Michael Bay Interview For ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’

In Michael Bay’s hugely anticipated summer blockbuster ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon,’ the Autobots Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide and Sideswipe led by Optimus Prime, are back in action, taking on the evil Decepticons, who are determined to avenge their defeat in 2009s ‘Transformers Revenge of the Fallen.’ In this new movie, the Autobots and Decepticons become involved in a perilous space race between the U.S. and Russia, and once again human Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) has to come to the aid of his robot friends. There’s new characters too, including a new villain in the form of Shockwave, a longtime “Transformers” character who rules Cybertron while the Autobots and Decepticons battle it out on Earth. ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ is released in cinemas June 29th in 2D, Real D 3D and IMAX 3D. Check out what director Michael Bay had to say about the film below.

How did you go about deciding to shoot in 3D? I havn’t been a big fan of 3D recently, but with this film you definitely raised the bar.

Michael Bay: I was very sceptical of 3D, I thought actually it could be a fad. James Cameron invited me onto the Avatar set several times, when I was trying to make my decision about this movie Steven Spielberg said to me, “Michael you should do this movie in 3D.” So I investigated it a bit more, just the technology, the equipment, James Cameron just finally said to me, “Michael, you’ve gotta do this movie in 3D, you’re the type of director who is going to love 3D.” When it was all said and done, before we did this, I told my crew, “this needs to be the best 3D, live-action movie made.” It’s very difficult when you take 3D cameras into the streets, strap them on to skydivers helmets, it’s a difficult format. If it works, and I believe it works so well in our movie, it is more immersive.

This really is a movie you have to see in 3D, it was made for 3D, every shot was made with that in mind. It’s a much different experience. I know audiences have been saying they’ve been let down by 3D, they truly have been let down, with these movies it’s often the afterthought instead of the forethought.

What was it like having a large chunk of Chicago at your disposal?

Michael Bay: Chicago was the most amazing city in what they gave us, the amount of access, the amount of closures. Michigan Avenue is a street they’ve only closed twice in the history of Michigan Avenue, once for Oprah Winfrey, and once for me (laughs). It was the height of tourist season, summer time, but I think we made it fun for all the tourists because it was almost like Universal Studios, it was almost like a tour, seeing the explosians, all the stuff going on. Thousands of people were watching, we tried to involve them, let them get close by, we got them close to the set.

There’s some incredible action sequences, I really loved the base jumpers. How did that idea come about?

Michael Bay: I consistently try to top my action and challenge myself as an action Director, I saw these guys on 60 Minutes, they were jumping off the cliffs of Norway, I said, “get those guys into my office!” (Laughs) First off I just wanna see if they can do it, I’ve got this great scene where they are jumping out of a crashing Osprey Helicopter, they’re flying with they’re wing suits, it’s like a squirrel suit, they have a parachute on their back. For every foot they fall, they go two feet forward, they would go about 150mph. We convinced Chicago to let them go half a mile through the city, in-between the buildings, turning corners…..how they let us do it is….you know (laughs).

How do incorporate these action sequences into the script?

Michael Bay: I worked very closely with Ehren Kruger, writers really have to allow me for my action, in terms of I write my own action. I basically go with imagery….once we know the geography of what we are trying to do, for our end goal for the movie, it’s how I construct that puzzle.

You can think of action scenes wherever, for some reason I was doing stomach crunches and that’s where I came up with this whole building sequence. That night I got back and typed up the visuals, then I start doing pre-visuals, with little cartoons, to try to get a sense of this physic thing I was trying to explain. That was a very complex sequence.

There’s a number of new additions to the movie, Transformer wise and actor wise…

Michael Bay: Yeah, Leonard Nimoy voices Sentinel Prime, he’s a great addition to the movie, he gives great gravitas to the role. The Transformers in this movie, the fans have always wanted more back-story, with the robot characters. I think we really delivered on that promise. Shockwave is one of our big bad Decepticons, He travels on this gigantic 500ft drilling device…….I don’t know where I came up with that (laughs), that wasn’t in Transformer lore.

I said to Shia that I really wanted to bring the acting game on this, we’re gonna class act this thing, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, I went after actors I really wanted to work with. Frances was on Fargo when she won the Oscar, what a performance. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is a brand new discovery, I worked with her on a Victoria’s Secrets commercial several years ago, she just has this great spark. John Malkovich is really very funny. Ken Jeong is someone I saw from ‘The Hangover,’ I just thought that guy is brilliant, I’ve gotta work with that crazy man. Patrick Dempsey plays a great role in this movie, another guy I admire.

This film is your third and final Transformers movie now…

Michael Bay: I really think it’s the best of the three, we’ve learned from the first two. The second one, we got caught with the writers strike, that made it tough to make that movie. It was very successful around the world but I always knew it was under the bar of what I wanted it to be. This time we’ve assured, we worked our buts off to make this the best of the three. Technically it’s the best, I think from photography, story, to acting, across the board it’s the best.