This is not a controversial opinion.
America's Michael Bay Tax has collected $237 million in the last 33 days from Transformers: Age of Extinction revenues alone. Worldwide, that film's gross will pass the $1 billion mark over the next week.
By that time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will have arrived. TMNT is a disaster porn corruption of the early '90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film and cartoon series — and, in turn, a bastardization of your carefree childhood or your child's even better one — and it is produced, of course, by Michael Bay.
Details about the initial script were so poorly received, fans demanded Bay off the project. The turtles were no longer mutants, they were now an "alien race." Even the title didn't make sense. He responded by telling everyone to "take a deep breath, and chill" He wound up going with a different script, maybe because of it.
This is a movie written around a title. Do not go see this movie. Stop giving your money to Michael Bay.
As if you needed a reason other than every prior Michael Bay moviegoing experience to not see this movie, one of the beneficiaries and stars of that latest Transformers movie, TJ Miller, gave you a better one this week.
On Doug Benson's podcast, he let the world in on Michael Bay's process, and Michael Bay's process is this: Make movies that are an adult boy's reenactments of a GI Joe gunfight in a bathtub, except make some of them three hours long.
The thing that he and I had discussed was this particular scene where I came over and said, "Michael, this doesn't particularly make sense. I think this line was a remnant from a prior script."
He was like, "Yeah, I don't like this scene. What do you think it should be?"
And I was like, "What!? You want me to make up a scene in a movie that's going to be seen by 300 million people worldwide?"
And he was like, "Yeah."
We worked through it. Eventually he came up with the idea that I come up with the eviction notice, and I say, "Tess, mi casa es su casa. And we're about to lose the casa."
He said, "That's hilarious. That's the one you should say." And I was like, "I do not agree. I think this is an awful idea."
I talked to him straight up. I was like, "This will be a thing that embarrasses me in front of hundreds of millions of people."
And he was like, "Trust me, this will be hilarious." And I trusted him, and he was wrong.
Miller is killed in the first 45 minutes of that movie, and we would've included a spoiler alert, but we are doing you a favor.
Michael Bay doesn't care about you. The world is filled with neutral or positive ways to spend your money, and we now have confirmation that going to see a Michael Bay movie is one of the worst ways to do so.
Not paying the Optional Michael Bay Tax next weekend is the only way to ensure that there will be no Optional Michael Bay Tax in the future. As you know, the Tax solely exists to trick those who did not know it was optional to enter a theatre and experience immediate pain, hurt, and regret.
We can stop it, together. And all you have to do is nothing.
You work very hard all day long. You are exhausted. It will exhaust you more to crawl to the theatre next Friday and watch as a gutless explode-a-thon sucks out every positive memory of your innocent, un-cheated preadolescence.
Don't do it. Do not see Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Tell everyone you know to join you.
This has nothing to do with Michael Bay, himself. Michael Bay seems like a nice man. Well, no, actually, he doesn't. He doesn't at all, but there's some good in there, and Esquire has documented it. He has had some bad things happen to him just like all of the rest of us. He has had sickness befall his dad, and he clawed his way through it, and he made a movie while it was happening anyway. And that is commendable. There is nothing not commendable about that.
There is nothing subhuman about Michael Bay, either. He is a regular man who makes movies babies understand in full, immediately. In that story by Jeanne Marie Laskas, the best part about him is the start of it, where he says that he has succeeded in his primary mission:
"So far he has not, thank God, become an asshole."
But he is not making good movies. He is only tossing birdseed to the brainless, twice per year. And he may not not be an asshole, either.
TJ Miller, again, can confirm this.
I think (my character's death is) optimistic because I don't have to work with Michael Bay again.
He has this specific way of communicating with people. Like once, he said to me, "Nothing that you've said is funny, TJ! Not one thing, all day! We hired you to be funny. There's 300 people here — none of them are laughing at you! Say something funny! I can cut you out of the movie!"
And then I said, "Michael, I would love that, because then I would be able to leave right this instant." Then he said, "Say something funny! You haven't even made the Make-A-Wish kids laugh."
And that was true. To be fair to him, I hadn't. So they were just sort of standing there saying, "This was not our wish. Can we trade our wish in? We didn't want to see the emptiness of Hollywood, screaming through a man dressed all in white."
The second the cameras stopped rolling, he was like, "Wanna go get sushi and buy some drinks?" It was a very bizarre and bipolar experience.
How about purchasing some illegal fireworks instead? Maybe try putting some weird stuff in the microwave, such as Peeps or unused electronics? Drugs, we hear, can also make life interesting.
All of these things are better for you, your children and the country in which you live than giving a movie theatre $13 to see a Michael Bay movie.
The eleven films Bay has directed since 1995 have pocketed studios almost $2.7 billion. That's enough to fix Detroit twice over, then purchase a controlling ownership stake of the Pistons.
We are paying for pain. We are walking into the theatre expecting hurt.
In his interview with Esquire in 2001, he said this about critics:
"You know what I've learned?" he is saying. "I've learned to just keep my head down, and people say shit about you, and you just kind of let it, just, that's their problem. That's not my problem!"
He's right. It's not his problem. It's the world's problem. We are the world. We are the children. Together, we will not let him ruin the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
