If Pain and Gain taught us anything (beyond that gay people deserve beatings and that fatties and midgets are hilarious), it was to illustrate that even Michael Bay has gotten bored of the Transformers franchise. And now he tells USA Today (the official newspaper of Michael Bay) that he’ll be passing off directing duties to someone else for Transformers 5, aka Trans5mers. The move makes a lot of sense considering Bay was able to basically brand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a ‘Michael Bay Movie’ without actually directing it, and gross $97 million opening weekend.
Bay, 49, believes he will pass the baton for future Transformer movies to a new director while he turns his focus elsewhere.
It’s not like you really need a director on a Transformers movie anyway. Just have the VFX artists communicate directly with the marketing department and skip the middle man. Also, I’ll bet you ten bucks that baton has been inside a stripper.
“There’s kind of a new chapter, a new direction in movies I want to make,” says Bay, who is eyeing a passion project, a documentary on elephant poaching. “I have a lot of stories to tell. And it’s about flexing new muscles.” [USA Today ]
Nothing he has ever done should make me optimistic for a future Michael Bay project (I liked The Rock when it came out), but I remain cautiously upbeat about him working on something that isn’t a three-hour adaptation of a 30-year-old toy commercial. I mean, it can only get better from here. I also choose to believe that he means “flexing new muscles” literally, and that this elephant poaching documentary is going to involve The Rock hunting elephants with a team of leopards. Sort of like an English fox hunt but shirtless, jacked, and greasy. The only way Michael Bay does anything.