Bay of Lost Hope
There was a movie-theatre moment eight years ago when I thought Michael Bay might one day grow into a semi-mature film artist. Maybe. To my delight and surprise the opening seconds of Pearl Harbor began with Hans Zimmer‘s music playing for nine beautiful seconds over a black screen — a semi-overture, I thought at first. But the black gave way to a shot of World War I-era biplanes cruising over cornfields during magic hour — a middle-American nostalgia scene. But that black-screen opener was still…well, mildly impressive.
This YouTube clip cuts off a couple of seconds’ worth of blackness so it doesn’t give the full effect. The first 45 to 50 seconds of this clip are a little too photogenic in a slick-TV-ad sort of way, but they’re otherwise engaging and certainly restrained by Bay standards. If only he’d held that black screen for another five seconds!
I asked Bay about the blackness at a press conference the next day. He talked about how he had to fight hard to begin the film this way, especially since it meant not starting this Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film with the traditional highway-tree-lightning Bruckheimer logo.
It wasn’t much of an artistic call on Bay’s part but it was at least something, I felt. I came away from Pearl Harbor half-convinced that if Bay ever wanted wanted to move beyond shallow whambam blockbuster movies that he had the potential to do so.
I was inspired to write this after reading Kim Morgan‘s recent review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. She also suspects that Bay has more in his quiver than he’s commonly given credit for.
“After settling into the second hour of the movie, dismayed I had over another hour ahead of me, it started to come to me: Michael Bay is a surrealist. He may not know he is, he may not like that I’m calling him one, but this money-sucking action filmmaker extraordinaire would do well by Bunuel or Jodorowksy or Gilliam or hell, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is absurdist surrealism at its finest, especially the ingenious movie, and the characters would have featured brilliantly in this picture — better than Bay’s ‘jive talking’ bots).
“If the filmmaker had some chutzpah, if he truly tapped into the melting pocket-watch corner of his brain, if he understood his full dreamweaving potential (because I do believe Michael Bay can ‘get me through the night’), the next Transformers would be titled Un Chien Andalou LaBeouf.”
Michael Bay represents the dark underbelly of the auteur theory.
I thought the same thing of Bay for a brief period when I saw the trailer that used Zimmer’s score from Thin Red Line. There’s a moment where the score kicks into gut wrenching mode and we’re given the overshoulder shot of a bomb spiraling down on one of the ships. In the theater it’s a moment that really got me in the stomach.
And then I saw the actual movie.
I remember being dazzled by one of the shots in the Pearl Harbor trailer (the shot of the boy throwing the baseball and seeing Zeroes fly by). The actual movie is borderline unwatchable, but that’s not entirely Bay’s fault; the script is abysmal.
I haven’t seen many of Bay’s films but the only one I can stand is The Rock, mainly because of some good dialogue, the Cage/Connery chemistry, and amusing supporting turns by Ed Harris, John Spencer, and Michael Bienh.
The thing about Bay is he seems script-agnostic — unable to distinguish between a good and a bad one — and he always goes for the tiresome rah-rah-slow-motion Right-Stuff/militaristic tone. Also, he composes shots but not sequences. His aesthetic has had an impact, but if he has actually created a good movie, I haven’t seen it yet.
If Pearl Harbor was a straight-up war film it might have been quite good. Unfortunately they tried to make it another Titanic and the love story failed. Beckinsale has never been worse.
I heard there’s a fanmade edit where they cut out the romance subplot and it plays a lot better.
Bay is a genius at emotional manipulation (well, sometimes).
I *love* Armageddon. It’s loud, it’s stupid, it’s RIDICULOUS. . . but in that movie Bay combines imagery and music in an incredible way. The little touches– Will Patton on his estranged wife’s front porch, Billy Bob Thornton’s leg braces– and the big touches– the shuttle launches, the shuttle crashes, the “World comes together in a phone commercial and American kids play like it’s 1965″, and the outstanding Bruce Willis death scene. . . it’s all really, really fucking great filmmaking.
Some of Bay’s work is like that– *compulsively* watchable. Armageddon, The Rock, and even Pearl Harbor (as long as it’s coming up on the attack) suck me into putting down the remote faster than you can say “Roadhouse”.
They’re not “good” in anything approaching the conventional sense of the word. Certainly not in a way that I think Wells would give them credit for, and certainly not in a way the comment crowd here would. But there *is* genius there.
And evil. Lots and lots and lots of CGI, THX ear-splitting evil.
(Honestly, for my money, “Bad Boys II” was one of the most repulsive experiences I’ve ever had in the theater. I’d rather watch a “Faces of Death” marathon than watch Martin Lawrence crack wise in a morgue).
Anyway. . . rambling comment, I know. I’m glad Transformers 2 got such savage reviews simply because I hated the first one so much so now I can save my time and money.
That said, I agree with Wells: at one point, at least, there was a glimmer of hope for Michael Bay. He’d never be a Truffaut, but he might just have been DeMille.
Let’s use this Michael Bay thread to throw a Mazal tov to actionman, who I think is getting married tomorrow…
Ashleylynch, that trailer is still my all-time favorite trailer. Alas, I’m pretty sure that Bay didn’t cut it (they’re all outsourced, of course), but regardless, in three minutes you get a better movie than you get in over (WELL over) two hours.
Watching that trailer, you could be forgiven for thinking it would be a masterpiece. Oops.
(I can’t see it at work, but here’s the link:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-PIPBtP02yKc/pearl_harbor_trailer/ . Not sure if that’s the one that uses Zimmer or the also-excellent Graeme Ravelle music).
Ya gotta admit, when the best thing you can say about Bay involves a blank screen, that’s an excellent backhander.
One of the weirdest love triangle stories of all time. Horrible movie.
This is Bay’s masterpiece scene right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB_ZlORvD4c
Awesome stuff, and the score is absolutely pitch-perfect. It’s cheesy as all hell but crazynine is right – it’s exactly the kind of thing that sucks you right in when you’re channel-surfing.
No, you’re right. Pearl Harbor had more ambition than anything he’s done since. He had his moments in that one, screwed it up in the end, and seemed to go “Well, that’s it” and settled for his bank deposits.
I think Bay needs Bruckheimer back.
As I was watching the finale of Transformers 2 the other day, with all those awesome military planes and stuff, I thought how Bay really should do a straight-up military action film with no CGI in the vein of Top Gun. I bet it’d be fucking awesome. He clearly loves that stuff. Let him play around with planes and tanks and missiles. It’ll be proper bo.
I know this will brand me with the MOTP (Mark of the Phlilistine) forever, but Pearl Harbor is one of those films I really enjoy, in spite of its many screaming flaws.
Every copy of “Pearl Harbor” should just be replaced by Fred Zinneman’s “From Here to Eternity”.
Bay tells the Wall Street Journal today that his next movie wiill be a small, character-driven piece.
His biggest problem as a filmmaker is that he’s completely tone-deaf to humor, obliging the actors to push too hard to find it in the thunkingly bad dialogue. The Rock stands out because Connery and Cage know how to play it.
I remember seeing this movie opening day. I was really let down. I did however come out of the movie huming the main theme by Hans Zimmer. I went right out and bought the soundtrack and still listen to it. Greas score. I love Hans Zimmer, this movie not so much. I also remember reading your reaction to it at the time Jeff. Weren’t you writing columns on reel.com at the time? I thought you had mentioned something at the time about how Bay didn’t set out to make a movie about Pearl Harbor but more of a WWII movie in general but Bruckheimer was the one that steered him toward doing a big Pearl Harbor thing. Do you remember anything about this or am I just crazy?
Oh also my favorite Bay movie is The Rock. Absolutly great. Connery owns in that movie. However I hated Armaggedon. I actually like the first 45 minutes where they are “putting the team together” and getting ready to go into space.
I wish Michael Bay were dead instead of Michael Jackson.
Michael Bay directs all of his movies as if the entire film-going audience is made up of 13 year old boys. To watch a Michael Bay movie (I’ve seen most and at least parts of all of them) is to experience an assault on the senses. His cinematography is all golden-hued sepia tones. They have a term for this type of lighting in Hollywood, it’s called “magic hour.” “Magic hour” is typically thought of as that last hour of the day before sunlight falls and the earth is bathed in a radiant glow. Well Michael Bay shoots every scene as if every hour of every day is “magic hour.” Even the night time ones! His films are edited as if by someone in the thralls of an epileptic fit. The camera can never hold a scene for more than 3 seconds without having to cut. Characters in his films tend to shout if for no other reason than to be heard over whatever’s being blown up. And the words they say! The dialogue in his movies must be written by someone who hasn’t graduated from crayons yet. He seems to confuse the most directing with the best directing. I suspect that he keeps things moving at this ADD pace so that no one has the time to notice that in a Michael Bay movie there is no “there” there.
Read the rest at http://sumopopblog.blogspot.com/
“They have a term for this type of lighting in Hollywood, it’s called “magic hour.” “Magic hour” is typically thought of as that last hour of the day before sunlight falls and the earth is bathed in a radiant glow.”
They have a term for this type of lighting in the real world; it’s called “sunset”.
Good point. Overwritten. Now fixed.
Bay is Ed Wood Jr. with 200 million dollar budgets.
And “Transformers 2″ is truly his “Plan 9 From Outer Space”…his ultimate achievement, a movie that defines him, his worldview, and his meager filmmaking skills.
Someone out there please do a mash-up between the PEARL HARBOR trailer and 1941. I’m sure some skilful editing could make the love triangle be Ben Affleck-Kate Beckinsale-John Belushi…
I LOVE watching otherwise rational people try to tell themselves Bay may have talent within himself, despite the fact this moron’s been in the business for over a decade now and has yet to produce even one scene –forget about a movie!– with a touching, or meaningful or even important moment in it.
Calling Bay a “surrealist” would be like calling Sascha Baron Cohen an “auteur.”
And listen to how she had to make up shit out of thin air to pad her imaginary analyse. It’s bad enough when you have imagine someone might have talen buried so deep within themselves that even you can’t tell what it is, but you’ve crossed the line unto lunacy when you start actively making up the ability for them altogether.
Anyone who thinks Bay has not degraded film should read that review TWICE and ask themselves how sad it is that a reviewer’s brain has become so diluted by Bayshit that they can’t even think anymore.
Then watch the Bayfans who say they don’t an intelligent movie.
This is my idea of movie hell.
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