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Both director Michael Bay and star Shia LaBeouf apologized for the crappiness of Transformers 2 and promised Transformers: Dark of the Moon would be better. Or at least suck less. So far it looks like they succeeded, barely.
"...the movie that fans have been waiting for, critics have complained about, and box office receipts are ripe to reward. Sure, it's still big and bloated, made even more elephantine by the spectacle savant's new love affair with 3D, but it works. The story is simplified and consistently moves forward."
— Bill Gibron, Onion AV Club"...hardly a fleet production, but here [director] Bay makes his best, most flexible use yet of all the flamboyant bigness at his command: Computer-drawn characters and human actors seem to occupy the same narrative for once."
— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly"A considerably better modulated, more bearable experience than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen..."
— Justin Chang, Variety"...a work of ineffable soullessness and persistent moral idiocy..."
— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune"...a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters and inane dialog. It provided me with one of the more unpleasant experiences I've had at the movies."
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times"...a techno spectacle that is spectacularly empty."
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter -
When it was announced last summer that Megan Fox would be replaced for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, teenage boys everywhere groaned in collective frustration. But never fear, Michael Bay replaced 2008's FHM Hottest Woman in the World with Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whitely, aka Maxim's 2011 Hottest Woman in the World. But how do they compare when it comes to the Transformers franchise? Find out in our face-off.
Megan Fox v. Rosie Huntington-Whitely >>
Posted 06.27.11 by reelz -
A new preview clip has arrived online for a movie that Shia LaBeouf has called "the greatest 3-D film ever made."
In an interview with The LA Times, LaBeouf offered enormous praise for the upcoming Transformers sequel, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which is his third movie with director Michael Bay.
We took the 3-D cameras out of the Avatar stages and put them on the head of a dude jumping out of a plane in Chicago while a building is exploding. For real. Four or five dudes actually. It's the greatest 3-D film ever made. It's an amalgamation of ideas from Jim Cameron, Steven [Spielberg] and Michael.
watch the clip >> Posted 06.24.11 by Ryan -
The upcoming sequel Transformers: Dark of the Moon is director Michael Bay's third Transformers movie in a row since kick-starting the franchise with the first Transformers in 2007. 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen fell flat with critics and audiences alike (though it still earned $402 million at the U.S. box office), and even Bay admitted that the sequel fell short of expectations and promised to do better with Dark of the Moon.
In a recent press event (via SlashFilm), Bay revealed that Dark of the Moon has "a lot of scenes you’ve never seen before."
There’s a lot of action stuff that I’ve never done before that’s pretty cool. It’s like some agent said, "Bay’s a competitor." And what he meant by that is a lot of people on the third one will just check out and just get a paycheck. It’s like I’ve been working every day for two years, every single day, because I want to make up for the second one and I want to leave this franchise as best I can. I’ve had a great run, fun time doing it. So really, it was a fun shoot.
I didn’t want to say it’s bigger, because what I like about it is…And I’ve said this with [screenwriter] Ehren [Kruger]. We were talking about concept. We used the term "Black Hawk Down" in just that it’s a small group and you follow. And there’s no cavalry coming. It’s a standard thing in movies: cavalry comes. We tried to make the cavalry unable to come. And it’s more fun to watch our heroes in this epic ending just a small group, which makes the movie more intimate.
Bay blows up chicago >> Posted 04.16.11 by Ryan -
Despite poor reviews, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was an inarguable hit last summer, scoring $402 million domestically. What also can't be argued, is that it sucked. Transformers fans have been quick to contest the quality of the Transformers sequel, and even Shia LaBeouf admits that he "wasn't impressed with what we did" in Revenge of the Fallen.
Now director Michael Bay is getting in the apology act. In a recent set visit, Bay talked to USA Today about the failures of Revenge of the Fallen.
More Michael Bay Mea Culpa >> Posted 06.11.10 by Ryan -
The second installment in director Michael Bay's Transformers franchise, Revenge of the Fallen, was a mega-hit at the box office, opening at #1 and eventually taking in over $400 million domestically, making it the second-highest grossing movie of 2009 after Avatar. However, it was raked over the coals by critics, receiving a score of just 20% by aggregate review site RottenTomatoes, which called it "noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch." In a recent AP interview from the Cannes Film Festival, the non-robot star of the franchise, Shia LaBeouf, called out Revenge on its failings and promised Transformers 3 will be a better movie by restoring the human element.
read labeouf on why Transformers 2 was bad >> Posted 05.14.10 by BrentJS -
"3-D Conversion." To many studio executives, that phrase conjures images of dollar signs in the form of higher ticket prices. But to director Michael Bay the phrase implies gimmicky, "fake 3-D" unsuitable for the "complicated stuff" he puts on film.
Back in February, when Bay was just starting to scout locations for Transformers 3, he dismissed rumors that he might be shooting the movie in 3-D, saying that his style of shooting is "too aggressive for 3-D cameras" and that he preferred "anamorphic lenses" over digital cameras. Despite his disinterest in shooting in 3-D, Bay admitted a month later that he was testing 3-D conversion on "some Transformers scenes."
Apparently, things are not going too well with the conversion process. Bay, as quoted by Deadline, recently had a few choice words to say about the conversion process, seemingly aimed at the Paramount and DreamWorks executives who are presumably pressuring him for a Transformers 3-D.
I'm used to having the A-team working on my films, and I'm going to hand it over to the D-team, have it shipped to India and hope for the best? This conversion process is always going to be inferior to shooting in real 3-D. Studios might be willing to sacrifice the look and use the gimmick to make $3 more a ticket, but I'm not. Avatar took four years. You can't just sh*t out a D movie. I'm saying, the jury is still out.
It's unclear whether Bay truly believes that 3-D conversion might eventually work on Transformers 3 or if he's simply trying to appease the studios, but he said that he hasn't completely abandoned conversion as an option.
I am trying to be sold [on conversion], and some companies are still working on the shots I gave them. Right now, it looks like fake 3-D, with layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are hoping to be thrilled, and you're thinking, huh, this kind of sucks. People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are technically precise, and if this isn't going to be excellent, I don't want to do it. And it is my choice.
While Bay either can't or won't flat-out tell the studios what he thinks about 3-D, Avatar director and champion of 3-D technology James Cameron has no problem speaking his mind about it. Cameron used the Spider-Man reboot as a prime example of the wrong way of going about making a movie in 3-D.
This is another example of Hollywood getting it wrong. Sony says, "We're doing Spider-Man in 3D." The director doesn't say, "Hey, I want to make the movie in 3D." The studio says, "You want to direct this movie? You're doing it in 3D, motherf*cker!" That's not how it should be.
Posted 03.25.10 by BrentJS -
Only a month after director Michael Bay said that 3-D technology "might be a fad" and that it isn't suited for his "old school" style of filmmaking, Bay conceded that he was "testing" 3-D conversion on his first Transformers to see if it will be viable to release Transformers 3 in 3-D. Now, it appears that the Transformers, themselves, might be getting a makeover along with the movies in which they star.
In a recent interview with SciFiWire, Scott Benza, animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, said that at least two of the featured robots will be getting upgrades in Transformers 3.
Our two lead characters, Optimus and Bumblebee, needed to be updated for the next chapter in the Transformers series. Bumblebee's matured a little bit, so I would just say look for subtle changes to his physique that have him look more mature.
Scott Farrar, the visual effects supervisor on Transformers 3, said that the changes to Optimus Prime will be more subtle.
[Prime will have] little tiny things that maybe the average viewer isn't going to notice but probably the fanboys will. You actually will run into pieces that are maybe always in the way, and wouldn't it be nice if that part wasn't there? Maybe you make a shift in the shoulder, in the chest or what have you. So it might be proportioning, but it also might be for usability, so [the animators]' task could be easier, too.
Farrar also offered the first update on the progress of Ehren Kruger's script for Transformers 3.
There's an outline and most of the script is done. It hasn't been released to us completely because they want to keep that under wraps, but we certainly know enough. Michael turns over sections of the script, and then the art department is full steam ahead right now, the L.A. art department. We also have an ILM art department working on this at the same time. So we take their 2-D work and start turning it into 3-D models, because we like to get a jump-start on this. Any model that looks like it could start, we want to get going, because it'll take us 30 weeks to build it.
Posted 03.04.10 by BrentJS -
Even before Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) opened in theaters, Paramount and DreamWorks announced that the next sequel, Transformers 3, was already in the works, and that it would open July 1, 2011. This apparently caught director Michael Bay off-guard because he immediately refuted the release date, saying that he needed "a break from fighting robots," and that he wanted to do a "small movie" before Transformers 3.
However, shortly after Bay's statements were widely publicized, he changed his mind and said that he was on for Transformers 3. So, what caused Bay to change his mind? Was it the fact that ROTF opened stronger than Transformers, ultimately surpassing it at the box office? It's likely that the large box-office numbers for ROTF translated into an even bigger paycheck for Bay to direct the sequel, but according to an interview he gave on Starz' "In the House," Bay was motivated to return by the prospect of saving jobs during a depressed economy.
The true story is we went to Vegas to celebrate [Revenge of the Fallen] crossing the $400 million mark domestic. I said, "I'm excited to do my small little movie." They said, "Well, we're here to talk about that." I've become friends with these guys that run Paramount and they [told me,] "We're going to get fired if we don't have a 2011 franchise," so I'm like you can't let these guys down.
The economy's been so rough, it's kind of important. When you say yes to [a] movie like this you automatically give 3000 people jobs. 1000 for the toys. 2000 for the filmmaking. I'm going to put [the small film] on hold and do it right after [Transformers 3].
As for what fans can expect from Transformers 3, Bay said that there will be new characters and "a lot of twists." And, though he previously stated that his style of directing is "too aggressive for 3-D cameras," he did say that he was willing to explore the possibility of converting Transformers 3 to 3-D after he shoots it.
It's a process we're testing with some Transformers scenes. How successful it is with my movie in terms of a lot of real stuff coming out of the frame, real dirt, real complicated little particles coming towards the lens, because hopefully that process will work. I've seen some tests that look great on other movies. I just want to see how it looks on my footage.
In other Transformers news, Bay's personal web-sitewas also recently updated with this new ROTF featurette showcasing the movie's Academy Award-nominated sound mixing.
Posted 03.03.10 by BrentJS -
Over the past decade or so, Hugo Weaving has created two of the most memorable supporting characters in recent pop-culture. He oozed malice and evil as Agent Smith in The Matrix, and he found just the right blend of benevolence and regality as the elf lord Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In both of those projects, Weaving seemed to have lots of fun diving into the roles.
But apparently, this wasn't the case when he voiced the villain Megatron for Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Weaving recently interviewed with The Age in his native Australia, and the idea of a sequel to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came up. Weaving's laughed and simply said: "Oh no. They're not making Transformers III, are they?"
Weaving went on to say that he actually knows very little about Bay's movies, and that the voiceover work was mainly just a paycheck for him.
Michael Bay talks to me on the phone. I've never methim. We were doing the voice for the second one and I still hadn't seen the first one. I still didn't really know who the chracters were and I didn't know what anything was. It's a voice job, for sure, and people assume I've spent my life working on it, but I really know so little about it.
Ouch. Well, Bay can refute the critics all he wants, but when Agent Smith-slash-Elrond says your movie isn't interesting, maybe it's true.
Weaving also stars in The Wolfman, which opened last Friday.
Posted 02.16.10 by reelz