This has probably been suggested at some point, but this comment got me thinking: Thanks to Bluray Basicially I think Bay did a horrible job at telling the story of the transformers (FTR I`m not interested in "bay didn`t write the script blah blah" comebacks. He was director, the final outcome is on his head. ), but some of the action I witnessed, courtesy of his direction, really made my nuts clench..erm, in a good way! Bay can`t tell a story, so leave him to do what he can do, Blow shit up and make it look good, kind of like a bayhem Yuen Wo-Ping, and get someone else to director the film proper. What do you think? And who do you think could work well with, and stand up to, the Bay?
I would kill myself because he destroyed my childhood. Seriously though, I agree with you 100%. As much as I hate his movies, I have to admit that the guy knows how to shoot an action scene.
To my tastes, Bay focuses a bit too much on ground battles, footsoldiers and cars. The air battles might have been sporadically in there... but aside from Starscream's fight versus the F22 squadron... all other air scenes felt like after thoughts to me. I think I know the cause of this : Bay's expertise are explosion scenes on the ground. After TF1, he reverted back to his safe-zone...and that means he didn't fully explore what flying altmodes could have contributed to the franchise. The TF character line up makes that all too appearant : on Autobots' side, basically all of them are cars....guys like Breakaway and Skyhammer got scrapped and even Jetfire didn't have any aerial face off vs Starscream. So, yeah.. despite me loving the movie designs, the concepts & potential, I think Bay is a 1-dimensional action director, a one trick pony.
I honestly think he has the potential to make a perfect Transformers movie because T1 and DOTM have all that is necessary, but there's some unnecessary bits thrown in. If he took away all of the gratuitous and lowly humor, T1 and DOTM would have been perfect. So, I think he's up to the job. With that said, T1 and DOTM are awesome and are my favorite two films.
Transformers 4, directed by Michael Bay. "Nuts-clenching action!" I'm predicting $125m opening weekend off that review!
To be honest I thought the action was kind of all over the place so I don't think I could call Micheal Bay the best person when it comes to action. You had some scenes where things worked just right. The forest battle in Revenge of the Fallen had some nice fluid choreography, the lighting was just right, and the camera seemed to be in just the right spot. Put then you had scenes like parts of the Prime and Megatron battle in the first film where the camera is in the wrong spot and it just seemed like a tumble of random parts rather than a well planned out movie fight sequence. Really don't want any of the old production team back except for maybe Peter Cullen because it's hard not say a nice guy like him couldn't be back. But I'd like the new team to have freedom to create something different rather than bringing back members of the old production team to just do the same things all over again. It would be like bringing in Tim Burton on Christopher Nolan's Batman. Yes I enjoyed Tim Burton's Batman, but I'm glad Christopher Nolan was able to do his own thing. I'd like the new production team on Transformers to do their own thing.
The bad examples you mentioned are from the first film, and the good ones are from the second film. Conclusion? Bay got better with directing the action sequences as the films progressed. He's the guy for the job.
The second movie had that epically disappointing fight between Prime and The Fallen so I'm not sure you could say he worked out every problem with the action as he went along. You can find really good action in all three films and you can find some action that could have been better. I just took two examples instead of attempting to cover every action scene from all three films as that's a lot of action sequences to break down into what worked so well and what didn't work as well as you could have hoped for.
The fight scene between Optimus and The Fallen is a poor example because Bay was on a very tight schedule with the film due to the writers strike. In fact, that's why ROTF was disappointing overall.
Agreed. Why does Bay do such a dismal job with coaching live actors, but absolutely nails it with the voices?
There were a few people who did great jobs. Gibson, Duhamel, Dempsey all did outstanding jobs, I thought.
Those particular actors weren't too bad in the films; but for every Duhamel, there was a Fox, a Rodriguez, and a Lucas
I actually like Bay as a director and the first Transformers movie he made in 2007 introduced me to the Transformers franchise and it's my favorite movie. However, I would take any director who can handle the cgi well and also tell a great story. I just want the franchise to continue whether it's a reboot or sequel. The Transformers movies have everything that I look for in summer blockbusters and it takes me back to when I was a kid again.
