You can read an awesome article posted at Michael Bay Official Website stating James Cameron’s secret involvement with Transformers: Dark of the Moon. You’ll get to see some cool Behind-The-Scenes stuff on the video posted along with the article.
Here is the Extended Version of the Discussion regarding Transformers 3 in 3D with Director Michael Bay and James Cameron. (Same video as mentioned above on this News Post)
mephisto1138
^ Aliens is just a dumbed down, louder version of Alien. The plots are identical.
Hey there's some aliens on this planet, lets go collect them. Wait, maybe we shouldn't, they're dangerous. Eff that, we're going anyway. Oh look half the cast is dead. Ok, a couple people escape from dangerous location to a safe location. Good, we're safe. We're in the safe place. OH CRAP AN ALIEN FOLLOWED US! Quick, shoot it out the airlock into space. Roll credits.
It was the same exact plot with a third of the suspense, acting and depth.
He did the same thing with T2: rehased T1, plot point for plot point. T1 is still by far my favorite of his films. Terminator was relentless and had real emotional depth. T2 felt like a kiddie funny version of the same plot. For as long as he claimed to have worked on Avatar, it was utter drivel. If you're going to work on something for 10 years, you'd think he could generate some characters with actual depth and creatures that are more inventive than just slapping 2 more of whatever limb defines that creature. A dragon with 2 wings now has 4. A horse with 4 legs now has 6. How inventive. Not to mention that big red dragon thing was completely jacked from a Roger Dean painting, as were 90 percent of the backgrounds including the floating area. Check out the wikipedia on that movie and check how big the section is of things he BLATANTLY stole from. Its a nice little summary, including a short story involving a guy named Joe or Jack who goes to an alien world to infiltrate a race of blue aliens called Nave by putting his consciousness into a clone of their bodies. Yeah, Cameron is a real original.
And yes, I would LOVE to have seen what Cuaron would have done with The Island. Children of Men is one of the best sci fi films since Blade Runner. In fact, I just had a convo about this with friends the other day, that to me, the most prolific sci-fi films of the last 20 odd years were Children of Men, District 9, Moon, Inception and Wall-E. Cameron lost his touch a while ago. T2 showed some serious signs of the fraying to come. Well, that and the ridiculous levels of sentimentality with Newt in Aliens (and then he threw a fairly public fit about the fact that Fincher killed her off screen for Alien 3, which had its faults, but at least it tried to do something new rather than just rehash the exact same plot as Scott's Alien). i don't hate James Cameron. His movies are fun despite huge logic holes and blatant rip offs from classic sci-fi, but I just don't get why the general public thinks he's a genius when he's totally in the same camp as Bay and Lucas: fun, great core ideas that just aren't fleshed out to the level they could easily attain in more competent hands. Well, I'd put him closer to Bay than Lucas. Lucas' worlds are far more dense, complex and actualized than just throwing extra limbs on existing animals and stealing visuals from famous paintings.
DeathsHead
Technically (SFX etc) they are both highly skilled, however I'd say shot for shot Cameron is a MUCH better visual director than Mr Bay. There's absolutely no subtlety in Bay's work : everything tends to be built around grandstanding shots that often clash with the tone of the scenes in question. He can command large scale set pieces like nobody else, but I'd argue that despite this his camera placement and general content direction is often all over the shop – for example his attack on Pearl Harbour is both a technical marvel and an emotional blank.
I'd like to say that this is a hangover from his days as a commercials director, but then Ridley Scott shot literally hundreds of commercials before his feature debut…
Even his most mature (and to an extent restrained) film – The Island – depends largely on an interesting script. I often wonder what a director like Cuaron would have done with it.
Personally I enjoyed Avatar, but was largely underwhelmed by what felt like a rehashed story. Cameron used to be a master storyteller ('Aliens' anyone?) but his scriptwriting skills seem to have been diluted as his visual proficiency has improved.
Incidentally I'm livid with the dreadful mic placement on M.Bay in this video; rustling and scraping throughout. Just awful.
You have two of the highest profile directors onstage and you can't hire a competent sound guy to wire them up or stop for 2 seconds to fix the problem? Disgraceful.
Poho
I read the whole article and didn't see anything about Cameron having a secret role.
a person
Sure, dude.
mondo
Does anyone want Cameron to take over Transformers if Bay does not want to continue?
mephisto1138
I couldn't stand Avatar. Most boring movie I've seen in forever. So the less Cameron the better. At least he seems to only be giving technical input, which he is fairly good with. I don't quite get why Cameron gets so celebrated and Bay gets so trashed by the mainstream film world. They're both mediocre when it comes to story telling and both have really poor taste in a lot of areas and rely on cheap sentiment way too much, but they're both EXTREMELY proficient filmmakers from a technical aspect. That's always been weird/funny to me.
Obsidian X
Indeed.
chris_jackson
I would love to spend a day in the head of Michael bay. He is probably one of the only directors who would have thought of strapping a 3d camera to a guys head and basically throw him out of a helicopter……legend!
NotoriousBIC
I think you'll talk differently when you convert your avatar to 3D
Anyways, found it a very interesting discussion, never realized some of the challenges such as lens flare being different etc.
Also do want to see the full sky-dive scene footage in 3D, think that would be some awesome shots.
ShadowPimp723
Any Movie approved By James Cameron Is A Good Movie
soundwaveCA
3D is a cheap and shitty gimmick of filmmaking that needed to die as of yesterday.
Matty
I hate to say my expectations are high for this movie, but my expectations are high for this movie.
Arcee 69
Damn! My 2 favorite directors working on the same movie. James & Michael have been my favorites for a long time. I'm gonna love this movie!
I'm really gonna be pissed when all the fanboy jerk-offs & worthless movie critics start tearing Dark of The Moon apart like they did Revenge Of The Fallen. It's inevitable.
eyeballkid
This will have better 3D then Avatar, because it was shot outside. Can't wait to see it!
Laserbot
interesting Mr. Bay used some of the same crew that worked on Avatar. this only bodes well for the movie visualy ide say.
IaconStargazer
Very cool and quite insightful!
EnerJohn
I really wish I could join these guys in the business of movie making. It's my dream.
TylerMirage
Very cool and interesting video. I like how they showed us new footage of filming and stuff.
"…if you pan too quickly. For this movie, I had to be more…in terms of… Wide, slow, slow the cutting down a bit." I like where this is going.
And I'll have to start doing more stomach crunches.
deathonacracker
if we've learned two things, it's that
Iranians are passionate people
Stomach crunches =
ElectricPrada09
To my knowledge this has a lot of new information. Especially the video that is in the link I posted. They show a lot of new on set footage and such. The article I posted came out today. That thread stared the 19th.