Steven Spielberg Tells Michael Bay 'Transformers 2' is 'Awesome'
Oh, and the film is really long...
Slash Film points us to Michael Bay's online forum where he has just posted the following message:
Steven Spielberg sat next to me in a big 100 person theater at Sony today. There were 98 empty seats. The lights came up after we just watched my cut of Revenge of the Fallen. He turned to me and said "It's awesome". He felt this movie was better then the first – and probably my best, who knows – at this point in a movie you start to lose your objectivity. I just hope the fans like it. I'm going to start putting it in front of audiences in a few weeks – no you are not invited, yet.
We have 60 days left. Let me tell you it will be a race to finish. It's 12 at night and we are still working here in the edit room. Everyone at ILM and DD are killing themselves right now, they are doing a stellar job on the effects. We also just finished our trailer which is coming out with Wolverine. Talk to you soon.
Not to beat a dead horse, but to make a movie better than the first Transformers shouldn't be too hard. However, despite Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I still think Spielberg knows what he is doing. So if he's giving it the thumbs up that is saying something, and I have a hard time believing Bay would fabricate something like this.
On top of this news, and the trailer news I am sure you noticed in the above quote, Bay also revealed to MTV the final runtime of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be "four minutes longer than the last one" putting it at approximately 147 minutes.
Even though I didn't like the first Transformers all that much I continue to hold out hope Bay has something better for me the next time around, especially considering I am going to be sitting on my ass watching CG robots battle for damn near two-and-a-half hours. Yeesh!
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The first one was perhaps not a masterpiece but it made me feel 12 years old again.
If this one can do the same then I'm fine with it.
Look at it for what it is, an action extravaganza aimed at kids and 'old' guys like me just reliving their childhood for a few hours.
The Tranformers movies are just not quality films !! to much CGI and the overall acting and story is boring. i hope harry potter 6 will beat it at the box office . ( althogh that also will be awfull ) Plus michael bay thinks hes made a masterpiece but it will never happen , the godfather was perfect titanic was perfect the dark knight was almost perfect but the transformers movies are far from.
The top ten films this year in no order will be :
1. Public Enemies
2. Wolverine
3. Star trek
4. Sherlock holmes
5. T4 : Salvation
6. Gran Torino
7 . Knowinig
8. Angels and Demons
9. New moon
10. Harry potter 6
these movies will be top grade film and will be loved buy all ( hopefully )
P.s : transformers 2 wont be the worst film this year Dragonball the movie has already achived that LETDOWN OF THE YEAR AWARD !!! thanks people.
Batman 98, not to step on any toes here but I think you maybe slightly delusional. Not that I think this or any other giant robot movie is a masterpiece but your top 10 list…
I am not too sure as to whether you mean top 10 grossing or top 10 most beloved, but in either case the buzzer has sounded and you got this answer wrong my friend.
Knowing is not setting records with either critics or patrons and while myself and many others including site patriarch Brad and king of all critics Roger Ebert liked it that simply isn’t the majority opinion.
If the list is top grossing, I expect HP6 to be more than a little higher. And Public Enemies would be lower.
If its critical reception I am going to go out on a limb and say 0 of these movies are regarded all that highly outside of internet criticism because we all know that the prestige flicks don’t really hit the screen until late in the year (Gran Torino missed the boat last year) (and not to say these movies wont be good. at the end of the day they will be regarded like most summer tent pole movies are… I think we were more than a little spoiled last year with its crop of awesomeness)
But at the end of the day I 100% think your assessment of the actual movie “Big Robots 2: We’re bigger and breaking more expensive things” won’t be any kind of cinematic epiphany. What it will be is what the 1st one was: fun nostalgia for people who were fans of the series but didn’t take it too seriously and fairly good action/splosion’ movie with good T&A from Megan Fox.
P.S. Am I all alone in thinking that Rachel Taylor (who played Maggie, the hyper smart, remarkably sexy and British hacker in the first movie) is both better looking and a better actress than Megan Fox?
Just a thought…
@Ross: Tasmanian/No not really
Ross im glad u have an arguement gainst me thank you . and yes i agree Rachel Taylor is better than megan fox.
Steven Spielberg said Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would be awesome too. The 1986 animated Trasnformers film-despite it's outdated visuals-is still THE Transformers film in my book.
Indy 4 was an imaginative and amazingly well put together film despite the screenplay. Needless to say, it's better than anything Bay will ever hope to do. And as for the actual praise from steven I'd rather wait till I haer it from the horses mouth.
He also said The Phantom Menace was awesome when Lucas gave him a sneak peek.
Indy4 was a mess, and imho, they completely phoned it in. I expect the Transformers sequel to be like Bad Boys2, which really doesn't say much
Of course he's gonna say it's awesome, he is the producer. That's like a parent telling their kid that he/she is the most hansome/prettiest kid in the whole world. After the first one, my expectations are as low as can be for the sequel.
yeah right, whatever you say steven.
Phil…Oops… (Unfortunate you feel that way though, specifically about the acting, because looks are subjective but screen presence is not…)
I do love the accent though, even if I completely missed where it was from by just about three-fifths of a planet!
P.S. – Very interesting that a lot of people who are kind of meh or down right loathed to this news are using Indy 4 as the weapon of choice. It's got to be the Shia connection right?
Any way people Public Enemies will by far be the best film this year plus its also based on a true story , unlike transformers the whole film might as well be in CGI .
all those for public enemies say " Bale kicks ass " lol .
We all know that making a movie better than the first Transformers isn't very hard. But when Bay mentions that this film is better than the earlier one, he's targeting an audience who LIKES the Transformers genre of films.
He isn't trying to make Casablanca 2, he's making Transformers 2.
As for Spielberg's comment … he's the executive producer isn't it? No exec producer of Spielberg's standards will tell his director that the film is cr@p and be stupid enough to let slip his comment to the internet. Except of course in cases like 'Babylon AD'… but that film had a dumb cast and crew to begin with.
he can't say it's a sh*t because he produced it!
This movie will be awesome! I love the first transformers, watch it almost everyday. The movie is the reason I'm getting into the series.
@Ross:
Well, I'm joining Roger Ebert and ropeofsilicon's own Brad Brevet in saying that "Knowing" was one damn solid fine movie. I'd see it again in theaters if I weren't so busy with end-of-year exams & stuff. So I'll just have to live vicariously through you guys and tell you to see it for me.
As for "Transformers 2," I'll be there opening weekend. I'm not expecting a masterpiece. The first film was a marvel of special effects and, surprisingly, so truly fun characters (in fact, many of my favorite parts had to do with the characters and not with the CGI action). Its downside was that it was 5 or 10 minutes too long at the end; I would have appreciated less sound and fury during the third act. I hope "Transformers 2," despite its slightly longer runtime, manages to avoid that. Action scenes are only as great as the story they support, and if it's all action and no story by the end, then it's not much fun. All that top-notch CGI in "Transformers" would have been wasted had the characters not been so fun.
What the F was wrong with Transformers? I loved it. Looking forward to 2. Bay's the man!
It's funny how the argument commonly used to defend Transformers is around the lines of "it's not supposed to be a masterpiece/oscar quality etc..," and they turn it around and call those who did not like the movie as "elitist snobs."
I think a good portion of those with utter disdain for Transformers-like me-only want the movie to have a semblance of depth and substance. IronMan, The Dark Knight, The Bourne Films, The first 2 Spidermans, and other recent summer fare have shown that summer blockbusters don't have to be all "junk food." While none of the aforementioned films were Oscar quality-except for TDK which was an anomaly-they were a hell of a lot more than just mindless explosions and idle comedic banter.
Transformers was not meant to be oscar worthy. Like most films its just there to be a fun form of cheap entertainment. And its funny, it seems that everyone just keeps jumping on the Micheal Bay sucks band wagon. Im pretty sure none of the people who posted negative comments could have made a better film, even tho you may tell yourself you can, most of his films have been pretty sucessful in terms of actual money being made, so he must be doing something right, and has anyone ever considered how hard it must be to direct a movie, when 3/4 of the film is CGI and has to be added after the initial shot? Maybe im wrong, im sure someone will say I am.
Lets be real people if Spielberg was not on the project do you think Transformer 1 would have been as good as it was, I' mean Bay is a good director, but he is nothing compared to Spielberg why would you even question his abilities. Michael Bay is good but Spielberg is a Legend.
i enjoy all sorts of movies, they can be deep and character driven or just plain fun. you don't have to just like one sort of movie, how boring is that? i don't understand the backlash towards transformers and i don't really care. it's not a problem movie, it does what it sets out to do, entertain. its smoothly paced and well written for the subject material and its not trying to be anything else except a live action transformers movie, but thats not good enough, you have to get inside the heads of the characters of autobots and decepticons and have all their feelings and motivations explained, a transformers greek tragedy of sorts, sure, that would have made a GREAT movie, you dumbasses. there's a lot of people in the world that are ridiculously impossible to please and movies like this just bring those folk into the spotlight for me and prove it. for the rest of us who are in touch with our childhood, we are getting constantly entertained on a daily basis. micheal bay's transformers will be remembered and loved by generations, just like the first cartoon movie, which was hated by critics as well. see who really gets to give the middle finger in the end?
Garry-
I completely agree with you! Movies have to fit certain criterion for them to be categorized as such. This movie had good action, a small storyline to follow, and it was comical. What more do you want people?!? It was not meant to be a robot soap opera. Give me a break. The movie could not have been much if any better. It's more of a personal dislike of the movie. That's fine if you don't like it, but you cannot say that it sucks because it doesn't fit your personal tastes.
thats right zman. transformers is actually a really well done movie i believe, even if people think its not up to their artistic standards. well whatever, i say to those people learn more about art and stop pretending you know what you're talking about