In defence of Michael Bay

Ask anyone who Michael Bay is, and no-one will be unbiased. He is a man only those who don't know him can be indifferent about - and not knowing Michael Bay in our day and age is an increasingly unlikely possibility.

To many people, the controversial filmmaker is actually a hero, who'll just cut the crap and give you the fix you need. But to many others, he is just pure unchecked evil: a man who makes bad films and is dumbing people with his trash. And curiously, it is this second perception that appears to be morally acceptable. It is your obligation to denounce Michael Bay, and anything that may sound defensive or apologetic to him is an aggression to cinema.

His most avid critics seem to depict him as a somewhat real-life supervillain; a massive force that just urgently needs to be stopped at all costs. Here in DeviantArt, I have seen people dedicating their times and talents to lash him out through their arts: one artist called him a "fucking tool", while another one requested him to "eat a dick". This makes me wonder if they would nourish this discontentment towards figures like Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong-Un, who are doing actual ill to the world instead of dumb movies.

There are plenty of values I admire in filmmakers, and one of such is honesty. When they make clear what they want with their movies. Bay has always been plainly honest about what he wants with his movies: to entertain us. He's there to make the movies audiences want to see, without trying to come with "morally acceptable" justifications. And I cannot help but to respect that, but that's not all that Bay has going for him.

I know it might seem blasphemous to compare even remotely Stanley Kubrick with Michael Bay. It would seem even as a crime to put these names in the same paragraph, but both however share a well known - and well documented - uncompromising and laser-focused dedication to their visions. They would do whatever possible to get those images in their heads into celluloid as they envisioned. Even if I don't always agree with what he's saying, I have to appreciate the voice itself: Bay is an auteur filmmaker. A dedicated visual master.

Bay may be by all means and beyond any consideration a flawed director, for he's not really a nuanced guy... but you cannot say he is without a very identifiable and unique visual style. One that actually has been commented and studied by film scholars.

Nevertheless, Bay is really, really despised. In my life, few other times I saw any other director getting this much heat - and usually they do when they mess up at given circumstances, rather than for their very existence. In face to this, it would be a massively bad idea to even defend him. If you do, you are a troll, just another one of those stupid people giving billions to his films, or a pseudo-intellectual contrarian saying what everybody else doesn't want to hear. I mean, the message is clear; the jury is in. Bay is evil. There's no defending him. You shouldn't even be thinking about defending him.

But I think Bay does deserve some sort of defence, for I've never seen any other filmmaker being judged with the double standards that he is. Whatever he does wrong is taken into much more consideration than when other directors do wrong as well, and whatever he does right may not be taken into consideration at all. If Guillermo del Toro drops the ball, it's you who's nitpicking and doesn't understand the message he's trying to convey; if Bay does it, it's your moral duty to lash him out, to preach to the choir.

Other directors have a pass to do what Bay does without getting the poison he gets. How do you think Furious 7 or The Wolf of Wall Street would have been received by critics if they had "directed by Michael Bay" in the credits, while being frame by frame the same? Lucy was an absolutely stupid film... entertaining, but really stupid. However, a surprising amount of critics were forgiving about this film. I'm not saying they are right or wrong; it's just that this got me thinking if they would have been this forgiving if Bay had been credited as its director, rather than Luc Besson.

And don't even get me started on Kingsman: The Secret Service. How do you think critics would have responded to that film, with its infamous church fight scene and a princess offering to go anal, if they knew Bay was the responsible for it? They would have certainly buried it, calling the whole thing immoral and perverted: another piece of vile garbage from Bay. But because it was by Matthew Vaughn, it is transgression, speaks for our society, or it's just damn fun. Which it is, I'll be damned if it isn't. But because it's not by Michael Bay, we can say it so safely.



Perhaps the most scandalous example of this is when Michael Bay gets wailed on for making his Transformers movies, for there's always that accusation he keeps repeating the formula ("these movies are indistinguishable from each other!"). Meanwhile, many people noticed that J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens was much too similar to the first Star Wars, almost like a rehash. But very few felt like condemning him for doing that, because that would be nitpicking, I guess. It's also curious to see how the Marvel movies feel so formulaic and resemble one another: those same quips, those same dialogues, those same villains, and dramatic moments... and yet, those are some of the most critically lauded action films of our time. I guess people are in their right not to bother if their movies are indeed formulaic, and even to be glad they are so. Go, have a blast with your uncreative superhero movies. But if that's the case, then this accusation is not valid anymore against Michael Bay, or anyone else for that matter.

Now, in no moment I'm out to say Michael Bay's flicks are masterpieces, and critics got it all wrong. In no moment I'm out to say that he's my hero or something. What we've seen from him was mostly mediocre works, with modest moments of decency and unforgettable moments of awfulness. Nevertheless, the massive majority of his films were successful, grossing over four billion dollars. If you were to believe for a fact in all those zero stars reviews and angry YouTubers, you would believe Bay to be a total failure as a filmmaker, with no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Someone who only keeps on making films because he's gaming the system or something, and not for his own merits. But when you look at these numbers, you have to agree Bay must be doing something right. You can't say someone with such a record is a complete failure; you can't say that he is untalented.

Let's then recapitulate Michael Bay's filmography this far. Let's honestly analyse each of his films for what they are, without double standards.

Bad Boys
1995

It all started with Bad Boys. Michael had been an intern in Lucasfilm, where he met figures like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and worked in films like Raiders of the Lost Ark. He started his career as a director by making music videos and commercials: one of such was the award-winning Got Milk?  ad, which carried the humour, the kinetic shots and the lively editing that would mark much of his later career. Michael was then given a golden opportunity with the Simpson/Bruckheimer production Bad Boys for Columbia.

The film launched the careers of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, by then television stars. Smith was mostly known for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air back then, but after running around with his button shirt open in Michael's feature debut, he proceeded to become one of the biggest revelations of the 90's, and one of the most prominent black actors in Hollywood. As for Lawrence, he became a popular comedy actor for a while, but now he is in a career low thanks to poor choices like Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son and Wild Hogs. You can bet he's anxiously awaiting for Bad Boys 3.

Bad Boys may have had a problematic pace: this is the first feature film of Bay after all, and quite a departure from short videos. But it had its heart on the right place: it was a 80's movie in the middle of the 90's. Today, after all those The Expendables movies, we take this notion of the revival actioner for granted. But Bad Boys feels like a 80's buddy cop film by trying to replicate what those movies did right, instead of explicitly imitating them. It had its own voice, it was its own thing. And with the pairing of Smith and Lawrence, the film had a contaminating energy. It was deliciously out of place.

Making over 140 million dollars on a budget of 19 millions, Michael arrived at Hollywood in big style.

The Rock
1996

Michael's next movie was the memorable The Rock, coming right at the next year. It was his first film with Disney, through its Touchstone label. And it was the last film Don Simpson produced before he died. The consensus over this film is that it is, by default, Michael's best film, or at very least his least bad. It's trilling, with a concealed sense of humour, elements of drama, and questions about true patriotism. It was dumb... but at the same time, it wasn't.

It starred Sean Connery, who was the movie's driving force with his passive-aggressive persona, like a sophisticated badass. And of course, The Rock is known for having some of the most memorable bits of acting by Nicolas Cage, who had just started the process of making bigger and more profitable films. One can safely say that the downward spiral Cage is currently into started taking shape in here.

While The Rock can be ludicrous - specially since it was made before 9/11 and had a different, more puerile view on terrorism than today - it is a decent and sometimes confrontational film. It had eye candy moments of action and comedy that are so peculiar to Michael, but it also raised uncomfortable questions about the treatment of the Military in America. And as future films would very much confirm, the director has a deep respect for the American troops.

And one more thing: Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino served as some of its screenwriters. They were uncredited, but now that you think about it, much of the film does look like their body of work. The film revolves around the obscure secrets of the Military, similarly to Sorkin's previous hit A Few Good Men, but for the sake of an actioner instead of an investigative courtroom drama. There's also the obsession of Cage's character with vintage music, and the catchy dialogues feel reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. Suddenly, it all clicks.

Armageddon
1998

This is the point when Michael became Bay, and serves as the division point of his career. The second film Bay did with Disney, Armageddon represented a change for the director - not in terms of ideal, but in terms of scale. It was the moment things got bigger, when he got into the big league.

The year is 1998. Bruce Willis was still an A-list star, rather than a parody of himself. Ben Affleck was just entering that long, harsh period between Good Will Hunting and Argo: a period when Hollywood wanted to make him into less of an artist and more of a star. And this inglorious road started with Armageddon, a delightfully insulting reinterpretation of The Right Stuff - complete, even with a slow motion walk sequence with astronauts. The film is as high-concept as it can get: a bunch of misfits have to explode an asteroid!

Co-written by a then little known J.J. Abrams, Armageddon should have been only around 15 minutes long, having the same sense of logic of a slightly overlong episode from Phineas and Ferb or T.U.F.F. Puppy. But Bay stretches the whole caboose into ten times that, thanks to overprotective dad puns, spacial cars floating in zero-gravity (just for the hell of it, shits and giggles) and Steve Buscemi delivering lines like "this place is like Dr. Seuss's worst nightmare" or "I hate knowing everything". It is worthy to mention the movie holds little regards for scientific accuracy, because scientific accuracy is for eggheads, right? If people wanted science, they would be watching the Discovery Channel (or Interstellar). It's not even right to call this movie a science-fiction, because for such, it needs to have actual science first.

Also, there's a scene when Michael Clarke Duncan dances and flexes his muscles in front of his friends while wearing nothing but a tight tiger-striped underwear during a physical check-up. That must have been the film's money shot, since things of the sort are specifically what we all want to see in our disaster movies. Plus, they bring mini-guns to outer space, because why not? If they can't blow the asteroid, they can just shot the damn thing.

The film was part of one of the most shameful showdowns in the history of cinema: Armageddon and the deeply bad Deep Impact were competing for the title of the definitive asteroid-themed movie of the year. They were the extreme anti-thesis of each other, with one being too overblown and childish with an emphasis on hillbillies in space, and the other being too mopey and manipulative with an emphasis on human tragedy. None of the films came out as balanced, but at very least Armageddon wasn't a pretentious drama asking to be taken seriously. And the irony of this whole story is that 1998 was also the year of a much more interesting showdown: Antz and A Bug's Life disputed for the title of best bug-themed CGI animation of the year, both of them with engaging themes and plots. Family animated films more intellectually challenging than disaster PG-13 films - as true then as it is today.

Armageddon is a wounded beast of a movie. Nevertheless, it is a fun film if you are in tune with it, and its many mistakes are somewhat compensated for what the film does right. Yes, it's not a good movie; it's the classic turn-off-your-brain that Bay does best. But if you acknowledge that it's dumb, no-one will doubt of your judgement (maybe your taste, but not your judgement).

Armageddon was unloved by critics, but despite what they had to say, it was the highest grossing film of the year, cementing Bay even further in Hollywood. In fact, you can say it's the quintessential asteroid film, the first and maybe only one most people will think about when picturing such theme. So you can say this was a showdown Michael Bay won. Not that it means much.

Pearl Harbor
2001

Pearl Harbor would be something a little more serious than anything else Bay had ever done by then. It was written by Randall Wallace (of Braveheart fame), and it was Bay's third time with Disney. Third and last: that union was proving to be more trouble for Bay than he anticipated.

Now, I know the point in this essay is to defend Michael Bay in some way, but there's no point in denying the obvious: Pearl Harbor is just a bad film.

It was bad at its release, and it aged even worse - the grotesque, incestuous love child of Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. It dragged for merciless three hours, and it was so contrived that it felt Bay was checking every cliché in the books. Bay defended himself declaring he wanted to do a R-rated film, and that like with Armageddon, there was studio interference. But sincerely, I don't think this film would have been better if Bay was fully at its reins; in fact, quite the opposite.

The film's intentions were very clear: to be a kinda-biopic war romance set in the Pacific War, and to cement Ben Affleck as a top billing actor. But it was severely ham-fisted, like a bad soap opera; a drama made by someone who didn't know how to make dramas. No, seriously: the film was tempered with some comic situations and awkwardly romantic moments that were completely out of tune with what the film apparently wanted to be. There was even a character with a stammer who serves as something of a comic relief.

Particularly embarrassing is the now infamous scene when a polio-afflicted president Franklin D. Roosevelt gives a rousing speech to a table filled with boring politicians with their boring dialogues about which boring course of action they should take, perhaps boringly. At one point, a plan is contested as something that can't be done. And as a response, the dude stands from his wheelchair and says "don't tell me it can't be done". Yeah! 'Murica! I think Bay included that moment in there because he wanted to make the scene interesting. And it's not an isolated scene, as the whole film is more or less like a conjunct of unnecessary moments to make scenes eye-catching, which is a chronic problem of his filmography.

And the saddest thing that can be said about this film is that it genuinely had the potential of being so much better. It had a considerable budget, some great production values and even some competent action pieces (which maybe distastefully made the tragic attack at Pearl Harbor look awesome). It had it all to be a great film, and if it had no potential at all, I would just dismiss it as bad and ignore it. But for all its unfulfilled values hidden amidst its awfulness, it's heartbreaking that this film stands among the worst of Bay... and that is saying a lot.

Since its release, Pearl Harbor has been the butt of many jokes in pop culture, and understandably. Nevertheless, while the film didn't set new box office records as it may have been expected, it still was a respectful success, making nearly 450 million dollars. It showed that Bay wasn't a fad or an one-hit-wonder: with four hits in a row, an unique visual style and utmost compromise with his projects, Bay had arrived to stay, you like it or not.

So this is a bad movie, and I'm not arguing with that. But I want you to remember what I said in the beginning: that it seems morally acceptable to treat Bay with double standards. People have condemned the film for not remembering the real heroes of Pearl Harbor, and I guess this is a valid criticism. But then, isn't that the precise same case with Saving Private Ryan? And Apocalypse Now? And so many other war movies out there? Would people make that criticism to highly beloved war movies? Didn't such films also "fail to mention" real war heroes as well? Jesus, Ryan failed to mention even the Allies!

Bad Boys II
2003

Bay had been pushed around by studio executives in Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, and he felt his vision as an artist was being hampered. Such events must have shaped him in some way; he didn't want to be a studio-assigned director, who would just do what producers told him. He wanted to be free, to explore his own identity... and he had gathered enough credibility for such. Bad Boys II was the first time we saw an unchained Michael Bay. It is my personal favourite from him, and so is a lot of people's.

Bad Boys II is the modern epitome of overblown and unapologetic. It's a hard R-rated film in all its aspects, with its gleeful graphic violence and bombastic action pieces. The film also had excessive jokes that would qualify it as an action comedy. No gag, racial stereotyping or sexual innuendo got turned down, and everything that Bay and his fellows could think of made its way to the celluloid without much judgement. It has no breaks: breaks are for pussies (well, that seems to be the film's philosophy).

To me, BBII had the most emblematic moment of Michael Bay's filmography: the bullet-tracking shot in the bust at the KKK gathering. Will Smith fires a bullet while he dives into the ground. The bullet breaks several bottles in its path, brushes past Martin Lawrence's buttocks, and then pierces a Klan member in the neck, with an orgasmic spray of blood... all of this in slow-motion. It was pure Bay, with its operatic visual mastery, unsubtle humour and shocking violence.

Critics hated the damn film. They hated its characters, its excesses and they hated its rats having sex. They just hated it with all of their might, and I remember that among all the bashing, film critic and notorious scumbag James Berardinelli just flat out said people who enjoyed this film needed to search for psychiatric help. Yes: if you enjoyed a film, you are mentally ill.

But the truth is, for all its excesses, Bad Boys II feel like it was exactly the movie it was meant to be, the film Bay had in his mind all along. And more importantly, it was a movie that succeed much more often than it faulted: no action piece feels like dragging the movie, and many of its jokes do entertain us. All in all, its an action comedy done right, with many some memorable scenes - most famously the "shit just got real" moment that became an internet meme. It's one of the few Michael Bay movies people will admit they enjoyed - at the time of its release, the film did made a somewhat disappointing box-office, failing to reach the 300 million dollars mark. But like movies such as The Shawshank Redemption and Fight Club, it became highly successful on television, with plenty people coming to finally "discover" it, and being in awe by just how darn fun it is.

I guess the best thing one can say about BBII is that, while it was very much overblown, it also had a sense of control, as things would never escape from hand. The same cannot be said of Transformers 2, but we're not there yet.

The Island
2005

In 2005, Bay decided to do something more ambitious and serious, the dystopia The Island, which is often refereed as "that Michael Bay movie nobody saw". Which to me, is something of a deeply flattering statement, since it's to say "we saw all your movies except this one".

It starred Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as the leads: McGregor had just ended his turn as Obi-Wan Kenobi that year, while Scarlett was slowly becoming a super-celebrity after Lost in Translation. The Island was Bay's only time working for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., and it was his first film without the involvement of producer Jerry Bruckheimer - so far, they still haven't worked together again.

It was meant somehow to be a thrown-back at those pessimistic science-fiction movies of the 70's, a homage to those New Hollywood downer films. It even carried some interesting concepts of public manipulation and the usage of technologies for constant monitoring, feeling indebted to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. It was still a Michael Bay film with many of his traits, but they're not as scandalous as before: we saw Bay, for the first time, sincerely wanting to make an intelligent movie. Maybe he burned all of his desire to set the world on fire with BBII.

For all its weighty topics and action scenes, The Island ended up making less than 170 million dollars on its 128 millions budget, and it was part of a string of commercial disappointments that leaded DreamWorks to fall from grace after an astronomic beginning. While the film made a paltry box office, critics at least agreed it had noble intentions and interesting ideas, and while it may have failed, at least it tried: it was a reflection of the direction Bay wanted to take by that time. It also introduced Bay to writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who would become some of the hottest (and most overrated) screenwriters in Hollywood. The duo would work again with Bay for his next two projects.

Steven Spielberg wanted Bay to direct a film based on Hasbro's Transformers. Bay didn't really want to, as he wanted to move into smaller projects; more personal films, such as what Pain & Gain would turn out to be. But apparently seeing this as the blockbuster of his career, he took the project with the promise of having considerable freedom to do what best suited him. Furthermore, who could say no to Steven himself?

Transformers
2007

Transformers saw Bay returning to high-stakes big-budget filmmaking, and following the example of the successful Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it had a PG-13 rating aiming at more adult markets, even because the kids who enjoyed the toys and the cartoon back in the 80's had grown up, and the film wanted to speak their language.

Not good, nor bad, the film polarised critics. It was visually dashing, with seizure-inducing CGI-heavy action sequences of pure - and sometimes incomprehensible - mayhem. On top of that, it had Bay's characteristic unsubtle sense of humour: there just had to be somewhere a fatty black guy dancing to a rhythm game. It starred Spielberg's then-protégé Shia LaBeouf: someone I've always believed to have been forcefully foisted into the market by Spielberg, but who did his best to prove his worth. As the love interest, it had Megan Fox, who became typecasted in Hollywood as an actress with beautiful looks and no acting skills.

At one point of the film, when two Transformers are fighting on a highway, a kid seeing the whole action in a nearby car exclaims "cool mom" to his mother. It was really fast, and you could easily miss it... but it was the truest moment in the whole film. Even with its scary scenes and lazy innuendos, Transformers was still a kid's movie. The PG-13 film in which you most definitely are supposed to bring your children to. It was made for kids, even the inner ones within us grown-ups.

Transformers feels almost like a less-than-good Spielberg movie; if E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been done wrong. The consensus on it back in the day was that it was merely so-so - and it is. But thanks to its hysterical sequels, the first film came to be panned in retrospect: now, it's regarded just as bad as the others. Its sequels gave it a bad context, almost as if they had revelled that the first movie was actually terrible all along. Regardless, the film became indeed Bay's biggest hit by the time, making over 700 million dollars, and consequently starting a fruitful relationship between Bay and Paramount. The studio gave him carte blanche, since in Hollywood, earning big money means earning big respect. Naturally, a sequel was wanted, since that was the intent since the beginning: to make a franchise. And Bay would go down a spiral he would never come back from: Transformers was the best and the worst thing to happen in his career.

The sequel arrived in 2009, once again with Steven Spielberg serving as executive producer. The film had a bigger budget, and fans were expecting it to be even better, to improve over its predecessor. But it was bad. Oh, boy... it was really, really bad.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2009

For the sequel, everything that was wrong in the first Transformers was repeated and then bloated: the film didn't correct what was previously wrong, instead believing that was what was actually right. And the result was one of the worst movies of the decade; a film so awful I couldn't believe people were not exaggerating about its issues. You can safely say this is Bay's worst film by a considerable margin over whichever one you may think to be his second worst.

For starters, it was filled to the brim with one storytelling incoherence after the other. The film could be best explained with a succinct "because it's a movie", and it's packed with plot holes so big you could fly a space shuttle through them. Trying to make sense of this bad acid trip of a motion picture is even more painful than watching it, as incredible as this may seem. Like with Bad Boys II, Bay once again decided this should be a bigger and louder sequel - in fact, the poster for that film is very blatantly featured in a dorm room in Fallen. But one of the triumphs of Bad Boys II was its cohesive narrative and likeable characters, while Fallen is just a calamitous mess. Bad Boys II is almost an Andrei Tarkovsky film compared to it!

Then, you have the characters. People complained that Jazz in the first movie was an insensitive black stereotype, but when compared to Mudflap and Skids, Jazz is absolutely benign. And speaking in comic relief, that film had at least five of them! Ramón Rodríguez as a college roommate is absolutely useless in every sense: he literally has no reason to be into the proceedings. He's not funny, he does nothing for the "plot", he's not essential in the least. It feels like Bay put him there as a favour. And why did Sam's parents have to be dragged into the climax? In fact, why were they even in this movie? Next to all these, Jar Jar Binks is Sir Laurence Olivier.

And of course... the "humour". In this film, we are assaulted with images like a man walking around a museum with his pants down, an elderly Autobot farting a drogue parachute, and a tiny Decepticon humping Megan Fox's leg... and all of this in one same scene. Shortly before that, Bay just shoves his camera up John Turturro's ass and bulging crouch in a nearly pornographic fashion. This is a film in which Bay felt it was absolutely necessary to order his digital artists to include massive, bouncing iron balls in one of the robots. I wonder how they felt as they made that scene: they could had used their talents to conjure the most awe-inspiring scenes that human imagination can think of... and they did that instead.

I would say that the fact some critics liked this film - with 19% of approval in Rotten Tomatoes and 35% in Metacritic - makes it somewhat overrated. Who would approve a movie like this? I won't ask them to search for psychiatric help like worthless shithead from before... but damn son, a positive review to that? Maybe a scene here and there was exciting, but the film as a whole was just terrible! I nearly feel like indeed encouraging you to watch it in the case you still haven't, so you can see with your own eyes that catastrophe is for real. You just have to see it to believe it. It's beyond words. It's an experience.

What in the name of God could Michael Bay be possibly thinking? Bay was contested before that film and all, but this is the point where he effectively started to be hated.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman defended themselves saying that they didn't have control over how their screenplay was going to be filmed, and the duo would never work with Bay again. But to prove how right I am when I mention Bay as a honest man, even he declared the movie to be crap - he recognised this when Armond White didn't. It's almost like it was meant to be so, as if Bay was trying to prove something with it.

Whatever it was... I think he proved it: the film was an even bigger success, making over 800 million dollars at the box office, and a third film was on its way.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2011

A middle term between the entertaining mediocrity of Transformers and the straight awfulness of Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon became Bay's first billion maker. Closing a chapter in the saga, the film was Shia's last role as the plucky protagonist, and he and Spielberg would part ways (but not before Shia's unfortunate turn as Indiana Jones' son). Megan Fox didn't return however, as she had a misunderstanding with Bay, even calling him a "Nazi". She was replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who was a model with no previous acting experience other than a Victoria Secret commercial (not that skills were needed, through). Also, the film had some small roles by Ken Jong, John Malkovich and even Buzz Aldrin, in yet another public indication of how much the former astronaut may be severely in need of money, and he's not above anything to get it.

Dark of the Moon was the first 3D movie of the franchise, and critics at least praised it as one of the best usages of the technology since Avatar, raising the discussions about the possibilities of 3D in the cinema medium.

Look, we can't really say those giant robot movies are good, but at least Bay seems to understand how ludicrous is a theme like that. He gives audiences an exercise in suspension of disbelief. He doesn't aim such movies to be serious, even because, due their thematic, that would not be the right approach. Of course no-one would want a gritty Transformers, but Bay doesn't care to find a middle area between what he did and what Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins - something like Iron Man or Star Wars. But you've got to give Bay some credit for not making epic dramas about robots beating each other. He didn't go for something ludicrous but straight-faced like the deservedly maligned Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Pain & Gain
2013

Two years later, Bay did what was possibly the best movies of the decade, the marvellous Pain & Gain. After six years directing nothing but Transformers, Pain must have felt like a shout of liberty to Bay. It was the closest film he ever did of being truly great, even if not my personal favourite: a steroid-fuelled crime comedy, and a tongue-in-cheek examination of the American Dream. In sharp contrast with several others "based on a true story" movies, it was filled with personality and wit of its own. It featured amazing performances by Mark Wahlberg, exploring further his comic vein, and Dwayne Johnson, in what was possibly his best bit of acting as a gentle giant.

It was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the duo behind the Captain America movies. In here, they fully explore their most wicked facets that they're unable to while at the MCU, so this might have been a shout of liberty for them as well. It was the kind of film Bay wanted to make after The Island all along, and God bless him for making it.

Critics didn't love it, but at least they respected it as a decent attempt: many of them saw what Bay was trying to convey with that film. However, the film still carried the stigmata of being "a Michael Bay film", and everything it did wrong was exaggerated by some critics - again with the double standards: Bay shows a woman's butt in his film and he is a disgusting misogynist, but Michael Cera touches a girls boob "by accident" and Superbad is one of the greatest comedies of the decade.

Bay has declared that the film was inspired by Pulp Fiction and Fargo. Think what you will about me, but I find this movie better than both: it's not as bloated as Fiction, and unlike Fargo, it's actually entertaining.

The following year, with Transformers: Age of Extinction inbound, I had my hopes Bay would come out of Pain as a changed, better man. It was even going to star Wahlberg again. Kelsey Grammer - more and more distant from his Frasier fame to finally have a career - was the main baddie, and it even starred T.J. Miller from Silicon Valley. How could this not be good?

Well... the film turned out to be another disappointment. Vaguely entertaining but overall unsatisfactory - you're better off watching clips of it in YouTube (provided Viacom won't take them out). From its absurd product placements and shameless pandering towards the Chinese market to its terrible dialogues and unnecessary situations, Age of Extinction was a heavily misguided film, even in relation to the rest of the franchise. And like many other films by Michael Bay, it landed on top of both the box offices and lists of the worst films of the year.

Usually, critics don't seem to throw this criticism - at least not explicitly - towards the audiences who make such movies into such massive hits. But some people have noticed the obvious: Bay is not forcing anyone to watch his movies. People just like them... very much.

For all its many shortcomings, I actually see this film as an evolution in relation to Revenge and Dark. Wahlberg in place of Shia meant a clear progress, and the robots received better personalities than in previous stances, for now you could tell them apart by other than just their colours. Miller deserved a longer role, for he was the human comic relief this saga deserved. In fact, he should have been the only human counterpart for Wahlberg through the whole film, with one being the other's foil. Just imagine how better that film might have been if it was the story of two feckless friends tossed in the middle of a robotic mess - if done right, this could have been the Bill & Ted of this generation. And Miller could have been a much better company for Wahlberg rather than the hot ass daughter and an Irish-American who is repetitively refereed to as "Lucky Charms" - that's tasteful, Mike. I would have him called "Phil Lynott" or "Tomm Moore". Their creepy romance was absolutely unnecessary, and I can't stress this enough: it had no reason to even exist.


In a critic's mentality, a Michael Bay film is always going to be short of something. They don't have this view with any other main director in Hollywood. If critics are eager to forgive Tarantino for whatever he does wrong, they are even more eager to criticise Bay even when he does right. Instead of being happy for seeing Bay putting his visual style to good use, they lash him altogether. And that was the case of 13 Hours. It was a sincere tribute to those men, reminding people that such tragic happening was more than just a political ace in the hole - it doesn't even feel like it was Bay's bid to get some respect, but to clear the air about what happened there, and to honour those soldiers.

If Pearl Harbor attempted matching Saving Private Ryan, 13 Hours feels like attempting to match Black Hawk Down. Bay shows those men simply as soldiers in an inglorious, hapless situation, tossed into a country torn apart by war and with several groups killing each other, without knowing who is who, and without knowing who to trust. Of course the film is still a Michael Bay film, and this shows sometimes. We get to see marvellous cars parked in the soldiers' compound, and the film feels at a moment like a Mercedes-Benz ad - complete, displaying the beauty, comfort and reliance of such cars. But in the end, 13 Hours was a very good film, and while not as gripping and witty as Pain & Gain, it was an adult film that really showed the reality of the Libya combats.

Despite the positive reviews, 13 Hours made a disappointing box office. Maybe it couldn't shake away its political background, but this is something that all the Bay haters need to sit down to think about. They say his movies are crap, but when he makes a good film... it bombs. Maybe Paramount is the greatest one to blame about this, investing very little in publicity and dumping it in January, almost like not giving a damn about it. I feel Paramount only did this film as a favour for Bay's deeds to the company, almost like saying "there: we did your stupid serious Benghazi drama. Now back at robotic scrotum".

While some critics praised the film, others still refused to give it the faintest of raves. Many critics were genuine with their criticism, and indeed that 13 Hours wasn't perfect. But others simply hated it because it was by Michael Bay, and they tried to mask it as best they could by evoking other reasons. One critic even said the film was about "shoot first and never apologise later". So now 13 Hours is a "shot first" kind of film? The whole picture is all about soldiers defending themselves. But hey... it's Michael Bay we're talking about here. This guy deserves no justice.

A particular example of this mentality came from Rolling Stone's pathetic excuse of a critic Peter Travers, who discredited Bay's efforts in 13 Hours by saying that while several critics were giving the film "a pass" for Bay's mastery in action sequences, he failed at everything else. It's almost as if the guy didn't even bother to watch the film. He tacitly discredited the opinions of his fellow critics who appreciated the film, and to show off as a modern dude in tune with cool trends, he posted a "helpme" hashtag in his review. Wow! This is a cool guy! He writes hashtags and hates Michael Bay! YOLO! Isn't he cool? No, he isn't. In fact, Travers behaves like that creepy uncle who tries to befriend younger kids. He's like those politicians out of touch with what kids like and end up looking (and sounding) incredibly cringe-inducing. He just has no idea of the fool he's making of himself.

What is the idea these people are evoking? That it's okay to play dirty when they believe the target is evil? That it's okay to bend the standards if the subject in question is perceived as bad? That it's okay to shoot an enemy soldier in a demilitarised zone because he's an enemy soldier, who has to be eliminated at all costs? I'm not so much standing for Michael Bay now as I am standing for fair judgement. Do you want to hate a film just because of who made it? This is your right, after all. But just say it so: "I hated it because it was by Michael Bay". Don't try to invent criteria you wouldn't hold any other film up to.

Parents have always taught their children the valour of honesty and integrity. What is integrity anyway? To me, it is standing up for what you believe without selling out. And Bay never has, because he has always stood up for the idea of making movies for the masses, like a (ferociously capitalist) supporter of the commoner man. Where is the integrity in stepping into a movie theatre and saying "I'm going to hate this movie" just because of a name in the credits?

In conclusion:

I wish Bay's movies were better, so then I could defend them as being "good", rather than simply "being honest", or "mediocre but enjoyable". It would be easy to say this is a stupid wish, but Pain & Gain and 13 Hours showed there's a good person in Bay. His very debut showed that. Hell, for all its flaws The Island showed that too. I desire Bay to change, and not to be blown away, for I see talents in him that need to be refined. If Uwe Boll released a film like Rampage, Michael Bay can surprise us as well. "Don't tell me it can't be done".

Do you actually think that proudly and loudly saying to the four winds that you hate Michael Bay will make you superior? Because to me, it seems that you don't have a real opinion, that you just want to pass a message about yourselves. As it very seems, several people say they hate him as a way to boost about their intellect, but instead of looking awesome, they look rather silly, as their immaturity shows even more. It's almost like if they were thankful a figure like Bay exists, so they can proclaim their hatred for him and feel enlightened.

I only ask from movie critics to use a little bit of good judgement in their reviews, and not to make use of double standards. They don't seem to hold such discontentment to Steven Spielberg, who was as much responsible for the Transformers films as Bay was. Least we forget, Spielberg was the one who got Bay into Transformers. This whole franchise wouldn't have started without him, and he approved of what Bay was doing every step in the way. Where's the criticism towards Steven? Does he get "a pass" because he made Schindler's List? If that's so, why don't we forgive Martin Brest already? I'm not saying that critics need to give Bay positive reviews. Criticise him when he does something wrong; criticise anyone who does something wrong. But also praise him when he does something right. Do not discriminate him because of his reputation - this is a case when it's perfectly fair to separate the art from the artist. 

And for those saying Bay is killing cinema, understand that cinema is too big of an entity to be killed - or so much so weaken - by a single man. He's just making movies people want to see; he's not the first of his kind, and he certainly won't be the last. In fact, Hollywood was built in part by figures like Bay, with their muscular filmmaking and their capitalistic instincts of giving the masses what they want. That doesn't mean directors with engaging ideas or small films won't do business, because there'll always be an audience for them. If they don't succeed, consider that it wasn't the fault of a completely unrelated guy. Maybe, you know, Anomalisa wasn't so good to begin with.

Don't go cowardly blaming everything on Bay, like a cathartic action that will make you feel you just saved cinema.