7-day Archive: 
The Malaysian Insider

Showbiz

‘Transformers 2’ director says film ‘was crap’

March 07, 2011

Director Michael Bay poses at the Los Angeles premiere of his film ‘‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’’ on June 22, 2009. — Reuters pic
LOS ANGELES, March 7 — Director Michael Bay has labelled as “crap” his 2009 movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” blaming its shortcomings on the Hollywood writers’ strike.

In an interview with Empire magazine, Bay admits that they “made some mistakes” while filming the critically panned sequel.

“The real fault with (Transformers 2) is that it ran into a mystical world,” he explains. “When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers’ strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you’ve got to have a story in three weeks.”

He adds, “I was prepping a movie for months where I only had 14 pages of some idea of what the movie was. It’s a BS way to make a movie, do you know what I’m saying?”

This isn’t the first time Bay has blamed the writers’ strike for the blockbuster’s faults. In July 2010, he told USA Today, “I’ll take some of the criticism. It was very hard to put (the sequel) together that quickly after the writers’ strike.”

Actor Shia LaBeouf had similar complaints earlier that year at the Cannes Film Festival. “When I saw the second movie, I wasn’t impressed with what we did,” he said. “There were some really wild stunts in it, but the heart was gone.”

However, both Bay and LaBeouf promised that the franchise’s third instalment, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” due in July, would rejuvenate the series.

Transformers 2” grossed about US$836 million (RM2.549 billion) worldwide, having cost about US$200 million to produce. — Reuters