Michael Bay Admits TRANSFORMERS 2 Was "Kind Of A Mess" & Shares Some Set Photos
Michael Bay hopes that Tranformers: Dark Of The Moon will make audiences/fans forget about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Bay admitted to the LA Times that “It was kind of a mess, wasn’t it?” Bay had some interesting points to say about regret in regards to the film, he said:
“Look, the movie had some good things in it and it was entertaining and it did very well, but it also failed in some key ways. I learned from it. And now with this third movie we’re going back to basics and I absolutely believe this is going to be a much better film than the second one.”
While being interviewed on the set of the new film he reminisced about his reaction to Steven Spielberg coming to him with the idea for the franchise he said, “The term I used at the time was ‘stupid idea,’ if I remember right,” The director had a major change of heart after visiting with Hasbro and learning about the characters and cosmic mythology surrounding them.
The Transformers franchise is what the director will be remembered for most out his career. He currently has no expectation of making a fourth installment. As a result he is working diligently to end the franchise on a high note. Bay goes on to say,
“I’m still having fun and especially with this movie. Look, we got burned on the last movie. The big thing was the writers strike, it hurt the film and it made it hard on everybody. We had three weeks to get our story and, really, we were going into the movie without a script. It’s tough to do that. It was too big of a movie. There were too many endings or too many things thatfelt like endings. There was so much animation [in the visual effects postproduction work], too, and we ran out of time. We used the schedule of the first movie for the second movie but on the second one way more labor was needed for the animation. And then it felt like we were writing the script in the edit room, trying to put together a story.”
Bay has not gotten much love from critics with his films as of late. They have all agreed on their distaste for the last Transformers film and for Bays other films, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2 and The Island. In the recent interviw Bay actually has publicly agreed with them.
“I think we have something to prove with this third one. We’re back to basics. The second one was something going on inside of Sam, the way he’s affected and feeling, and that’s a hard thing to do. It’s more mystical, in a way. This one, there’s nothing mystical about it. It’s a good old-fashioned mystery and it’s a tougher movie … it’s funny but it’s not a wisecrack-funny; it’s funnier in the situation.”
Spielberg brought Bay in to direct the franchise because of the way the director has dealt with humans on screen. Spielberg goes on to say,
”The first chance I ever had to work with Michael Bay was when he directed ’The Island’ for DreamWorks and Warner Bros. in 2005. The Island,’ while not a commercial success, was successful in showing me how well Michael could deal with relationships within a big conceptual drama. It didn’t take second sight to know how brilliantly he would handle the action between the Autobots and the Decepticons. But because our principal premise for a first ’Transformers’ was the story of a girl, a boy and his car, ‘The Island’ showed me that Michael would pay special attention to the human stories in ‘Transformers.’ “
Spielberg went on to say:
“As the plot thickens in the third installment of ‘Transformers,’ Michael’s work on it feels fresh and energized … with lots of new and inventive ways of turning a page on this franchise. “
Bay describes the third film in the franchise as being “lean and mean.” Bay also revealed that the script written by Ehren Kruger (The Ring) presents more of a small-team, commando tension and compared the film to Black Hawk Down but with giant alien robots instead of Middle East deserts. Dark of the Moon will mostly take place in Chicago where humanity continues to fight for survival.
I am excited for some of the same scenes that Bay is most proud of. He mentioned some cool urban warfare scenes in the film, including sequences where a team of glide-suit commandos fly between skyscrapers like a black-ops version of flying squirrels. Bay also talked about his excitement for the story of the film and the conspiracy mystery that sets up the new story, which traces back to the 1960s space program.
Fans of the first film can excpect John Turturro, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson to return to the fray. What I am most excited for in the upcoming film is that John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Patrick Dempsey have joined the cast. I love both Malkovich and McDormand and think they will bring some new life into the film.I may not be in the majority with this next statement, but I am very happy that Megan Fox has been left out of the film. Her performances were some of my main gripes about the first two films.
Bay believes the film is better off without Fox's character and that the movie has more room to move without her and that the cast is stronger this time around. Bay’s excitement faded when asked about Fox in the interview. He went on to mention Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who will play the female lead in the film by saying, “I don’t want to talk about it, but we obviously replaced our girl, and by everything I see we fared well." He went on to say, “Look, I will say that I think we have a better cast with this third movie than we’ve ever had.”
Bay also revealed some cool points about the use of 3-D cameras on the set of Dark of the Moon. He talked about his initial feelins on the 3D format after visitng the Avatar set by saing,
‘This is so not me.’ So it’s kind of scary, all right? Especially because I do real-world stuff … this is really hard for me because I’m a die-hard film guy, anamorphic old-school lenses, and there’s nothing more beautiful than anamorphic lenses to me. So going digital was just kind of crass for me.”
Bay goes on to talk about his love of technology and his take on the format by saying,
“Have you ever seen these cameras? They’re big. You’ve got the mirrors — what you’re doing is splitting a mirror, so you get weird refractions. It cuts light. The second camera is always going to be a touch softer because it’s going through a mirror. It sees reflections a little weird. It’ll catch a glare on one eye but it won’t on the other so it will kind of jump out at you sometimes in 3-D.”
I saw The Green Hornet in 3D today and got the chance to see the trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and I am enjoying what I am seeing so far. I can't wait to see the film in 3D when it is released. Below are some photos from the set, check them out and share your thoughts! Are ou looking forward to seeing the next Tranformers?
