In Defence of Michael Bay

Image source: movie-list.com

James Smith responds to Max Jewell's recent critique of Michael Bay's oeuvre (link below)

Before I begin, I must point out that I am not saying Michael Bay is a brilliant director. He has made some absolute stinkers (Pearl Harbour, full of historical errors and rightly derided).  And yet there are certainly much worse directors (Madonna, the ones who made Vampires Suck and Meet the Spartans, and Paul W. S. Anderson, the man who brought us The Three Musketeers (2011 version) and the godawfully, hilariously bad Resident Evil Afterlife that I enjoyed for all the wrong reasons; Anderson is a man who can’t direct OR write).

On Friday, 13^th April Max Jewell argued that Michael Bay's his brain should be donated to science (see belo). In that vein, we would lose one of Hollywood’s best (stretching that description to its maximum limit) and most famous blockbuster directors. Seriously, who else could have fitted together the incoherent plot that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and made a massive enough profit to add a third to the trilogy? I hugely enjoyed two of his movies: Armageddon and The Island. Armageddon presents the interesting idea of how the world might defend itself against an asteroid the size of Texas, even though it is scientifically impossible: drill a hole only 800m in an asteroid with a diameter of 6 miles, break it in half and save the world. Ummm… Then The Island, which is definitely an intelligent look at the ethics of clones, although the critics weren’t too keen on it.

I do, however, understand that he has a strange penchant for blowing things up. Why Mr Bay decided that he had to blow up Paris in Armageddon and a huge motorway in The Island, I will never know. But he isn’t afraid of doing it. And he doesn’t care what critics think (whether this is admirable or not I don’t know). Someone has to do the schlocky blockbusters with the explosions, but he dives headfirst into it. If Michael Bay, or people like him, didn’t exist, profits wouldn’t be made and there would be no movie business. So no donating of brains, okay Max? Unless it belongs to Paul W. S. Anderson; I don’t think I could stand another of his game-to-film movies like Mortal Kombat. Except another hilariously appalling attempt at horror in the fifth Resident Evil movie of the franchise – I laughed non-stop for about 10 minutes of the movie at how ridiculous it was – which is certainly more than I can say for Meet the Spartans – a movie that’s meant to be funny.

I’ve gone a bit off-topic here. I re-iterate: Max, you no cut Michael Bay’s brain out of head. Comprendé?

See Max Jewell's critique of Michael Bay at:

http://portsmouthpoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/why-michael-bay-should-donate-his-brain.html