Biography and the path to success of the legendary director

Michael Bay is an American-born director, co-founder of The Institute, a production organization, and co-owner of Digital Domain, a digital technology company. Michael is also a co-owner of Platinum Dunes, which made remakes of popular horror films. "Friday the 13th", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street".

Bay became famous throughout the world for his work on big-budget blockbusters and the signature style of visual special effects. If you add up all the payments received from the films shot by Michael, then the total amount will be calculated in more than three billion dollars.

Michael Bay was born in the early winter of 1965 in Los Angeles, where the director spent his youth. Foster guardians were involved in the upbringing and care of the boy. Bay went to the best school in Santa Monica. His passion for directing from an early age backfired. For example, the future director added firecrackers for a toy train and videotaped the accident using my mother's 8mm camera. It even happened that firefighters had to be called to the shooting.

The creative path of Michael Bay

Michael took his first steps in mastering the craft as an intern in the production of a painting. George Lucas "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Bay thought the film was simply awful. Later, he went to a theater performance where the same story was being played out. Then the future director realized for himself that the same story can be presented and revealed in a completely different way. So Michael decided to become a director of films.

He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986 with qualifications in English and cinematography. Michael was the best student of one of the teachers named Jeanine Basingerwho taught classes in film history. In preparing the reporting thesis, Bay used knowledge from the classes of the Art College of Design.

When Michael graduated from graduate school, he began filming commercials and music videos for Propaganda Films. His 90-second World War II video impressed Coca-Cola marketers, and in 1992, his Red Cross-themed commercial won a Clio award.

How it all began

The first achievements of the young director did not go unnoticed and interested producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. They chose Michael to direct the feature film. "Bad Boys", which became a breakthrough in the career of the then aspiring actor Will Smith. The movie grossed $141 million at the box office.

The next work, called Rock, was an action film based on the famous Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay Area. Actors Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris took part in the film. The members of the jury of the film award "Oscar" considered this work in the category "Best achievements in the field of sound".

Michael Bay's next major film "Armageddon" was nominated for an Oscar four times, in addition, popular actors at that time were involved in it. The film starred Liv Taylor, Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and other well-known actors from Hollywood.

military fighter "Pearl Harbor" provided the director with four more Oscar nominations in 2001. Shortly thereafter, Michael Bay made a sequel to Bad Boys, which received twice as much at the worldwide box office as the first part.

In 2005, Michael completed work on the sci-fi film The Island, starring Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi. It was Bay's first work not to be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The film grossed approximately $172 million at the worldwide box office, but Michael was dissatisfied with the box office and said that he did not like the film's advertising - it did not give an idea of the character and message of the plot.

«Transformers" - success or failure?

In 2007, Michael Bay, along with Steven Spielberg, prepared a spectacular blockbuster "Transformers", which surpassed the film's box office record. "Spider-Man 2". In the future, Bay worked on several sequels to the story about alien robots, but now all the critics were against him. He was even awarded the Golden Raspberry anti-award in three categories: Worst Film, Worst Director and Worst Screenplay.

Despite the resistance of the environment and negative reviews, in the summer of 2011, Michael Bay completed the film "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon". In the third film, one of the main roles went to not Megan Fox, but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. The unexpected replacement of the famous model with another actress was due to Megan's remark, which was recklessly made in an interview: Fox compared Michael's behavior during filming with Hitler. Steven Spielberg did not like the situation, and he made a replacement in the cast.

All Michael's films about transformers were criticized by both publicists and viewers. Both of them noted the director's obsession with explosions and special effects to the detriment of the quality of the plot. Also, speaking about the very first film, fragments of the picture were noted, where the actions of combat robots become barely understandable to the viewer due to not the most successful filling of the frame. Thus, criticism touched not only the quality of the narrative, but also the intelligibility of what is happening during the battles and battle scenes.

Despite the flurry of negative reviews, Michael made five films about representatives of a high-tech race and their adventures on planet Earth. All works were very successful at the box office. The storyline does not come to an end, but only develops through the addition of new stories and characters.

Other projects

In addition, the director took on the film adaptation of the story about mutant ninja turtles. In total, two pictures came out - critics and part of the audience complained about the bad plot. In the case of Transformers, the reviews did not interfere with the collection of a large box office at the global box office, but this time the pictures were not as commercially successful. The second film was slightly better received than the first part.

The most unsuccessful, according to critics, are the author's work on remakes of cult horror films, in particular "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street". However, it is worth noting that Bay only participated in the production as a producer.