For fans of Michael bay, you’ve come to the right place. Here I present you with the Michael Bay visual’s look book of his cinema.
I don’t know about you, but I am starting to get a little tired of the critics of Michael bay, which is ironic because I am one of them or certainly used to be, but this article is about admiring the cinema that he has brought to us over the last 30 years in visual spectacle just for fun, not so much the story and characters.
Upon typing his name on google images, it doesn’t take long to discover his talents for action cinema, his images really stand out but the fun and discovery don’t stop there. He has produced several action scenes, available on youtube, that are a delight to watch in terms of the mechanics of cinema and visual composition. He certainly knows how to light a set of fireworks he wants to.
These images and clips are meant to completely disengage your mind on all forms of rationality, if you do this, the excitement may just blow you away with usually a pretty excellent soundtrack.
Whether or not you like the work of Michael Bay, it is really nice to admire his talent on occasion. His best scenes are when he combines a rather half meaningful plot with excellent visual mastery, this is sometimes rare to find and it’s just easier to extract just mindless action scenes. I have always enjoyed this scene below from Transformers: Age of Extinction, where we see the robots re-unite with an excellent soundtrack, this time we get a little substance.
Yes, you can criticise his films all day long for poor character representations, overlong runtimes, poor dialogue, boring plot, but the only film that I have truly hated is Pain and Gain, with this release being his most morally offensive work to date, with perhaps his most true to authenticity film 13 Hours, which is’nt saying much for the type of his work. Lets take a look at his most glorious images from some of his films and for those that hate his work, I’d encourage to stick around.
The Rock
Michael Bay’s best action film with a fun cast.
Armageddon
His films visual style is exaggerated for pleasure and effect, bright use of saturated colours and sunsets. But in this case, its being used to emphasize the theme of love and act as its cinematic orchestra. Its cheesy but it does look nice for sure, and this will not be the only time he uses the sunset in his pictures.
Pearl Harbor
A film that places more visual emphasis on drama, chaos and tragedy with explosions. Due to the nature of battle, we get a lot of wide shots.
Bad Boys 2
Michael Bay brought us his most action-packed sequel, with more car chases and thrills. Visually speaking this film resembled more of a music video which is disappointing but this was the trend in the early 2000’s with the release of 2 Fast 2 Furious but he still places the camera right in the thick of the action, capturing the full senses of pure action cinema.
The film provides us with plenty of action scenes to choose from with a long and entertaining final act.
The Island
Another film that re-establishes scope and scale.
The best action scene to watch is the highway chase scene, featuring plenty of road rage and crashes, it looks glorious in style and Ewan Mcgregor is put in one tough situation. The force was definitely with him for that scene.
Transformers Series
Each Transformers has a different visual quality to it, delving deep into different locations and characters, with the action scenes at times going bigger in scale. There also seems to be an emphasis on military personnel, with Josh Duhamel leading the way. In terms of pure action, Transformers 3 has the best action sequence in the franchise towards the end.
These are some of the series stand out moments and scenes in terms of visual composition. The opening fight scene in The Last Knight stands out the most because it’s so bold and you can feel the environment.
Pain and Gain
An immoral bombastic ride, but it was still a ride with a lot of colour. This is one of Michael Bay’s smaller pictures with a little less emphasis on action. But, we still see plenty of fast cars, sunsets and a lot of colours, a lot. With the camera and GoPro’s placed right near the actors.
13 Hours
A real life military depiction of true events. The film clicked well with Bay films as a true return to form coming off the weak The Last Knight. Like Pearl harbor, the film has more of a frantic look and feel to it.
You can catch Pain and Gain, Bad Boys, The Island and 6 Underground on Netflix UK.
What do you think is Michael Bay’s best cinematic shot?
Author Bio
Sam is a content writer. He loves all elements connected with film and writes with passion, always. You can find him on Linkedin, where you will be able to read more articles. When he is not writing, you can find him practicing football
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