Michael Bay 'Blows Up' Word-War with Megan Fox

A minor war of words has flared between Director Michael Bay and actress Megan Fox over some of Fox's comments regarding the Transformers movies. And while Fox may be a bit out of line with her comments, Bay may have-how shall we put this-"blown up" his own rebuttal with a few overstated remarks of his own.

The whole debacle started when Fox told Entertainment Weekly that, despite the Transformers film franchise "[opening] doors" for her career, audiences are "well aware that this is not a movie about acting."

Fox refers to Michael Bay's use of special effects and action scenes. Many critics have pointed out that Bay seems to do better with demolition in his films than dialogue. No matter how true this critique may be, Fox's comments aren't the kind any director would take sitting down.

Sure enough, Michael Bay launched his counterattack, telling the Wall Street Journal that Fox "[said] some very ridiculous things."

"She's 23 years old," he told the Journal, "and she still has a lot of growing up to do."

But before we start talking about how ungrateful Megan Fox is for Bay's Transformers films shoving her into the limelight, let's consider the point in the argument where Bay lost a few of his listeners. As his defense against Fox's claims that his films are more about special effects than acting, Bay may have said some "very ridiculous things" of his own. Instead of defending the quality of the Transformers films, Bay tossed out the names of some hefty Hollywood stars. Among them were Nicholas Cage, Ben Affleck, and Will Smith. According to Bay, none of these Hollywood favorites were "big" actors or movie stars before he cast them.

If this was a Michael Bay movie, the action has just screeched to a halt for a timely, "Wait, what was that?"

Let's start with Nicholas Cage. Michael Bay claims Cage "wasn't a big actor" when he cast him in his 1996 film, The Rock. Yet Cage had already won an Oscar and Golden Globe Award for his role in 1995's Leaving Las Vegas. He had also starred in feature films such as It Could Happen to You and Moonstruck. So unless Bay meant he wasn't a big action star until The Rock, he's a little off the mark with this statement.

Next, there's Ben Affleck, who Bay says wasn't a star until his role in 1998's Armageddon. Again, Bay must have meant that he wasn't an action star until this film. Either that or he completely forgot that Affleck had already starred in, and written, Good Will Hunting. Affleck and co-writer Matt Damon won Oscars for their screenplay, thrusting both actors into the welcoming glow of Hollywood stardom, and opening the door for directors like Bay to scoop them up for their own blockbusters.

Then there's Will Smith. Bay says Smith wasn't a big star until he was cast in Bad Boys. But hold the phone: Smith had been starring on television's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air since 1990. He had also been featured in 1993's Six Degrees of Separation, a film that began a steady stream of critical praise. And while Bad Boys was a major film for Smith, most critics say it was in fact Independence Day that earned him the title of a big star in Hollywood.

Even claiming to have made Martin Lawrence and Shia LaBeouf big stars is a little bit of an overstatement. Lawrence had been starring on the Martin show since 1992, three years prior to starring in Bay's Bad Boys. And while Transformers did mark a major landmark in LaBeouf's career, he had already become a household name thanks to the Disney Channel series Even Stevens (2003) and his role in the feature film Holes (2003).

So it seems what we have here, to put it in Hollywood terms, is a Cool-Hand-Luke-meets . . . well, just-about-any-Michael-Bay-movie-situation. What started as what we might have simply called a "failure to communicate" between actress and director has blown up with a director taking some credit where it isn't due for other actors' careers.

Maybe it's all just a new way of selling some tickets to the latest Transformers film. Instead of robots, we're getting a little humility and common sense in disguise.

Sources

Chris Nashawaty, "Megan Fox: 'Fallen' Angel", Entertainment Weekly (EW.com)

Lauren A. E. Schuker, "Michael Bay on Transformers, Megan Fox, and More", The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)