Stop blaming all of the Transformers movies issues on Michael Bay. The guy didn't write the scripts for the movies, so he can't be heldd responsible for the terrible plots or the crappy jokes.

The over abundance of explosives in the movies can be put on him... but in a series about GIANT robots FIGHTING each other in a WAR, what do you expect?

(Really the guy needs to be cut slack especially over ROTF, he was forced to by Hasbro to begin filming without a script)

 

I'm glad someone addressed this finally. Sure, blame Bay for the explosions and military porn, but not the scripts which contain the dumb jokes and cringy moments. That's on Krueger and whoever else wrote for the movies.

I wish more people would see this, but hating Bay makes you cool or whatever.

 

Oh come on, we're well into a new period of movie news. Let's leave the repetitive arguments for when there's nothing better to discuss.

 

The Robo-Testicles in 'Transformers 2' Explained

Bay is hardly lacking influence. He throws his own ideas into the pot and they carry more weight than all the others because he's the head honcho. I know there's an interview he did recently where he was talking about liking Transformers for being able to throw names around, but I can't find it for the life of me. There's also the factor of the writers and designers specifically trying to appease him so they don't have to go back and make another draft.

 

Look, the writing in these movies it ain't anything stellar and I feel confident that half a dozen members on this site could produce something more compelling. And you know what, it's true that the writers wrote it so they are responsible for the existence of, for example, Devestator's balls.

However, as director, Mr. Bay is the local ultimate power, occasionally answering to the folks at Hasbro and it is on him to read something and red pen it if it makes no sense or is fucking stupid: so while the idea may have been Kruger, Orci or Kurtzman it's presence in the movie is Michael's call. So there's the big goddamn sin: they wrote that stupidity but he made it real. He looked at this idea, this appalling excuse for a joke and said "Yeah, lets make that shit happen".

 

let me first state that bay helped bring back transformers & make them relevant again...transformers 1 was a jaw-dropping spectacle of a film & is a classic of it's genre & im a big fan of bay..i know it's not cool to say that but i think he's a genius behind the camera...

but his name is on the title so he must have a say or pride in what is in the film (not saying he doesn't) but he is the 'head coach/quarterback' of the films, so he gets all the blame & credit

& bay seems like a very hands-on, controlling type director, we're talking about a guy who put up his own money to film the finale of bad boys 1 because the studio balked (fools)...i'd love to know what happened during the filming of tf3 that allowed bay to be swayed by ferrari & how he allowed idiot fans to derail the filmverse continuity & attach a race to characters (the twins) & botch the original ending just to spite them

what bugs me is when people blame him for tmnt when he's not even the director of those films.

 

Why Bay ruined TF for me-
-Transformer designs. They look like shit.
- Character butchering. They represent the actual charters like salt resembles sugar in coffee.
- Unrealistic scenarios. Transformium flying through the air as a transformation? Dumb
- Bee gets his voice back then it's magically not back... Stupid
- Overall impression that Bay hated Transformers and wanted to piss me off by butchering the entire thing.. not once but 5 times.

I hate what he did to something I hold dear to my heart since the beginning

 

i can understand this viewpoint..for me, it's the resident evil series..the films are at times so far from the source material i question why they were even made in the first place...one thing that helped me get over it a little was by realizing & accepting that the films are a different 'universe' from the source material..in that, while the films are based on the games they are not a direct retelling..

so everything that happens in the transformers movieverse, while similar at times, is it's own thing & separate from, the g1 cartoon or any other individual continuity for example

but i do understand where you're coming from..im still mad at what they did to barry in the re films, among many other gripes; most obviously that the films (re films), as a whole, are a pile of piss

 

When you look at the Bay track record as a director and you see the same flaws over and over again under different writers, producers, and actors then at some point you either have to say that Bay has the worst luck in Hollywood to always be surrounded by people that keep his films exactly the same or maybe just maybe the director is the real problem.

Sure Bay doesn't do every job on the film but every bit of it has to get the director to say I approve that. When the shark would not work on Jaws Steven Spielberg didn't throw up his hands and say I'm a slave to script, he went with the writer and re-wrote the film. Peter Jackson didn't throw up his hands and say he was a slave to the first design of Gollum that was presented, he sent the design back again and again until the look seemed right.

Yes Bay isn't the only powerful influence on the Transformers films, but the studio executives, the producers, and Hasbro aren't there every day of filming and editing. Ultimately it falls on Bay because he's the one that decided if a take is good enough or the actor needs to try the line in a different way, Bay has to decide what should be in the release and what needs to be left on the cutting room floor. They put his name in really big letters because he's responsible for the things that make a movie.

 

The other part that ruins Transformers for me (Bayverse) is the abundance of people who have nearly zero history with the fandom who vehemently support the madness, effectively prolonging the agony.

By the 3rd movie, it should have just ended. Bay should have been sent on his merry way and a reboot should have happened that better reflected what the people who have been there from the start enjoy.

If it wasn't for US SUPPORTING THE FANDOM FROM THE START the franchise would be done. We paid our dues, now stop catering to the ones who don't know what the hell a decent Transformers movie should look like.

 

Well, the good thing about these topics is that they recur so often that people don't even really have to think of a response, just check the previous versions and crib from those.

Bay's name is all over the previous films. Transformers Whatever: A Michael Bay film. As director, he bears the final say in much of what the film becomes (from a cinematic perspective, setting aside studio meddling, which can and has sunk major films). As a result, it is reasonable to expect a significant degree of responsibility on his part for the script that he can accept, reject or alter effectively as he sees fit, the pyrotechnical content, and basically any other issues that lead to the finished product of the films. If not the director, who else does the buck stop with at the end of the day?

Once he is relegated to a producing role, yes, certainly, his responsibility over whatever finished product comes out will be diminished, but at that point, only because the responsibility will then reside with THAT director.

And when there's enough of us to bring in literally billions of dollars in film revenues, I'm sure that they will.

 

The reason I'm open to the movies is because of the potential they display. I always wonder about stuff like the Allspark and so.

I've been around Transformers since the UT but I found very little to make me discover so much more of the brand. The 2007 film came and I'm sure you have no idea how much that movie meant for me. It was nowhere near what old school fans wanted I imagine but it was a great popcorn movie like Independence Day. It is still a decent film.  

 

While these films are not perfect, if you want my opinion I would much rather see Bay's version of Transformers than 99% of the fan ideas I see floating around.

The problem with us as fans is we take Transformers too damn seriously and view it is as some sacred relic to be treated with kid's gloves and not as the goofy, corny, fun adventure meant to sell toys that it really is. Excessive explosions, immature jokes, cheesy one liners, and over-the-top action are perfectly within the realms of the brand.

As to people complaining about things in the films being "unrealistic." What? You're a fan of giant talking robots that transform. Realism left the stage in 1984. Fans sure love to cherry pick what "ruins" Transformers or makes it not real. I find it hilarious when Transformers fans praise the crap out of stupid things in G1 or the 2007 movie but treat equivalent things in Bay's sequels as crimes against humanity, and I say that as someone who loves G1.

The worst Transformers film ever would be a film that panders exclusively to fans.
1986? It kills off many characters, turns some Decepticons into Unicron's heralds, introduces the Quintessons and Sharkticons, and brings in Hot Rod/Rodimus as the new leader.
2007? It brought live action Transformers to the world and had a whole new design aesthetic to Transformers.
ROTF? Whatever one thinks of it, it made a comics only character into the main villain, and it embraced a lot of goofy humor.
DOTM? Actually made an Autobot into an interesting main villain who was secretly working with Megatron, and actually shows Megatron as a fallen warlord in many ways.
AOE? It shows what the world becomes after Chicago, expands the film universe beyond Autobots, Decepticons, and humans, has humans building their own Transformers, and has Prime actually lose faith in humanity.

Each of the films above, whatever one may think about them, actually took some risks, and as a fan I would much rather see something different from my inner vision of Transformers. Most of the fan ideas I see are so creatively bankrupt and repetitive I would much rather have another ROTF-like film, which I actually really enjoyed by the way.

Frankly, I wouldn't want Transformers to not have goofy or over-the-top sh*t in it.

Also, I am not convinced that Bay hates Transformer by any stretch. He may not like certain characters or concepts, but that doesn't mean he hates the brand. On the contrary, he seemed to really like Lockdown and Hound as characters from what I can tell from interviews.

 

XD great post

 

Bay don't respect the franchise that's all.

 

I wonder if opinion would change if another film was directed by Bay but his name had no connection to it.

Most of the complaints leveled at him are baseless. Just because he took it in a new direction doesn't mean he disrespects the franchise. By that logic, everything after MTMTE Part 1 is disrespectful because it isn't the same as the original.

Bay is a hands on director, something you don't see as much these days. It's fine if you don't like the films for plot or design but he gets way too much crap for what he does.

I also find it ironic that people say they're done paying attention to Bay. Look at The Beast- everyone agrees it belongs in the garbage and it only comes up as the occasional joke. But when Bay's critics discuss and pay as much attention to the films as his fans, he must be doing something right.

 

There's nothing I have disliked about what bay has done! Would I have addressed the films differently....yes! Would I have changed a lot....probably! Bay is the front man, if he thinks a scene works he does it his way if he thinks it's gotta change- he changes it! It's his responsibility to make the movies flow and tell the story they are supposed to! Now he can only work with the ingredients he's given, sometimes actors even change scenes....so no it's not all bay! But there is the one unanswered question that will forever remain unanswered.....did bays decisions improve or detract from what he was given to work with, as for all we know the initial story he has been given over the years may have been far more shocking and terrible than any of his haters realised and only through his interventions has it been made better or perhaps it may have been just the opposite....we will never know.

 

So you're saying Bay has the power to change basically whatever happens in scenes but that simultaneously it's not all him? If actors change scenes, but Bay is the front man, doesn't it ultimately fall to him, by action or inaction, to have a finished product that he's satisfied with?

Also, given we've seen previous drafts of scripts that have been leaked and given Bay and co have been pretty candid about their narrative process, I don't think it's accurate to say that we will never know if what was handed to Bay before he tinkered with it was better, worse, or effectively similar.

I strongly, strongly doubt that we will ever see a Michael Bay directed film that does not have his name prominently attached to it. He's a successful, well-known director whose work is considered to put asses in seats, there's basically no way in this day and age that brand recognition isn't going to get milked for all it's worth.

In the hypothetical situation where he makes a new film somehow from the shadows and noone puts it together that he was a director? Honestly, I think many of the same people would still find bones to pick with it (if anything, I figure "huh, this looks a lot like a Michael Bay film" would be a reoccurring comment, given how consistent and recognizable Michael Bay's cinematic style is). Does Michael Bay take some shit because he's Michael Bay? Almost certainly, that's the flipside of that brand recognition I mentioned earlier. That being said, however, reducing criticisms of the TF films to a hate-on for Michael Bay is dismissive towards the many, many thoughtful criticisms viewers have put forward about these films for nearly a decade. His style is his style, and love it or hate it, you're probably going to love it or hate it because there's a lot to love and hate.

The difference, however, between the TF films and "The Beast" is that "The Beast" was a semi-canonical backup comic that was packaged with DVD sets available only in the UK, with effectively no additional context or connection to the TF Universe, done by people who have done basically no other official work on the brand. The TF films, by comparison, have been the most prominent piece of TF media in probably the last 20 years, if not more, and have been effectively the face of the brand for nearly a decade. The sheer amount of attention paid to the movies (and the resources poured into them by Hasbro) mean they're inevitably going to be subject to discussion and scrutiny by the fandom rather than occasional derision and dismissal as apocrypha.

 

Or those people are fans and simply have different opinions. I enjoy these films and I have a bit of history with the transformers fandom, even been putting in quite a bit of research on the different continuities. It's true G1 started Transformers, but the franchise should be allowed to grow and expand on ideas and lores. That is why I don't care if the characters don't look or completely act like their G1 selves, as long as they're written well and the core element of the character remains. Based on how things were in AOE and how things are looking in TLK, I'll say that Bay is taking the steps in the right direction on the path of improvement.

Now to the topic at hand, I'm going to have to agree and disagree. Bay shouldn't receive so much hate he gets since there are other factors; a notable example would be the nostalgia critic's review of the 2nd ninja turtles film and how he pretty much blamed everything on Bay, claiming that it had everything to be a good movie but because Bay was on board it magically got ruined from his touch. By that logic since Bay would solely be at fault for being the producer, then Don Murphy should be the one at fault for the Transformers film since he's the producer of those films. No one really thinks about that.

But at the same time, Bay does deserve criticism. Take for example the twins, while their act was the result of improvising, Bay was the one that gave them the okay. He had the power to have them retake it and suggest a different take, but he felt it was fine. All choices must go through the director since the director is responsible for putting the film together. So if a problem pops up, part of the fault does fall to Bay for allowing that problem to appear in the first place.

 

Having Bee talk then oddly come back as a mutant again... He made those ingredients himself.