinion. But…

…in his companion article at the Sun-Times blog titled “The Fall of the Revengers” he begins the piece: “The day will come when “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” will be studied in film classes and shown at cult film festivals.” He argues this because he sees Transformers: ROTF as the biggest, most useless summer blockbuster movie and he can’t imagine that this will do anything but kill movies this big. In Ebert’s mind, Revenge of the Fallen is as far as we’re going to let blockbuster cinema go.

We don’t yet know if that’s true, but that’s exactly why I can’t give Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen anything but an incredibly positive review. Because I haven’t had my face raped this hard in awhile, and Bay pulls it off in that creepy/charming way where I’m starting to wonder if I egged on this film’s lustful robot libdo with my short skirts and flirting. I was asking to be brought to the brink of seizure by robot-battle cinema, so why should I be pissed when the film leaves me used, confused and with my critical pants around my ankles?

I’m not going to summarize the plot, both because it doesn’t matter and if you really want to know it and haven’t seen the movie there are dozens of sites and probably 3 or more of your friends who are willing to tell you how bad it is. The process this film went through when it was being developed doesn’t lend itself to a coherent plot. Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman made a 20-page outline before the writer’s strike, which Bay developed into something like 40 pages as he started to design the robots (and if you think Hasbro wasn’t pushing cool toys all the while, you’re dead wrong). The strike ended and the film was already coming together, so what we have is a plot of faint ideas of why the characters should be in any given place at any given time. The character “arcs” are so one-dimensional that the dialogue is just padding to get us to the next racist joke, bout of physical comedy or massive explosion.

I realized this about the time when Megatron was raised from the bottom of the ocean. The military are tracking the Decepticons as they sink to the lowest depths of the ocean to retrieve the body of their leader, and the radar operator very clearly says there are 5 targets sinking to the depths. Megatron is revived after a tiny robot named “The Doctor” orders four of the Decepticons to destroy the smallest one for parts to rebuild Megatron. The Hugo Weaving-voiced robot then begins to rise our of the ocean along with his cronies and the radar operator says there are now 6 targets rising up out of the waves at an alarming speed. If you can count: 5 going down, one gets destroyed, one gets revived: there should be 5 targets, not 6, rising out of the ocean.

My reaction: “Oh, I guess I should stop listening to the dialogue or caring about the story, because it’s obvious Michael Bay and the script supervisor don’t give two farts.”

The film then goes on to actively try and fight whomever tries to follow the plot. Even if you gloss over the Optimus Prime-sized holes, the climax has Sam going to Autobot heaven before being resurrected like Robo-Jesus. If you haven’t given up on logic by then, I have news for you: You’re watching a movie where the biggest damn robot I’ve ever seen has wrecking ball testicles.

Remember the slow-news-day story of McG challenging Michael Bay to a dick-measuring contest because both of their summer movies had giant robots? Micahel Bay wins. Even though they both made movies that had plots I’d like to transcribe on my toilet paper so I could wipe myself with them, Michael Bay never seems to lose control of science experiment in BOOM. McG, for all his good intentions, made promises about his film that the flick couldn’t keep. The only promise Michael Bay made is that this movie would be the biggest thing you’ve ever seen, and guess what? It is.

I can see where most critics are ready to screw Transformers into the ground, because we’re a picky bunch. There’s always pressure to steer the audience towards something that’s going to elevate the storytelling form. Films that swim around in shark-infested festival waters only to emerge as a popular indie get championed because they had to pay their dues with the sweat of their creative department, on the merits of their stories and characters. But that doesn’t mean that every film that comes out is meant to be judged in the same way. I’m not going to compare every movie to Citizen Kane or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. If I want to see interesting dialogue, I’ll watch Coffee and Cigarettes. If I want a neat-o character study, I’ll pick up something like American Splendor. But, if I want to see a film that abandons what traditionally makes a film “good,” namely the story-telling elements, my critically-lauded choice is…I don’t know, something like Koyaanisqatsi.

Revenge Of The Fallen showed me visuals that made my mind want to explode, and since I sat far enough away from the screen, I don’t have any of the gripes about the action direction from Bay making things visually confusing. Bumblebee, the smallest Autobot, fights like a bad-ass every time he graces the final battle. He shakes Ravage to f-ing death! Optimus Prime is out for robo-blood in this installment and rips a robot’s face in half. The camera swoops, gibs, pans, flies and twists because it knows you’ve given up on the why, you’re just supposed to focus on the what. And the wow.

The film is like a calzone that has embedded jalapeños made of racial stereotypes and sight-gags. If those “jokes” weren’t so broad, you wouldn’t even notice them amongst the red onions of robot fights and banana peppers of Megan Fox’s blank-stare sexiness. The stereotypes in this film are just being as big as they have to be to get noticed, like the guy who brings fire-crackers to a dildo party.

Ebert might be right in the sense that this might be the pinnacle of the blow-em-up summer movie. Watching the previews for 2012 and The Last Airbender trying to prepare me for the massive CGI fest I was about to see just highlighted how much fighting robots work. Seeing Scorpionok return in slow motion and plunge himself into Jetfire happened so fast and was so lovingly rendered that prolonged shots of an aircraft carrier destroying the White House in the 2012 preview look gratuitous. Michael Bay only shows incredibly cool and unique action/CGI for 30 seconds while Roland Emmerich is doing little more than animating a mildly impressive storyboard.

If you want to see a movie with fantastic characters and a coherent, complex plot, I’m guessing you see a lot of movies in theaters between September and January. When Avatar comes along later this year with the high hopes of being a game-changer, I’ll coax it towards my face, making sure it’s aroused and ready to make love to me. With Transformers, I was straight up assaulted and abused, but I smiled through the whole ordeal.

How is that not a valid film experience?

Orci and Kurtzman Back Away From T:ROTF’s Racist Bots

Dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:11:01 +0000

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are having a pretty good year, regardless of what you think of their most recent releases, Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Without a doubt, these two are the biggest screenwriting duo currently working, with their next screenplay being the blockbuster-sized Cowboys and Aliens for Dreamworks.

However, Revenge Of The Fallen happens to feature two possible racist robots, Skids and Mudflap, who talk in ebonics, constantly bicker, can’t read and one even has a gold buck-tooth. Add their ape-like build and the fact that T:ROTF is aimed at children, and the internet goes up-in-arms about racial stereotypes that have no reason being in the film.

As quickly as possible, the PR machine has hit the digital streets to quash the uproar the likes of which I haven’t seen since Jar Jar Binks. AP managed to corner Bay:

Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling ‘bots are just good clean fun.
“We’re just putting more personality in,” Bay said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”
If these characters weren’t animated and instead played by real black actors, “then you might have to admit that it’s racist,” [Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion] said. “But stick it into a robot’s mouth, and it’s just a robot, it’s OK.”
But if they’re alien robots, she continued, “why do they talk like bad black stereotypes?”
Bay brushes off any whiff of controversy.
“Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything,” he said. “It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.”

Bay obviously doesn’t care if he’s created racist characters and pointed those stereotypes directly at an audience of children, but Orci and Kurtzman seem to be distancing themselves from the decision to include the Twins, something they insist Bay told them to put in the script (hence their near-total absence from the finale sequence).

From Film School Rejects:

They’ve already claimed in other interviews that the gold tooth and several other elements were Michael Bay’s idea, but when I talked to them, they moved beyond that to claim they were disappointed by the characters.
Cole: I heard that the gold tooth was Michael Bay’s idea, but do you have any response to those who found The Twins offensive?
Orci: Number one, we sympathize. Yes, the gold tooth was not in the script, that’s true.
Kurtzman: It’s really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it.I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie.
Cole: Were you offended by them?
Kurtzman: I wasn’t thrilled. I certainly wasn’t thrilled.
Orci: Yeah, same reaction. I’m not easily offended, but when I saw it, I thought, ‘Someone’s gonna write about that.’”

Smart move, guys, just point towards your director and run the eff away! Live to write predictable tent-pole films another day!