It will be a long while and a massive career overhaul before Michael Bay finds himself exempt of public mockery. The pop culture literate poke fun at the Bad Boys and Transformers franchise director for his egregious explosions, his epileptic editing style, and his moreover lacking story material. But hey, all filmmakers have their follies. And at least Bay knows what his are. In a recent interview with the Miami Herald focusing on his Florida-set crime film Pain & Gain, Bay actually came out and apologized for his critically marred blockbuster Armageddon.
“I will apologize for Armageddon,” Bay said in the interview, “because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us.”
Apparently, the entire production was a Texas-sized catastrophe. Bay said, “It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.”
Indeed it did — general critical reception aside, the apocalyptic romance ranks as one of the most quintessentially iconic films of the late ’90s, launching Ben Affleck’s career, and somehow landing among the ranks of the Criterion Collection. Maybe you should reserve your apologies for Transformers 2, Bay.
Follow Michael Arbeiter on Twitter @MichaelArbeiter
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