The Big Picture: Leave Michael Bay Alone

Twinmill5000

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Mcoffey said:
Great Episode Bob.

I don't hate Bay, but he does confuse the hell out of me. I don't understand how someone who can make something as gut-wrenchingly awful as Transformers (Four times!) can make something as fantastic as Pain and Gain. The former is racist, sexist, jingoistic garbage. The latter is a hilarious condemnation of that shit and the stupid people that like it. The characters in Pain and Gain are clearly portrayed as bad people, and they're also the people who would be first in line for a movie like Transformers. If he knows this stuff is bad and bad for you, why does he keep making it? Why doesn't he use Transformers to do something more? Or at the very least not propagate the views he's previously criticized.

I just don't get it.
I think I can explain it.

Sometimes, you just want to draw dicks all over the place, because, even though you're a really good artist, and you've proven it with pieces that pander to the common-critical audience, giving you your fame, you just sort of want to draw dicks. You know people will buy your drawings of dicks, and even if they don't, you have too much money to care, and since you don't care, and want to draw dicks, you end up drawing dicks.

That's the Michael Bay analogy in a nutshell. He wants to draw dicks. Yep.
 

jFr[e]ak93

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I mostly agree with this. Though I will say that I don't think the audience's taste is entirely to blame for liking his movies.

Usually when a director tries to make something more awesome than it is, they resort to grating, low camera angles, slomotion, etc.... instead of letting the characters or story earn the title of awesome on their own merit.

Orgins: Wolverine was guilty of this (thought admittedly, the story sucked). It treated everyone as being awesome without actually proving they were.

Michael Bay attempts makes everything look awesome with such confidence and flare that either you start believing it, or it seems like a parody of action movies in general.

The Rock had that vibe for me. It was impossibly stupid, but still made you feel like the stuff that happened was awesome.

That's my attempt at theatrical deconstruction at least...
 

Bara_no_Hime

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Mcoffey said:
That is an excellent point. The writers of Pain and Gain also wrote Captain America 2 and Thor 2. The writers of Transformers 2 wrote Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Star Trek Into Darkness.

So yeah, the writer quality definitely had something to do with it.
Yeah, seriously. People always seem to forget that the directors have nothing to do with the writing (unless they're ALSO the writer).

If you want a well written movie, pay attention to who wrote the script, not just who directed it.

OT: Damn Bob, that was a fantastic ending. I may have to quote you.
 

Samsont

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Good on you Bob, I'm impressed at the honesty here, and the fact that you didn't tone it down just to keep things more acceptable and "safe" for your job. I'd love seeing more stuff like this from you.
 

Machine Man 1992

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Moeez said:
Machine Man 1992 said:
People go to loud, stupid movies for the same reason people stick M-80's in water bottles: the simple act of exploding things stimulates the pleasure center like a courtesan made of opium.

We, the general public, go to movies like these to relax. We have lives, and families, and stupid, stupid jobs where we deal with shitheel customers on a regular basis. A nice, uncomplicated film about robots punching each other in the face is appealing. Sure you get films that have crossover appeal, ones that houghty-toughty film buffs and average Joe both enjoy like Inception or The Dark Knight Saga.

I think Bay realizes what he is and exploits that t its' fullest potential. He knows that he makes stupid, but fun to watch movies, and he knows that he's the studio's money making machine. So he makes what he thinks would be cool to watch, and gets payed a mint for it.
I don't buy that these Transformers movies are "uncomplicated". The plots are needlessly convoluted, just watch Bob's review of Age Of Extinction. They're ridiculously long. I don't see how these movies are conducive to the general public.

What's uncomplicated action movies that I happen to like?

The Raid

Dredd

And yet Age of Extinction has an A- Cinemascore. I think we need to try to understand why that is. Apparently, the marketing push was incredible with $175 million only used for corporate brand partners like GM Chevrolet and Oreo Cookies, Big Red soda, Valero gas stations and Western Star trucks: http://nikkifinke.com/transformers-age-extinction-starts-weekend-worldwide/
Point for you then. Or maybe people go just for the spectacle. These movies are basically their own Universal Studio's rides. They're loud, they're stupid, and they're fun.

Remember fun? I remember fun. I remember that period at around age 13-14 where movies like these were good, because they got you hyped up and shit exploded in them. I didn't think about plot or characters; my criterion for a satisfying movie was a simple checklist.

Does shit blow up real good?
[X]Yes []No
Did you have fun watching it?
[X]Yes []No

Plus, I've always liked Bay's aesthetic; something about it just screams "Summer Blockbuster" and makes it fun to look at.
 

Machine Man 1992

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jFr[e said:
ak93]I mostly agree with this. Though I will say that I don't think the audience's taste is entirely to blame for liking his movies.

Usually when a director tries to make something more awesome than it is, they resort to grating, low camera angles, slomotion, etc.... instead of letting the characters or story earn the title of awesome on their own merit.

Orgins: Wolverine was guilty of this (thought admittedly, the story sucked). It treated everyone as being awesome without actually proving they were.

Michael Bay attempts makes everything look awesome with such confidence and flare that either you start believing it, or it seems like a parody of action movies in general.

The Rock had that vibe for me. It was impossibly stupid, but still made you feel like the stuff that happened was awesome.

That's my attempt at theatrical deconstruction at least...
Ah, this is just the breakdown I was looking for.

That's Bay's secret; He just tries so goddamned hard to make everything cool, that pure saturation makes it sink in. And speaking of parody, the man's not above self depreciation, just look at those commercials where he explodes his grill and his pool in the name of making things awesome. Or that one commercial where he just puts throws out helicopters at sunset.
 

John McMinn

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This is interesting. It made me think as I've butchered Michael Bay a few times. That being said. If TMNT is as bad as I fear it to be, then I'm gonna go right back to Bay bashing.
 

Cerity

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Ronack said:
We keep bashing him specifically because we know he can do better because of movies like Bad Boys II and The Rock, but he keeps pandering to the idiot masses.
agreed, but i think that was the point movie Bob was making. I will admit Michael Bay films are guilty pleasures of even my own. Punish as you see fit. I'm sorry movie Bob.
 

schiz0phren1c

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JPArbiter said:
BOB! YOU ARE! MY NUMBER ONE! GUUUUUUUUUUUUUY!

seriously a Mic drop would not have been out of place at the end of that.
Totally agree(both with Bob saying the unsayable and with Arbiter about the Mic Drop,I've done it myself and its both satisfying as hell,and really underscores your point :)
 

Arcane Azmadi

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Well. After the 'Age of Extinction' review I actually messaged Bob with a suggestion that he should do a Big Picture episode on Michael Bay, to try and dispel the notion that he hates the man and is biased against him. I don't know whether he took my suggestion or whether he was planning to do this already (probably the latter since this wasn't quite what I was suggesting) but it's still fascinating to see this.

Have to give Bob ultimate kudos for going back and admitting that he was unprofessional in his 'Revenge of the Fallen' review and he's now embarassed by it and feels the need to apologise to Michael Bay for it. Say what you like about Bob, you can't call him one-eyed, stubborn or a hypocrite who refuses to admit when he's wrong.
 

GratchDDO

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I don't know that I'd single out Michael Bay as the issue. I'd moreso put the problem with the crud the screenwriter is cranking out that doesn't appease as either an independent movie or as an extended object of the childhood cartoon.

Movie's from Marvel and the recent LEGO movie prove you can make a movie both for the masses that has something more than Hollywood checkboxes strung together. It's a shame with all the great writers out there we get stuck with Transformers and Amazing Spiderman scripts.
 

HardkorSB

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Ronack said:
We keep bashing him specifically because we know he can do better because of movies like Bad Boys II and The Rock, but he keeps pandering to the idiot masses.
Yes and Bad Boys 2 was the thinking man's film, wasn't it?

All of Bay's movies are dumb entertainment but he's really good when you give him free reign.
With Transformers, he has to keep it PG-13 and essentially make a big budget toy commercial. He doesn't even want to make these movies but he's so successful that the studio keeps hiring him and he's a businessman so he's not going to pass up the biggest movie of the year.
He only got money for Pain and Gain because he did Transformers 3. He probably got another extra movie out of them for doing the 4th one.
 

Netrigan

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walrusaurus said:
The thing is that Television is inherently better suited to that kind of in depth character driven drama. A good portion of your average 2-hour movie has to be devoted to exposition and plot mechanics, leaving only maybe an hour or so to completely focus on character building/development. Yes, a good film weaves its character development into its expository scenes, but even then they have a fraction of the time a TV series has. The average tv season is 20-24 episodes, they have literally 10x the space to have intimate character moments that film simply cannot afford.

I think the decline of 'serious cinema' viewership goes hand in hand with the rise in serialized television. With how expensive movie tickets are these days i'm not going to a theater to see a film unless its something that i can only experience there. Which invariably means big showpiece movies with lots of CGI and explosions, because thats something i can't experience the same way on my computer monster at home. Therese no reason for me to pay 13 dollars to go see Lincoln when i can spend $1 and get the exact same experience when it comes out on redbox.
A few years back, I was a serious movie watcher and I've almost completely stopped watching them for exactly this reason.

Oddly enough, I've also almost completely stopped reading comics for much the same reason... TV started playing the same game as Sandman and Preacher and Watchmen and end up being better written than 99% of the comics who try the same sort of thing.

TV is simply doing an amazing job at telling long-form stories with great characterization that movies just feel so hollow and empty now. 12 Years a Slave should have been an instant favorite but I couldn't help but notice how none of the characters (including the lead) were truly established. Too many characters got reduced to "woman who tries to sleep with him" or "asshole who wants to lynch him".

And there's really no way the movie could have been better. It hit all its targets with great skill and great acting, but I would have rather sat down to watch an HBO or AMC production which lets me get to know more of those characters.

Which kind of leaves me in this weird situation where I view movies as rides and I rarely venture out for anything which isn't a big, loud affair. I still head out for the odd Wolves of Wall Street or American Hustle, but TV is where I go to think. Movies are where I go to watch shit 'splode.
 

thedoclc

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walrusaurus said:
thedoclc said:
The thing is that Television is inherently better suited to that kind of in depth character driven drama. A good portion of your average 2-hour movie has to be devoted to exposition and plot mechanics, leaving only maybe an hour or so to completely focus on character building/development. Yes, a good film weaves its character development into its expository scenes, but even then they have a fraction of the time a TV series has. The average tv season is 20-24 episodes, they have literally 10x the space to have intimate character moments that film simply cannot afford.

I think the decline of 'serious cinema' viewership goes hand in hand with the rise in serialized television. With how expensive movie tickets are these days i'm not going to a theater to see a film unless its something that i can only experience there. Which invariably means big showpiece movies with lots of CGI and explosions, because thats something i can't experience the same way on my computer monster at home. Therese no reason for me to pay 13 dollars to go see Lincoln when i can spend $1 and get the exact same experience when it comes out on redbox.
I completely agree with you, and I hasten to add that this is pretty much what happened in the middle of the 20th century, only backwards. TV took over serving up affordable family low-brow entertainment, so the movies took over being bigger, more dramatic, with gimmicks and so forth. Only today, TV is serving up the more challenging entertainment, and Hollywood continues to be pretty vapid.

Something neither of us thought about: how do video games, as one of the largest entertainment industries, fit into this? I don't have a good answer except to say they really weren't an option accepted by families until fairly recently.
 

dubious_wolf

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Mcoffey said:
I think Bay probably feels he needs to appeal the lowest common denominator.
as painful as that is. These movies keep making money for a reason. It's like the endless call of duty clones. why aren't they better or deeper? They typically have some very talented people working on them. but they are so heavily sanitized that anything interesting gets left on the editing room floor.
 

wolfyrik

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I agree with everything MovieBob Said, and yet I know that I'm still going to see the Transformers movie. Yes it will be objectively bad from a critical standpoint, but with brain switched off and a pile of icecream clogging up my arteries, it's going to be fun.

What I don't understand is the fact that Michael Bay gets so much abuse for only making objectively bad movies, while Tom Cruise gets called a legend for doing exactly the same thing. I can't recall a single Tom Cruise film back to and including Top Gun that didn't make it's money in exactly the same way as any Michael Bay film. In fact I'd argue that Michael Bays' few really good films, far outclass any film that included Tom Cruise in any capacity and yet Bay = bad, Cruise = good. I know Cruise acts rather than directs, but we're talking about acclaim based on the merit of the main name, the one that sells the films.

What's more, as far as I'm aware, Michael Bay hasn't accepted any gifts proudced by slave labour in the unlawful, unsanctioned gulags of space-alien cults. He hasn't publically insulted any mothers on the way they raise their children, as in differently to him. He hasn't given millions of dollars to a group of lunatics who think that other religions, especially christianity, only exist because of left over programming stuck in the souls of dead, brainwashed ETs who stick to our bodies, thanks to a galactic genocide by a warlord named Xenu.

And yet Bay = bad.

No I don't understand that and yes, I will see Transformers 4. I'll probably give his future films a go as well, if the subject appeals to me.
 

walrusaurus

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thedoclc said:
walrusaurus said:
thedoclc said:
snip
I completely agree with you, and I hasten to add that this is pretty much what happened in the middle of the 20th century, only backwards. TV took over serving up affordable family low-brow entertainment, so the movies took over being bigger, more dramatic, with gimmicks and so forth. Only today, TV is serving up the more challenging entertainment, and Hollywood continues to be pretty vapid.

Something neither of us thought about: how do video games, as one of the largest entertainment industries, fit into this? I don't have a good answer except to say they really weren't an option accepted by families until fairly recently.
Video games are in a really strange place as far as storytelling goes. The amount of time we can spend playing a game is even more than a TV series, so they have so much more time and opportunity for storytelling. Yet, the need to give the player agency makes telling a linear story difficult without compromising the game-ness. Some games do this better than others, but the industry as a whole is really dropping the ball.

And its not like having a meaningful story requires the whole game to be structured around it a la Mass Effect, there are other ways to get it done. Take Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; its not a "story game" there's no branching dialogue or moral choice system but it has a story to tell. There are only 3 human characters and maybe 30 minutes of actual spoken dialogue in the whole experience, but it in my opinion has the best storytelling of any videogame I've ever played. This is a game that came out more than a decade ago and it still puts nearly every modern game to shame.
 

Ashoten

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Your thoughts here would have more weight Bob if you your self didn't build a career on bashing people like Bay. Although you certainly wouldn't be the first person in history to build yourself up by taking shots at other peoples work. I would be angry at you about this accept you are correct about the movie critics jumping all over this movie having written the reviews before their butts were even in the seats. It is also true that to the modern America audience movie critics opinions are kind of meaningless.

My problem with Bay is that he tends to glorify violence as the only solution or at least the preferred solution. Talking is usually reserved for pointless comedy or having duche meat heads size each other up in a typical alpha male fashion. So can you talk about how Bays male characters set unreasonable and dangerous standards for young men to try and live up to? For those of you not in the know it is a real problem with young men abusing steroids to try and achieve those muscles that Hollywood tells them all the ladys love. OF course this isn't isolated to what Bay does we can see these same trends in video games that goes beyond just a power fantasy.

It still blows my mind though that I consider The Island to be one of the smarter scifi movies to come out in the last decade. Certainly better then Prometheus sadly.

After thought: I blame corporations whose only goal is to get the biggest pay out for the least cost. We live in a type of strip mining era of economy (at least in America) whatever franchise can be established is then milked and dragged out until it is no longer profitable. This is probably why being a hipster is pretty common. I mean people tend to be a hipster about at least one form of entertainment they enjoy attempting to find something that was born from true creativity and not mass produced dreg.
 

loc978

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True about movies, games, television, music, food, sex, religion... the more interconnected we get, the more highly educated, intelligent people realize we have bad taste as a species. Laziness is a hell of a thing, and Bay capitalizes on it every bit as ruthlessly as McDonalds or Wal-Mart. Doesn't even attempt to hide his contempt much. Pain & Gain was a mocking, derisive expression of it (especially with Wahlberg's character claiming to be "smarter" than most people... and the moment where the movie pauses to remind you that it's still a true story).

...do I blame him, though? Yes. Not for the attitude, not for the beliefs or the scorn he heaps on his own regular audience... but for the advantage taking. The "greed is good" attitude is one of the biggest reasons we're going figuratively downhill as a nation and as a species. I equate Bay, McDonalds, any similar business model to a rapist targeting mentally handicapped children. A huge part of Pain & Gain's lesson (there is no easy way to success, much less the top tiers of it, without creating victims) could be targeted at Bay's other works. Fuck that guy.