Is Michael Bay on the Hollywood Blacklist?

Michael Bay’s career has BOOMED for a while. In fact, most of his movies are filled with crashes and booms. Booms are actually what Bay does best. But it seems that with Transformers II, Hollywood wants Bay to go bust.

Bay’s strong suit has never been his story telling. It’s action. It’s stunts. It’s slow motion heroes staring off into middle distance. That’s his trademark. He’s done similar movies for the past decade and a half.

But this week, suddenly Hollywood critics are finding Bay’s style so awful that they’re viciously panning his latest, Tranformers II.

Look, I’m pretty darn confident that Transformers II is not a good movie. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to see it. But the vitriol coming out of reviewers is pretty odd and it intrigued me. And what many of them seem to focus on is Bay’s unpardonable sin of dissing President Obama in the movie.

Variety:

“So as usual in these movies, the federal bureaucrats are portrayed as annoying if not villainous. The President’s man, “Galloway,” is a bespectacled blowhard who becomes an obstacle to our brave fighting men and their alliance with the noble Autobots. Operating specifically under Barack Obama’s presidential authority, he makes all kinds of mischief. He says the President wants to try “diplomacy” against the evil Decepticons and hints the President would consider handing over Shia LaBouf’s character to be killed by them.”

This doesn’t sit well with the elites whose sole commandment is “Thou shall not disrespect Obama.” They say it’s unfair. (Sounds kind of believable to me after you read this.)

But Rolling Stone ups the ante and gives the movie 0 stars and personally attacks the director.

Disguised as a human director, Bay is actually a destroyer of dreams. When Hasbro invented those Transformers toys, the intention was for kids to use their imagination about what those bots would morph into. Bay crushes that imagination with his own crude interpretations that seem untouched by human hands and spirit. I know there are still 17 months to go, but I’m thinking Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.

What? Aren’t we forgetting Basic Instinct II or The Love Guru?

But it’s more than one teeny weeny Obama mention in his latest movie. I think it’s worse. Much worse. I think Hollywood is starting to suspect that Bay is not a liberal. And there’s reason to suspect it.

Bay created the uber-patriotic Armageddon where oil drillers save the world. Oil drillers! (That should have clued Hollywood in, huh?)

Bay directed the patriotic WWII movie Pearl Harbor.

Bay also directed one of the most pro-life movies I’ve seen in the past twenty years in “The Island” in that it comes out against human cloning, for the existence of the soul, and deals with other moral dilemmas along with all sorts of explosions and car chases. There’s a lot more explosions and near nudity than moral dilemmas but the morality of the movie is clearly anti-cloning anyway.

Even in Transformers, the military is seen almost universally positive tones which sets it apart from virtually every other movie coming out of Hollywood right now.

And while the critics are savaging the movie, regular folks seems to like it fine. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes give the movie 22% out of 100% while the regular folks give the movie a 68% approval. Something tells me there’s more going on here than critics upset that the plot doesn’t hold together all that well.

So critics and liberal weenies are after Bay. Something tells me he won’t care too much as Transformers is already zooming towards $100 million just a few days after being released. And this is the same Michael Bay who said:

We don’t make movies for critics. I’ve done four movies; there’s millions upon millions upon millions of people who’ve paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.

Sure sounds like a fiscal conservative.