All of us out there who watch Michael Bay films make fun of the guy more often than not. The reality is that his movies tend to be over the top, filled with too many explosives and are often so dramatic that you actually laugh. But how many directors out there can you say have an entire genre of film named after them? Seriously. How many times have you caught yourself saying, “That’s like something Michael Bay would do,” or “that’s like a Michael Bay movie,” or some iteration of that. The fact that we associate a particular form of film with this man has to in some way be a testament to his abilities. That’s certainly what legendary Anthony Hopkins said after working with Bay on Transformers: The Last Knight.
“[They’re] terrific, they’re created by a genius. All those machines and those Transformers are created by Michael. And he was telling me about the work he did on them — how he would refine them and go into the special effects guys and design them and get all the details of light on metal and all that. He told me all that at breakfast before I started on the film. I thought ‘This guy’s a genius. He really is.’ He’s the same ilk as Oliver Stone and Spielberg and Scorsese. Brilliance. Savants, really, they are. He’s a savant.”
I don’t care who you are or how much you dislike Michael Bay. I also don’t care if you think that Hopkins is just trying to hype the movie (why would he do that at the age of 79?). When someone who has a body of work like Hopkins does and says a director he’s working with is a genius you pretty much have to listen and take it seriously.
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