Michael Bay
366 connections found
Filmography
Pain & Gain 2013 
Armageddon 1998 
Transformers 2007 
Transformers: Age of Extinction 2014 
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 2009 
Pearl Harbor 2001 
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011 
The Rock 1996 
Transformers: The Last Knight 2017 
Bad Boys 1995 
Bad Boys II 2003 
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi 2016 
The Island 2005 
6 Underground 2019 
Ambulance 2022 View:
Connections, in both directions
Another car chase, surely, or another grisly scene of medical malfeasance, whether in the form of implanting tiny crawling robotic critters under someone's eyelid or some unsavory business involving a bone saw, or yet one more reference to (or rip-off from) "Blade Runner" or "Logan's Run" or "Gattaca" or "Minority Report" or "The Island of Dr. Moreau" or "Austin Powers" (unintentional, but there are scenes featuring McGregor's character and his nemesis, played by Sean Bean, that can't help but conjure Dr. Evil).
The film's three screenwriters borrow heavily from such post-apocalyptic adventures as "Logan's Run," and, of course, Orwell's "1984."
Obviously, the concept of having naive humans escape from a seemingly perfect utopian society has "Logan's Run" written all over it.
The resultant motion picture is sort of a combination "THX-1138," "Logan's Run," "Blade Runner," and "The Matrix."
Playing out somewhat like “Logan’s Run” meets “Total Recall”, the tale unfolds along predictable but enjoyable lines with the odd flash of creativity (eg. the holographic shield) and an impressively picturesque opening nightmare sequence.
The plot and theme of the film is in many ways similar to a personal favourite of mine, Logan’s Run .
Moonfall (2022)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced by Armageddon (1998), Transformers (2007), Pearl Harbor (2001)
Plot Characters Themes Music
Emmerich directs a script he co-wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen and it comes close to camp, recalling ’90s disaster flicks like “Armageddon,” some high concept from “Interstellar,” some Emmerich DNA from “The Day After Tomorrow” and even call-backs to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Planet of the Apes.”
Along the way, the film samples liberally from Emmerich’s past projects, with a dash of Independence Day and plenty of The Day After Tomorrow to go along with 2012 ‘s conspiracy-friendly inspiration, and it’s hard to miss the overt similarities to some films he didn’t make, like 1998 meteor-disaster adventure Armageddon .
(Let’s also take this as a sign to continue making blockbusters where the actors actually have chemistry, people!) Wilson confronts the potential end of the world with a subtlety reminiscent of Bruce Willis in Armageddon: He’s tormented but not brooding, disheveled but not hopeless, brave but not a martyr.
Moonfall has moments that recall obvious sci-fi influences like The Matrix as well as his one-time competitors like Michael Bay's Armageddon and half-forgotten curiosities like Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars .
Additionally, the music by Harald Kloser (who’s also one of the film’s co-writers) may be a pastiche of warmed-over themes from “Armageddon” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” but it attempts to inject some tension and excitement into the film.
With them as they launch off on an “Armageddon” (1998)/“Don’t Look Up” (2021)-like mission is a nerdy extrovert with IBS (a very Rickey Gervais-esque John Bradley of “Game of Thrones,” bringing the much-needed comic relief).
Another car chase, surely, or another grisly scene of medical malfeasance, whether in the form of implanting tiny crawling robotic critters under someone's eyelid or some unsavory business involving a bone saw, or yet one more reference to (or rip-off from) "Blade Runner" or "Logan's Run" or "Gattaca" or "Minority Report" or "The Island of Dr. Moreau" or "Austin Powers" (unintentional, but there are scenes featuring McGregor's character and his nemesis, played by Sean Bean, that can't help but conjure Dr. Evil).
But writer Caspian Tredwell-Owen - who adapted his own story with co-screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci - was also inspired by Philip K. Dick's "Blade Runner," which proposed the notion of having manufactured humans fight for their identities after being implanted with previously existing memories.
The resultant motion picture is sort of a combination "THX-1138," "Logan's Run," "Blade Runner," and "The Matrix."
Their hesitation to kiss, you see, comes from the fact they're playing harvested beings, or replicants -- to borrow a term from "Blade Runner," which Michael Bay's movie has ransacked like WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers.
Possessing no new ideas, it reworks and borrows from such films as Blade Runner, The Matrix and Logan's Run.
Obviously people will make comparisons to Blade Runner and Logan's Run , and some from writer Philip K. Dick.
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016), Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Themes Plot
It is neither as grossly gratuitous as Peter Berg's "Lone Survivor" nor as gripping as Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down."
In the hands of the right filmmaker, a film about Benghazi might have yielded something like Ridley Scott's “ Black Hawk Down ,” another chronicle of a mission in an unstable land that went horribly wrong.
In that regard “13 Hours” is more the latter, casting shades of “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Black Hawk Down.”
This is the kind of war film that will be a hard to shake off because it's so intense much like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down.
In trying to make his Black Hawk Down, Michael Bay has inadvertently made his own The Green Berets—as envisioned by Donald Trump.
He wanted to direct Black Hawk Down, but Ridley Scott got there first.
Midway pays tribute to fallen American heroes even as the film may also be a spiritual sequel to an earlier Pacific-set World War 2 film, Pearl Harbor .
Director Roland Emmerich thankfully relies on the (barely) competent special effects to make the battle scenes exciting but otherwise, there’s a bunch of second-rate aerial photography and copycat shots from Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” (like a tired p.o.v.
Oh, it's not "Pearl Harbor" horrific, and most of the actors do their best with a wholly clunky script that plays like an homage to John Wayne "war pictures," but this "Midway" was made for the ADHD generation.
Both of these specimens of testosterone-fueled all-American derring-do (played by Brits who periodically struggle with their accents) are real historical figures, as are almost all of the characters in Midway , which attempts to dramatize the most famous naval battle of World War II by drawing equal inspiration from the monotonous historical reenactments of 1970’s Tora! Tora! Tora! , the butt-numbing soap-opera spectacle of 2001’s Pearl Harbor , and the Irwin Allen influences of Emmerich’s own disaster movies.
That’s not to say the script has to go into full-on weepy romance territory like Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” (2001), but Moore is too big a star not to use her considerable talents.
Nobody had to invent a character for Ben Affleck to play who was everywhere at once in “Pearl Harbor” (even in The Battle of Britain).
Power Rangers (2017)
Directed by Dean Israelite
influenced by Transformers (2007), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Visuals Themes Music
With its city-block-levelling action sequences that recall Transformers, to the characters’ adolescent enthusiasm that mirrors similar moments in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, Power Rangers feels late to the party, its every move telegraphed by earlier films.
Perhaps the two most obvious pieces of franchise DNA present in this film are ones you shouldn't want to emulate: Michael Bay’s Transformers and the Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.
In fact, from the symphonic music that plays over the opening credits to the film’s glacially-paced origin story and the city-destroying robot fight with which it culminates, “Power Rangers” owes far more to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the “Twilight” generation, and Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies than it does its own source material.
Case in point: “Power Rangers,” a movie for people who find “Transformers” too intellectually challenging.
Following in the childhood-exhuming footsteps of Transformers, 21 Jump Street, and now CHIPS (or, if you’re old-school, CHiPs), comes Hollywood’s latest high-risk wager on low-brow nostalgia, Power Rangers .
Inevitably, director Dean Israelite and writer John Gatins incorporate the franchise's sillier and more nostalgic underpinnings, from snippets of the "Go go Power Rangers" theme that chased many a parent from the room to a seemingly inevitable "Transformers" joke.
The latter is on full display in "Greenland" where the title certainly sounds benign and sort of "let's go on vacation" dreamy compared to its similarly themed predecessors "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" where a celestial object is certain to cast a shadow on Annie singing about there always being tomorrow to look forward to.
With plenty of soul-searching, Greenland is reminiscent of Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact (1998) which is largely considered to be far superior to the brash and risibly over the top Armageddon .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greenland exists in a slightly uneasy space among Emmerichian dreck 2012 , Bayish dreck Armageddon , halfway-decent dreck Deep Impact , artsy dreck Melancholia and, somewhat possibly interestingly, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , but, somewhat possibly disappointingly, minus the aliens.
That’s as a result of the decision to eschew the multi-character approach, and the bombastic, apocalypse porn of previous killer-comet movies like 1998’s double whammy of Deep Impact and Armageddon (okay, asteroid in the latter).
Then again, even in the pulpy Armageddon , the complicated between Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, and Liv Tyler also worked, and even the most dead inside amongst us still remember sobbing at the clichéd “noble sacrifice” that climaxes the movie.
Gone are the days when Bruce Willis would go try and nuke the rock in “Armageddon,” more fitting for 2020 is an action movie about civilization grappling with its fragility.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Bad Boys II (2003), Bad Boys (1995), Armageddon (1998)
Themes
Fuzz explicitly references flicks like Bad Boys II and Point Break -- and later, when Pegg and Wright ratchet up the satire, there are sly nods to Terminator 2 and Robocop and a dozen other classic action movies, cop movies, and buddy movies -- but it doesn’t ape them.
Hot Fuzz ’s primary target of adoration and satire is the buddy action movie, with the screenplay referencing and paying homage to everything from Bad Boys II to Point Break , and even the Miami Vice TV show.
Helmed by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who brought us the hilarious zombie shocker Shaun of the Dead in 2004, Fuzz lifts the genre of buddy movies to a new level and pays an earnest homage to famed action spectacles such as Bad Boys II and Point Break .
Upon arriving in Sandford, he realizes that his commanding officer (Jim Broadbent) is a flake and his peers are morons, although he does strike up a friendship with Danny Butterman (Frost), a well-meaning cop who finds spiritual guidance in the movies Bad Boys II and Point Break.
Directed by Edgar Wright, and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, the duo who brought us the hilarious 2004 zombie shocker Shaun of the Dead , Hot Fuzz lifts the “buddy movie” genre to a new level while paying homage to popular action flicks like Bad Boys II and Point Break .
As the grotesque nature of the apparently random murders escalates, so too does a blood-and-bullets spectacle to rival gnarly action-thrillers like Michael Bay’s "Bad Boys II," a movie referenced in one of Danny’s rants about great cop movies.
Battleship (2012)
Directed by Peter Berg
influenced by Transformers (2007), Pearl Harbor (2001), Armageddon (1998), The Island (2005), Bad Boys (1995), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Plot Visuals
The plot sounds like a combination of “Independence Day,” “Armageddon” and “Transformers,” and in many ways, this film tries to replicate the formula that made those three pictures massively successful.
For director Peter Berg, whose Hollywood action resume leads with “Hancock” but pales in comparison to Michael Bay’s “Transformers,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Armageddon” and “Bad Boys,” “Battleship” proves that Berg is a worthy adversary as a blockbuster action director.
During that time, it has as much in common with the “Transformers” movies as it does with “Armageddon,” “War of the Worlds,” “Battle: Los Angeles” and even the patriotic, gung-ho spirit of “Top Gun.”
The last section of Battleship is sort of like Antiques Roadshow meets Armageddon, albeit with way too much of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.
The good news is that Berg is all about the earlier, better Bay movies - Armageddon is all over Battleship like the Beatles are all over Oasis.
Battleship makes you reconsider every mean thing you ever said about Michael Bay: Compared to this, even Pearl Harbor starts looking good.
Others may be reminded of The Matrix and Minority Report , but The Island isn't in the same league.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the entire topic of cloning is just an excuse for protracted action sequences, some lifted a little too obviously from films like Minority Report and The Matrix Reloaded.
But in “The Island,” a sort of Logan’s rerun that also splices in DNA from “Minority Report” and “Total Recall,” director Michael Bay fills the screen with broken glass by throwing stones at Hollywood’s own house.
It's not all a wash: the conception of the future is a bit silly and feels like it's ripping off Minority Report in ways that don't make sense (Los Angeles, 2019: City of ski lift trains), but it's a good movie to rip off, and while the movie does some terrible things with its setting, at least it looks nice.
"The Island" has certain special effects, not its largest or most sensational, that reminded me of the creativity in a film like Spielberg's " Minority Report ."
Set in the early ‘90s, “Pain & Gain” desperately wants to be a ‘90s classic in the vein of “Pulp Fiction” or the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo,” but Bay has clearly overestimated the fairly pedestrian and conventional script from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ("Captain America: The First Avenger").
Some of this material recalls the warped sense of humor embraced by the Coens (think the woodchipper in Fargo) and Tarantino ("The Bonnie Situation" in Pulp Fiction), among others.
Where inspired violent comedies like “Seven Psychopaths” and “Fargo” deliver their jolts with deadpan, tongue-in-cheek precision, “Pain & Gain” hits its thumb with the hammer.
Without Frances McDormand’s Marge, Fargo probably wouldn't have landed an Oscar.
Bay, a frequent subject of conversation on Wahlberg’s long-running series “Entourage,” may have intended “Pain & Gain” to be the “Fargo” of Miami-Dade true crime stories.
On social media, in the days leading up to the release of Pain & Gain , this pitch-black serio-comedy was alternately described by those lucky enough to see it in advance as “Michael Bay’s Boogie Nights ” or “ Fargo for idiots.”
As it turns out, Real Steel, directed by Night at the Museum’s Shawn Levy, borrows so much from other films that it might better be titled Reel Steal: not only from The Champ, but from Rocky, the Transformers movies and even some Star Wars.
Now, you can make a pop lunacy Happy Meal psychedelic mind destructor like the "Transformers," but that's only if you're Michael Bay, and if you're Michael Bay, you're too busy buttoning and unbuttoning your shirt in front of a mirror right now to read this.
This is basically a more restrained version of the robot fights in the Transformers films, which, while they’re done better here than in those films, still doesn’t make for a compelling concept.
Yes, it's intrinsically all quite goofy (imagine trying to watch this with a straight face before the success of the "Transformers" flicks), and Levy near completely botches the big final match between Atom (and, essentially, Jackman's character who's controlling him in "mirror mode" thus necessitating Jackman to pretty much fight the bout) and the resident, high tech and undefeated champion named - what else -- Zeus (I guess all of the Decepticon names were already taken).
There's that "Transformers" inspiration, of course, with a heavy dose of Rock'em Sock'em Robots thrown in.
Based "in part," according to the opening credits, on the 1956 short story "Steel" by the great Richard Matheson (the story previously inspired a 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone"), "Real Steel" represents a canny welding of the state-of-the-art effects and boy-and-his-robot relationship of the "Transformers" films with the hoary sentiment of the tough guy-reformed-by-cute kid stories that have been a staple of motion pictures since the silent era.
It is based on a little-seen 1979 feature called The Clonus Horror, in which citizens are promised a paradise called "America" rather than The Island, but it comes across as a compendium of dystopian visions that has echoes of The Matrix, Logan's Run, Blade Runner, Gattaca and THX 1138 plus a few reprises of some moments from Bay's own repertoire.
Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) live in a sterile THX 1138 dystopia where everyone has the education of a fifteen-year-old (which, for Bay, means they're just cracking that Dick & Jane primer), meaningless assembly-line jobs, no concept of sex or sexuality, and letters/numbers for names.
The result is a sci-fier with roots in such films as "Logan's Run," "THX 1138," "Looker" and "Coma," that devolves into one big chase scene after another with lots of explosions.
The picture is an unabashed pastiche, clapping together elements of such earlier sci-fi films as "THX 1138," "Logan's Run," "Minority Report" and, of course, "Blade Runner."
It is based on a little-seen 1979 feature called The Clonus Horror, in which citizens are promised a paradise called "America" rather than The Island, but it comes across as a compendium of dystopian visions that has echoes of The Matrix, Logan's Run, Blade Runner, Gattaca and THX 1138 plus a few reprises of some moments from Bay's own repertoire.
The real source, though, is a 1979 sci-fi cheapie called The Clonus Horror, probably best known as the subject of a satiric drubbing by the cut-ups at “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
Much of the connect-the-dots plot is similar to "The Clonus Horror," a laughable, low-budget B-movie bomb from 1979, which fumbled with inferences about the fallacies of the American Dream.
As a result, Pearl Harbor constantly reminds you of other, better movies (yes, even From Here to Eternity) -- but only for a second, because then he's off to something else.
Lovelorn soldiers stationed in Hawaii have their romantic lives torn asunder when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor: you can add remaking Fred Zinnemann's Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity without due credit to the tally of Pearl Harbor 's wickedness, although a picture as cool and sensitive--the two qualities exactly lacking from Pearl Harbor --as From Here to Eternity would hardly want the acknowledgment.
As a matter of fact, there is more than passing borrowing from that Spielberg film, James Cameron's "Titanic," "From Here to Eternity" and a myriad of Hollywood war movies from the 40's and 50's.
And as a searing personal drama about an ensemble of characters whose lives are caught up in the events of Dec. 7, 1941, it's a pale shadow of one of the most celebrated movies of all time: 1953's "From Here to Eternity."
People carouse and drink on Dec. 6, 1941, as if they're in "From Here to Eternity."
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced Pain & Gain (2013), The Rock (1996)
Themes
Set in the early ‘90s, “Pain & Gain” desperately wants to be a ‘90s classic in the vein of “Pulp Fiction” or the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo,” but Bay has clearly overestimated the fairly pedestrian and conventional script from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ("Captain America: The First Avenger").
Some of this material recalls the warped sense of humor embraced by the Coens (think the woodchipper in Fargo) and Tarantino ("The Bonnie Situation" in Pulp Fiction), among others.
But soon the movie turns violent in a way that’s more akin to “Pulp Fiction” than the popcorn flicks that Bay made with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
(Think of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega accidentally shoots Marvin in the car.
Bay has said that when he read the screenplay he envisioned a cross between Fargo and Pulp Fiction; perhaps he didn’t consider the fact that those two fine films are so wildly different in tone and ambition that a mash-up wouldn’t be a good idea.
In a movie that borrows from all the movies I've already listed (plus second-hand filching from " Die Hard " and related epics), there are two particularly obvious steals: the old hypodermic-needle-plunging-into-the-heart trick, from Quentin Tarantino's " Pulp Fiction ," and the Mexican standoff in which everybody has a gun pulled on everyone else (from QT's " Reservoir Dogs " and " True Romance " courtesy of old Westerns).
I imagine Michael Bay, sitting down on his least-stained beanbag chair, cracking open his second Monster energy drink and occasionally leering at his half-torn Farrah Fawcett poster, had a Mission: Impossible marathon one day and decided “I can do this, too.”
6 Underground is a whirlwind collision of the Ocean’s heist films, the Fast & Furious franchise, the Mission: Impossible series, Vin Diesel’s XXX saga, and The A-Team.
6 Underground comes across like a mashup between Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels, and Fast Five.
With its makeshift family, high-speed car chases, and elaborate heists, Netflix’s action blockbuster “6 Underground” is solid proof that Michael Bay would love to direct a “ Mission: Impossible ” or “Fast and Furious” movie.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If the Mission: Impossible , Ocean’s Eleven and Fast and Furious franchises had a baby with naught but two cold nickels clinking around in its skull, it would be 6 Underground .
The movie is produced by David Ellison’s Skydance Media, which has also been involved in the most recent “Mission: Impossible” pictures, and it is hard not to feel like “6 Underground” is just some knockoff version of the “M:I” movies, without any of the gritty resolve or unexpected grace that filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie has brought to that series’ most recent entries.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Directed by Chris McKay
influenced by Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001)
Plot Themes
The Tomorrow War manages to combine the best bits of Edge Of Tomorrow , Arrival , Armageddon , Alien , Independence Day , and God knows what else in the kind of movie that Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich would’ve directed in their primes if they’d had more talent.
There are good actors in this film, including an Oscar-winner in J.K. Simmons, who plays Dan’s militia-minded estranged father, but none of them can overcome the charmless and convoluted script, which comes nowhere close to the many films that obviously inspired it, such as Terminator 2 , Alien and Armageddon .
It's a bit of a hodgepodge of better, and worse, movies – including Armageddon , Starship Troopers and the Terminator and Alien franchises – but remains defiantly entertaining.
Once the film is finished showing you science, the aliens attack, and it's like "Armageddon" for a bit, in that, every possible thing that can go wrong does.
Given that it's a summer release, one could absolutely imagine seeing this at a drive-in back in the '90s with other event films like Independence Day , Men in Black , or Armageddon , with the blend of action, humor, sci-fi, and comedy sure to scratch a specific itch of certain audiences.
Not since “Armageddon” has a plot been so miniscule to the big, brawny action set pieces that if you looked hard enough, Micheal Bay probably has consulting credit.
The Wandering Earth (2019)
Directed by Frant Gwo
influenced by Armageddon (1998), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Visuals Plot Characters
This curiously apolitical sci-fi extravaganza combines the garish plastic delirium of the “Monster Hunt” franchise with the men-on-a-mission bombast of “Armageddon;” it’s as unrelenting as “Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back,” and as bone dumb as “Geostorm” or “The Core.”
This soon gives way to Hollywood-style genre shenanigans, with the film borrowing (very) liberally from a long list of films including Armageddon , Sunshine , The Day After Tomorrow , 2012 , 2001: A Space Odyssey and many, many others, in some cases lifting whole sequences outright.
A hyperactive hybrid of doomsday films ranging from ’50s classic “When Worlds Collide” to Michael Bay’s bombastic “Armageddon” and, most notably, Ishiro Honda’s 1962 Japanese space opera “Gorath,” “The Wandering Earth” is perhaps most striking for its lack of nationalism and propaganda.
The group of workers — and the two rebellious teens who get caught up in the crisis — are straight out of disaster thrillers like Armageddon or The Core : gritty archetypes who get a few cool lines of dialogues or an impressive action sequence before dying one by one.
From start to finish, you will notice plot points from Interstellar , Gravity , 2001: A Space Odyssey, Armageddon , and every Roland Emmerich disaster movie ever.
The Core, Deep Impact, and to an unavoidable extent, Armageddon, are all influences on this eco-disaster pic.
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)
Directed by Jean-François Richet
influenced 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)
Visuals Plot
Bay even sets the scene with a flickering caption in a blocky sans-serif computer font, evoking the 1970s and '80s classics of genre directors like John Carpenter, whose Assault on Precinct 13 might well be a specific reference point.
But “13 Hours” is best understood as an action-movie/video game variation on real events, a sort of mash-up of tha attack on the Alamo and John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13.”
The plot to Bay's "13 Hours" also brings to mind horror director John Carpenter's 1976 siege thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13," albeit with more firepower and much bigger turf to protect from insurgents.
Indeed, the "siege" aspect of the movie borrows from not only Westerns but from such shockers as "Night of the Living Dead" and John Carpenter's scary urban thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13."