Jun 25th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
The Softer Side of Michael Bay
This LA Times series of photos with captions purports to illustrate “the romances of Michael Bay” beyond the frenetic action for which he’s best known. But they leave out what I think you would have to call his greatest romance, this brief 1990s-vintage ad for Levis Jeans:
Bay’s Aaron Burr “Got Milk” is also a great commercial. Longtime readers know that I’m a Michael Bay apologist, but there’s no doubt that his finest work occurred outside the confines of feature filmmaking.
19 Responses to “The Softer Side of Michael Bay”
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June 25th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
A few years ago I watched Bay serve as a guest judge on that “American Idol”-esque director search show on Fox. What amazed me was his sophisticated understanding of narrative, character, and tone. His comments demonstrated a very keen eye for story and how good stories are told. I developed an incredible respect for him.
Then I saw “The Island.”
It just goes to show that age-old truth that knowing something isn’t the same thing as doing it.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
It’s too bad he couldn’t show his softer side in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which can politely be considered the sexist and (possibly) racist blockbuster of the year.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Potentially the two greatest commercials of the 1990s. Bad Boys II is also ridiculously enjoyable, if also completely depraved and pointless.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I’m fascinated to learn that Bay directed the Aaron Burr “Got Milk” commercial. It’s one of my favorite commercials of all time.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
What I like about Michael Bay is that he knows full well that everyone hates him but he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to make films the way he wants to.
Although Matt’s blog post has me reconsidering my take on the subject.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I like to make fun of Michael Bay as much as everyone, but he sure can make some ridiculous and fun movies. Bad Boys is one of the most watchable action movies of all time. To this day, I still will tune in whenever I stumble across in on cable.
Pearl Harbor sucked though…
I miss more than Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more than that movie missed the point.
And that’s enough a lot girl. And now, now you’ve gone away
And all I’m trying to say is Pearl Harbor sucked…
and I miss you.
I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting schools
He was terrible in that film…
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part
He’s way better than Ben Affleck and now,
All I can think about is your smile and that shitty movie
too…
Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you…
Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked just a little bit more than I miss
you…
June 25th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Revenge of the fallen seems to just defy explaination, aside from amping up the blatent stereotyping (because more steroetyping makes up for the lack of characterisation in the last film) There are serious issues with the number of blatent rips from other films (gremilns? and the whole Plot device turns into crass paris hilton lowest common denominator humour) The frankly bizzare reefer madness exercise, (completely kills suspension of disbelief, fatal for a film with giant talking robots), buckets of deus ex machina, a repeation of the first film’s dual macguffin plot mangling, while nothing made me hurt as much as the bunker “we needs a communication device” bit in the first bit (an excersise in pointless technobabble that did nothing for the plot and made shit up instead of taking a simple and macguyver explainable route)
Then there are concepts (transformers can disguise themselves as human, yes I know about the pretenders, and that’s completely different) that violate the very design ethic that caused the production design to ditch a more traditional look ( that look existed for a reason, easy animation, and an easier time for comic book colourists and marketing persons) and that look was exchanged for a design ethic that made the one thing that the film had to sell (giant robots beat the crap out of each other) almost impossible to achieve (can anyone make out what’s happening in most of the fight scenes?) because the human eye can’t pick out any detail in the busyness. All that contradictory stuff is done to try and add drama to a romantic subplot so horrifically cliched and irrelevent it caused me pain.
Even the action sequeces which should be the saviour of the film have problems, with drastic variation in the fighting ability of characters depending on the needs of getting the plot to the next story point. This is exacerbated by the constant ressurection of characters (cf. frenzy in the first film, who survived as a head and later got a new body) meaning you have no emotional investment in them should they die
it was better than the first but not by much, there were a couple of nice set piecees but they were stuck in a film 40 mins too long.
I should also point out that I am by no means a G1 purist. I’ve just seen Epics of robot combat done infinately better elsewhere.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Michael Bay?
Commercials?
http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/02/14/michael-bay-is-awesome/
June 25th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I’m not sure the first Transformers movie and a couple commercials can make up for all his other directing sins, but the Aaron Burr commercial is in fact one of my all-time favorites, and finding out he directed it does in fact move the needle on my opinion of him.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
By the way, Pearl Harbor would have been infinitely better WITHOUT any contributions from Bay’s “softer side”.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
The only tolerable version of “I Think I Love You” was by Voice of the Beehive. The inclusion of one of the non-tolerable versions of the song in that Levis commercial pretty much did it in, as far as I’m concerned.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
God, that Levi advert was crap. It’s hardly surprising he can’t make good films if he can’t make good ads. The best Levi ad evah! OK, so it is British.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
If its not animated and in Japanese, its probably going to suck.
That being said, I’m going to go see the movie anyway
June 25th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
What amazed me was his sophisticated understanding of narrative, character, and tone.
A classmate of mine often liked to say that Bay went to Wesleyan. I have no interest in verifying his claim.
June 25th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
The funny thing about Bay is that he’s fairly modest and unassuming. Very approachable. Polite, considerate. 9 times out of 10 a commercially super-successful, critically ill-received guy like him will be a major a-hole. He’s not.
June 25th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
He’s going to make films the way he wants to.
That’s sort of impressive when movies are complicated but hard to grasp. When “the way he wants to” is “a way that’s really shitty but he thinks it will make lots of money” it’s kind of hard to be impressed.
My impression of Bay is that he does what he thinks will maximize the ROI on his movies. If that means gratuitous product placement and marketing of 3rd-party interests in exchange for money and pandering to certain audience demographics in order to attract them in large numbers, so be it, even if the dialog and plot suck. What that means is that you end up with a grudging respect for a guy who can make money in the business when he puts out movies like “Transformers,” but he comes across as a laughable ass when he puts out movies like “The Island” or “Transformers 2.”
June 25th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I can’t believe that no one has pointed out that the best thing Michael Bay has ever done was his cameo in Mystery Men.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
American cinema simply would not be what it is today if not for Michael Bay. That statement will mean different things to different people.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:43 am
To be fair there’s plenty of animated japanese robot sagas that suck balls too. for example pretty much all the transformers cartoons that came out after the us series ended.
(and I should point out I’m not a big fan of the us cartoon either. Rumble is red, frenzy is blue. The cartoon was WRONG.)