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Michael Bay is an Amazing Director


Deji Joseph

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Now before the mob burns me on the stake, let me explain, while Michael may not be the best Director in term of narrative substance, he sure knows how to give the audience what they want. Yes the are hormonal teenagers, but generally teens dont really care about characters anyway unless they are female and provocatively dressed. So may potential filmmakers deride his work and claim its easy. So why havent we seen the second coming of Michael Bay? Answer - Its hard, A few Directors may be able to come up with ideas as visually grand but may not be as good in translating it to the Big screen - G.I Joe. I watched True Grit with my fiend the other day, after beginning him to come, not to my surprise he fell asleep, and i can see why, critically its a beautifully crafted work of art, but apart from that its boring. Before you criticise him i have watched many great films with other friends and received the same reaction. We have even made short films and while mine is no where near the best narrative, i noticed something, as long as your audience finds it interesting in a positive way - nothing else matters. Its harsh but thats the reality, no matter how well crafted your film is, if the audience lose interest then its the same as them never seeing it, but if it was interesting, thing like out of focus shots, continuity errors go unnoticed and you get good word of mouth! So are "bad" films really bad? or should you say, you didnt enjoy it, or its not your type of film, because as long as the project was profitable based on its creative merits, not solely reliant on the name of it cast or director, then surely isnt it a good film, just because a critic didnt enjoy it, doesnt mean somebody else didnt, we come to films entertained. So how would you define a bad film?

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Bad film? One which doesn't do what the maker sets out to have it do. Now, what I consider a bad film will be my own opinions of a bad film, and I'll relate it to my like minded friends as a bad film and hopefully they'll understand it's just what I think (my friends and I often disagree on films). As for Mr Bay, I go for the surround sound, but I stay for the chauvinism.

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Good is a subjective term unless you're talking about a movie's ability to draw an audience and generate revenue (in which case "successful" would be the better term). For some people, any movie that stars Johnny Depp is a good movie. I think 'Eraserhead' is a great movie. I also think tapioca pudding is the best pudding. Most people disagree. They're only right in their minds.

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It's a matter of tastes. One might love a great movie like True Grit, and others may find it boring. That's one of the beauties of cinema, not everyone is going to like what they see. Some may love it, some may not.

 

Kev

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Films like "Titanic" can be called great, but others call it the worst film ever made. It's a matter of personal taste, for example I can't watch "Pearl Harbour" for more than a couple of mins, but I can easily watch "Tora Tora Tora".

 

Michael Bay knows the market he's aiming at, but that doesn't mean his film are great pieces of cinema.

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It's a matter of tastes. One might love a great movie like True Grit, and others may find it boring. That's one of the beauties of cinema, not everyone is going to like what they see. Some may love it, some may not.

 

Kev

 

You're right, to me there is no good or bad. You either like it or you don't. Even films with technical flaws can be enjoyable to some.

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Now before the mob burns me on the stake, let me explain, while Michael may not be the best Director in term of narrative substance, he sure knows how to give the audience what they want. Yes the are hormonal teenagers, but generally teens dont really care about characters anyway unless they are female and provocatively dressed. So may potential filmmakers deride his work and claim its easy. So why havent we seen the second coming of Michael Bay? Answer - Its hard, A few Directors may be able to come up with ideas as visually grand but may not be as good in translating it to the Big screen - G.I Joe. I watched True Grit with my fiend the other day, after beginning him to come, not to my surprise he fell asleep, and i can see why, critically its a beautifully crafted work of art, but apart from that its boring. Before you criticise him i have watched many great films with other friends and received the same reaction. We have even made short films and while mine is no where near the best narrative, i noticed something, as long as your audience finds it interesting in a positive way - nothing else matters. Its harsh but thats the reality, no matter how well crafted your film is, if the audience lose interest then its the same as them never seeing it, but if it was interesting, thing like out of focus shots, continuity errors go unnoticed and you get good word of mouth! So are "bad" films really bad? or should you say, you didnt enjoy it, or its not your type of film, because as long as the project was profitable based on its creative merits, not solely reliant on the name of it cast or director, then surely isnt it a good film, just because a critic didnt enjoy it, doesnt mean somebody else didnt, we come to films entertained. So how would you define a bad film?

 

There's a fat chunk of irony in your post and it's this:

 

Michael Bay's favorite directors are the Coens. So I'm sure he'd be glad to hear you enjoyed his movies (and you're right to the extent that he's a great director and story issues in both aside, Transformers 2 was brilliant next to GI Joe), but I don't think he'd be glad to hear you trash the Coens. True Grit wasn't their best work, but it was a great piece of filmmaking from our era's best American directors.

 

Michael Bay comes from directing commercials and he's VERY good at a few things. He can deliver fast exposition better than anyone else, sometimes elegantly (though the image), sometimes inelegantly (through wild lines or what have you). He can set up the stakes of a scene very fast and very coherently. He also has an AMAZING eye for action and a great eye period. His style of direction (hyperkinetic frontal primarily objective action/comedy?) is unique and inimitable, however it's been very influential. I think Bay is to some very small extent the Spielberg of our jaded, degenerate generation. I mean that as a huge compliment.

 

Still, you're making a serious mistake thinking you're the only audience member. True Grit did great business and a lot of people, me included, were really entertained by it. It's also a pretty unique film for the Coens (a Spielberg story with a Coens twist) and it was shot quite well. There are metrics, as objective as you're going to get in art analysis, by which Transformers 2 is exceptional. There are others by which True Grit is. Beyond that it's a matter of subjective opinion, or some would argue it's all opinion with occasional big words to dress it up.

Edited by M Joel Wauhkonen
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What is a Bad Film you ask?

 

It is very simple. A bad film is a bad story, period. In our day an age people want to pretend that flashy graphics and engaging cinematography will turn a lame duck of a story into a great film because it is “full of action”. But time always tells a different story. The great expensive thriller did ok at the box office and most people say, “It was ok”, or the yawning “It was good”.

 

Hollywood knows that only great stories make great movies, which is why they only seem to make remakes of remakes or sequels to the nth degree these days. Every year there is an abundance of remakes and sequels enough to make you puke. It used to be that many actors would refuse to do sequels because they knew that the story involved would never be better than the original. We as viewers know this so well that we often wait for DVD rentals before seeing the sequel of a movie that we thought was, “Yawningly good”.

 

It is the movies that are truly great that people will see over and over again so long is the memory has faded enough to make the story seem fresh again. Passion of the Christ, Jaws, and Saving Private Ryan are all movies that shaken people to their very core. It was stated that Jaws made everyone in the world terrified of sharks. Many people cannot bear to watch Passion of the Christ more than once because it changes them and forces them to see themselves differently. Would any of these movies be great movies without the story behind them? Of course they wouldn’t.

 

What highlights best that a great movie is only a great story on screen is when a low budget movie either does really well and is loved for many years, or is instantly hated and vilified for eternity. Two cases in point are Army of Darkness and The Blair Witch Project. Army of Darkness will always be a beloved low budget comedy horror classic while Blair Witch Project is only remembered for the pathetic mass swindling of the public for ticket money at any cost on the part of the Hollywood so called elite. You can claim good or poor cinematography for the failures or successes of either film, however, it is the fact that one presents a classic humor story line very well (Army of Darkness) while the other one (Blair Witch) has little to no story whatsoever and attempts to utilize classic horror film cinematography fill the gaps in between the action. I’ve seen much better, and more entertaining, short and long films done with little to no budget than Blair Witch would ever come close to matching. The sequel to Blair Witch was just as bad, proving that throwing money at a problem does not and cannot fix a lack of story involvement. It never has, and it never will, because the movie is the story and it cannot be separated from this brutal fact by any attempt at clever cinematography or special effects.

 

So, good stories make good movies and always have no matter how simple or complex the cinematography was or is.

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It comes down to marketing and understanding your demographic really. It is a business after all, one in which you sell your product to the people. I agree that Michael Bay does a great job at pleasing his audiences. Those people may not like True Grit. They may enjoy pro wrestling instead. It's all taste. I will say, I enjoy movies like Transformers because in all honesty, sometimes I want a movie I could sit down and space out to and enjoy without having to really look too deep. Flashy explosions, witty quips here and there, it does provide me with that fun "hollywood experience" that's fun to watch. But having said that, I identify more with the Coens and their style. I remember waiting in line to see True Grit, and a group of teens were behind me cracking all kinds of cowboy jokes saying to each other, "we're going to see that cowboy movie!" and I remembered being their age and going to movies with groups of people who only wanted to see the "popular" movies. I guess being on the upper age scale of the michael bay demographic, I could enjoy both. My heart may be with movies I deem artistic and beautiful, the Coens work was the first to really speak to me where I watched it then sat there and thought, "wow, that's what a movie should be like!" (excluding the classics of course!). It's all taste. I have snobbier friends who thumb their noses at movies like Transformers because they aren't as "intellectually stimulating" as the movies they go to see but I find irony in them only going to see obscure cinema as a way of inflating their social status amongst their circles rather than out of artistic appreciation because name dropping with obscure movies makes you an intellectual for sure! But who am I to judge? I think there's a certain charm to fun movies. Heck it makes movies like True Grit stand out even more from a storytelling/artistic standpoint alone!

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