Monday Morning Critic – Transformers 4, Michael Bay And The Real Reason Why He Doesn’t Make “Good’ Movies – Why I Broke Up With True Blood In The Final Season

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MMC

Michael Bay was in the news this week, dropping a totally bad ass interview along the way that would up being quoted everywhere, on the eve of one of the biggest openings in a fairly storied career for the director/producer. The only film to cross $100 million domestically in its opening weekend so far in 2014, Transformers: Age of Extinction wasn’t the worst film of the year but it came with two caveats coming in. To understand Michael Bay is to understand that he’s the People’s Director, not the Critic’s Director.

A Bay which automatically means that no matter what people en masse are going to trash it for the most part. Some directors get a free pass (and a good rating) because of their name alone. Bay has always been one who will never get a good review for the same reason; potentially having to write that Michael Bay did something good might actually give a stroke to a number of professional film critics. The hate when he makes a film is palpable and you’d think Bay personally bullied at least one of these guys in high school from the way he’s written about.

The only critic who probably can be considered to even give a fair shake to the man has been Armond White, the gay black film critic from New York known as film criticism’s biggest contrarian. When he’s your biggest defender … well … you aren’t exactly on the best of footing in that world. White sort of defended the film in his review of it. No one of note really gave it anything other than an awful, awful review.

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The other thing is that the film is going to make an ungodly sum of money, both foreign and domestic, enough that the film series has cleared nine figures of profit every time out. A Michael Bay Transformers film is an event, something that everyone wants to see in theatres for any number of reasons, and is one of the few franchises that is genuinely critic proof. Nothing can slow down Bay when he has big ass robots blowing shit up with a budget in the nine figures, it seems.

Bay is a pariah among the effectual film critical class, mainly because his theory has always been that making money for your work is awesome and you should make as much money as you can with every film. I defended the guy many moons ago, so there’s nothing new I have in that regard. I think Bay gets the short end of the stick unfairly because he’s not trying to do anything but give the people what they want out of a film featuring gigantic robots fighting each other. No one wants to see Optimus Prime and Megatron discussing the meaning of existence at a hash bar in 1930s Paris in black & white. They want to see two big ass robots destroy Chicago. He gives people just that … and there’s nothing wrong with it.

The thing that bothers me about all this, especially the usual (and predictable) backlash towards Bay making another movie in this franchise, is that Bay doesn’t make “good” movies. Bay’s pursuit of big explosions and big box office grosses are the worst possible thing to happen in film over the last decade or so, apparently. He’s the guy who gets blamed for the over reliance on CGI for spectacle, et al, and there’s a lot of truth to it. Bay is a director who mainly works on getting shots, and then making them work with CGI, as opposed to being a genuine auteur. For big blockbuster films he wants to make money, nothing more, and everything in his films are designed to maximize an international audience. And the thing that’s most interesting is that there’s always that one guy who says something like this.

“I wish Michael Bay would make good movies instead of these garbage ones.”

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It’s one of the things that always drives me nuts because Bay did make a great film that wasn’t a big dumb action film once. It was called Pain & Gain and it was awesome. Here’s the problem: less people saw that film in its entire run in theatres than saw Transformers 4 this weekend.

If you’re Michael Bay, and you have this sort of result, what do you expect him to do?

Real talk here. Michael Bay is a director who also happens to be a producer as well, and Platinum Dunes (his production company) is there to make money. I can imagine Bay looked at the reviews (which weren’t that much better by the professionals, who saw “Directed by Michael Bay” and tuned out) and the box office, deciding that being the “Transformers Guy” isn’t a bad gig after all. Bay could’ve made any project he wanted to after the first trilogy, casting his eyes on a quirky dark comedy about bodybuilders who committed a string of ghastly murders in Miami in the 90s, and came back to it after getting Pain & Gain out of his system as a sort of rebuke to everyone who thought he couldn’t try and make a film with something to say.

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Bay’s attempt at garnering some critical cred was as blatant as Jim Carrey practically begging for an Oscar nomination, of course, but Bay made the type of film everyone wanted him to make and no one cared. He has nothing in the works to direct, either, that’s a marked departure from his resume of work either. A guy who makes studios that much money has the ability to pick his spots … and Bay’s found his. Pain & Gain was a reminder that sometimes the people don’t want what they ask you for.

Pain & Gain made its budget back but people didn’t come out to see it en masse, he didn’t get any awards and his status as the anti-Christ of the professional film critic remained the same. He gave people exactly what they wanted, a “good” film on a quirky topic with a true to life quality, and the world shrugged at him. They said “your film does not intrigue us” and that was that.

Bay went to work on another Transformers film and arguably Pain & Gain will remain the #2 on the “Best Michael Bay Films Ever” following The Rock.

If you complained about the fact that there are more Transformers films, but didn’t go to Pain & Gain, you’re the problem. Bitching about the former isn’t the solution. Bay rightfully pointed out that the loudest fanboy voices complaining about him are the same ones that are seeing his films, multiple times usually, and he’s made no qualms that he’s under no delusion that he’s some sort of brilliant story teller. He’s good at blowing things up on screen and delivering exactly what he promises, nothing more, and that when you plunk down your $10 for a ticket you’ll get what you pay for.

If anything Bay is a populist director and you can’t blame him for seeing where the winds blew, trying to adjust his sails, and then going back when he discovered he wasn’t going where he wanted to. People are screaming “give us a good film, Mike” and he did just that. And what’d they say? Time to bust out my guy Jay Cutler to give you an honest, accurate representation of it.

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So really, when you wonder why Michael Bay goes back to the same well that pays him exceptionally well, think about it like this. No one cared where it matters the most, with their money, for something that was a passion project for many years. Michael Bay went to the masses and said “Here’s a film that won’t be about gigantic robots fighting each other, has a great screenplay, is based off a true story AND I got both ‘The Rock’ and Marky Mark to star in it” and people said “GIVE US FILMS WITH GIGANTIC ROBOTS DESTROYING THINGS THAT ALSO STINKS SO WE CAN FEEL BETTER ABOUT OUR SAD LITTLE LIVES! WE DON’T MIND MARK WAHLBERG, EITHER!”

In the end scheme of things, Michael Bay looked in the mirror and being the Transformers guy pays better. And if he can sleep well at night on a gigantic pile of money, having made the only project he ever campaigned to make, then I can’t say as I blame him.

Stuff for General George S. Pimpage, Esq

Travis tackled the latest Transformers as well as the indie comedy Obvious Child.

I reviewed the latest season of Duck Dynasty on Blu-Ray, click here to check it out.

I freelance occasionally and tackled the new Transformers for my debut on Nerdcore Movement..

Travis wrapped up June in review, worth a click.

And now on MMC … we chill out to some Bob Marley.

If you want to pimp anything email it to me with a good reason why. It helps to bribe me with stuff, just saying ….

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

True-Blood

This week’s DVD Television Show Getting Thrown Into the Discard Pile – True Blood (The Final Season)

Sometimes you just have to see a show end, no matter how far it’s fallen, for the sake of completion. I sat through Burn Notice until the end, if only because of some weird loyalty to seeing how it ends as opposed to anything else. It was like my recent completion of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica,which had an awful 10 minutes tacked onto what was a solid (if unfulfilling) finale. It was like the Dexter finale in which the ok ending point (Dexter taking his boat and Deb’s body into the ocean) was passed and the one guaranteed to piss everybody off (Dexter’s a lumberjack, yo) was the one that wound up being used. If I hadn’t had that desire for completion I don’t think I’d have made it that far … it takes a special sort of show to be able to hit.

And True Blood isn’t it … and thusly I’m stopping my viewing as an excuse to talk about the nature of the completion of television shows.

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I’ve been watching True Blood since Travis sent me the first season as a prank, my distaste for horror stuffs and vampires something he finds amusing I think, and wound up enjoying far beyond I thought I would. Jenny Sherman (her last name at the time) and I wound up talking about the show each season over the years starting from the 2nd season and it was the symbol of the end of the week. It’s never been what you’d call a great show, more like good campy fun, but over the past couple seasons it’s gone downhill so far that I can’t watch it anymore.

But the problem is something’s still bugging me on a number of levels and that’s of completion. Right now I’ll never know how it ends because I won’t have finished it up. And I’m alright with that, actually, because putting in 11 more hours into that show is throwing good time after bad for me. The show has admittedly gone downhill to the point where HBO is giving it a mercy kill and one season to wrap up loose ends. It’s more than they gave Hung and Bored to Death, neither of which got a proper good bye as they were cancelled after lackluster third seasons.

The True Blood universe, for me at least, ended about 20 minutes into last night’s episode. I kept thinking while I was watching what had been a reliable hour of camp fun for so long that I could be doing other things, like watching my laundry dry, as opposed to this.

The key thing is this: is it ok to walk away now or should you go down with the ship, like a captain in an old timey sea ship? One of the things I regret about Dexter was sticking around long enough to see that awful, awful finale and I only did for the sake of being able to make that lumberjack joke.

What say you, readers? Is it ok to walk away before the end after you’ve invested time into a show, if only to be spared the letdown? Or do you stay to the end? Let me know below.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 tall boys of Red Fox and community college co-eds with low standards at the Fox and Hound

Deliver us from Evil – A “based on a true story” horror film … yawn

Skip It – Anytime a horror film has that clue you immediately know it’s garbage and nearly 100% not true.

Earth To Echo – A found footage style version of Short Circuit, it looks like.

Skip It – Meh … Circuit stunk and this isn’t much better.

Tammy – The female version of Danny McBride is back.

Skip It – Wake me when the Melissa McCarthy experiment is over.

America (2014) – Dinesh D’Souza does wacky conservative things, I think

Skip It – Political films always stink, no matter which side you’re on.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .