Michael Bay and Megan Fox in Ridiculous Verbal War

In the red corner: Megan Fox. In the blue corner: Michael Bay. The Transformers hottie and her director are currently engaged in a public spat stemming from Fox's comments that Bay spent more time working on effects than he did collaborating with his actors. As if that's a shock. "I mean, I can't shit on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me," Fox admitted to Entertainment Weekly. "But I don't want to blow smoke up people's ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting." You could fire back, of course, that Megan Fox isn't an actress about acting and would receive very little indisputable evidence to the contrary. Bay, unsurprisingly, had something to say in response to his star. "Well, that's Megan Fox for you," the director told The Wall Street Journal. "She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do." Following the protocol of his action-filled movies, Bay kept the onslaught going long after it ceased being interesting, and made some mistakes along the way:

"Nic Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in Armageddon. Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did Transformers -- and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from Bad Boys."

If you were paying attention, you realized that Bay was wrong in each of his examples. Of course, since this is the director who chose to focus on a fictional story in Pearl Harbor and gloss over the real hero who briefly appeared in that mess, it's not surprising that his sense of history may be off. Nic Cage had been in movies for 15 years when he appeared in The Rock, including starring roles in Moonstruck, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Raising Arizona. He also won an Academy Award months before the Michael Bay movie was released. So there's that. Ben Affleck, while not a major star when Armageddon was released, had also just won an Academy Award for co-writing Good Will Hunting. Bay should not take any credit for "putting" an already rising star in his movie, but Kevin Smith sure could. Shia LaBeouf - again, months before Transformers - proved his mettle as a box office option when Disturbia quadrupled its budget. LaBeouf had also been working in Hollywood for years and was clearly about to break through with or without Michael Bay. And as for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence...um...didn't they both have their own TV shows before Bad Boys? And hadn't Smith been a pop star for nearly a decade? And hadn't he received critical acclaim for his performance in Six Degrees of Separation? If anything, Bay can say he was there at the right time in all of these careers, but there's hardly a Lana Turner discovery among them. He did have a more active hand in the creation of the Megan Fox machine, and it's obvious that she's beginning to resent being confined as the hot girl from Transformers. She's going to have to prove she's worth the trouble, though, and she hasn't done it yet. In her defense, she didn't have anything to do in Revenge of the Fallen. It's one of the more wasted Obligatory Girl characters in quite a while. I would suspect it's likely that Fox wants to break out from the Transformers franchise and walk her own path. She does seem a little less interested in marching in lockstep with the rest of the industry, anyway.

Comments

[Julian Francis]

bravo

[anybody]

A bimbo and a himbo fighting it out... the important question really is who cares about either one of them. They shared one decent movie in the first transformers, Bay has maybe two or three other decent flicks in his whole career, which Fox will soon tie with a hopefully good Jonah Hex. As far as egomaniacs go she may be a bad actress but at least she's hot, he's just a bad filmmaker.

[Capo]

great article Colin

[Lengthy Johnson]

I dunno.

I think Michael Bay would actually be right to say that his films were vehicles that did catapult some actors from the "promising" category to the "superstar" category.

Not saying that Michael Bay is a genius but he certainly knows how to create commercial success.

Modesty is a virtue, though.

[Asana]

"Following the protocol of his action-filled movies, Bay kept the onslaught going long after it ceased being interesting, and made some mistakes along the way:"

You seem to have missed the part where he both patted himself on the back while pounding his fist to his chest.

[typicalsays]

the thing is? michael bay will still be making blow'em up action movies in 20 years. megan fox will be doing "erotic thrillers" to try to shock hollywood into casting her again.

[Leslie]

I'm sorry, but your counterpoints to his "big actor" comments really aren't that strong, especially WIll and Martin. You might as well say David Schwimmer was a big (movie) actor because he was on Friends for so long.

You can hate Bay's movies if you want, but he deserves some credit in every one of those cases actually. There's a definite line between the types of movies those people were able to make before and after their Bay blockbusters.

[Lillian James]

Cheers, Colin, cheers.