AWARDS SEASON

Hero Complex robot expert Yvonne Villarreal gives a listen to "Transformers" director Michael Bay and his sound team as they wave the flag for trophy time in Hollywood.

Imagine Demolisher and Optimus Prime wreaking havoc on the Earth as they battle -- but doing it in complete silence.

Not very thrilling, huh? The hunky pieces of metal in the "Transformers" films lose a lot of their thunderous power without all that sound. It's the clinks and whooshes and BOOMS caused by the massive appliances that complete the larger-than-life experience of the films.

Director Michael Bay recently joined sound re-recording mixers Greg P. Russell and Gary Summers, and supervising sound editors Ethan Van Der Ryn and Erik Aadahl to discuss the sound art (and science) of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" at the Cary Grant Theatre on the Sony Pictures lot. 

“I have like 2,000 people — through their artistry — making my dreams a film,” Bay said. “The artistry of this sound group is just amazing. I love, love sound. It’s 45-50% of the movies.”

It’s a welcomed percentage. The acting by Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf may not stir the soul of Academy voters, but the franchise's high-quality sound performance has made up for that. The first "Transformers" film was nominated for three Academy Awards in 2008 in the categories of sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects.

“All of our sounds are performing almost like actors,” said Aadahl, whom Bay described as the “secret weapon” of the films. “They’re just performing the scene through sound.”

 

From explosions and car chases to clinking metal and pounding footsteps, every piece of sound is carefully produced. “It’s like," Russell said, "painting with sound.” 

Aadahl continued the thought: “It just takes a lot of playing around with different elements. With sound, we are completely unfettered by the laws of physics.”

And with a film bursting with auditory bombast, a mellow scene can be a welcome challenge. Take the Reedman scene from the second installment of the franchise. After Soundwave finds out the location of the All Spark fragment needed to revive Megatron, Ravage was dispatched to the island of Diego Garcia, where the human-autobot alliance NEST was stationed, to recover the shard. The shadowy robot infiltrated the base with microcons, a swarm of ball bearings. Thousands of the tiny spheres combined to form Reedman, a mantis-like figure.

It was a scene meant to “cleanse the palate” from the booming sound featured throughout most of the film. The volume was turned down to enhance the sound created by the energy sparks. So where did the inspiration for the muted, vibrating zing of the microcons come from? A couple of magnets. Spread an inch apart and tossed in the air, they meet to create a quivering sound that -- when amplified by a microphone -- resembles the chattering of insects.

“It’s all about thinking ‘How can we take organic things in the real world and twist them around to give them a synthetic edge?’ ” Van der Ryn said.

Many times, the thunderous sounds heard in the theater aren’t synthetically produced. Sometimes everyday household fare (when magnified) can serve as the source. Aadahl said the vibrating hum from his electrical shaver resembled an bug buzz — perfect for a tiny Decepticon scout. The creak from opening the stove door? That served as the central sound for an older (more rusty) Decepticon. And a slamming dryer door was used as the thud for Devastator’s footsteps -- proving that that it doesn’t always take a large element to produce a big sound.

“Those huge things seem small in comparison to the small things,” Aadahl said. “We find the macro in the micro.”

So can we expect more thunderous sound in the third installment? Although the number of robots increased significantly from the first film for the second, the third film -- which will hit theaters in summer 2011, won’t be as robot-heavy and there will be fewer explosions, a tight-lipped Bay said after the Q+A. 

“There will be a nice crescendo ending,” Bay said. “It gets much more into the robot character. The last time you kind of met a few of the robots; this time you’re gonna get a much cooler landscape.”

--Yvonne Villarreal

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PHOTOS: Top and bottom, scenes from "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen" (Paramount Pictures). Middle, filmmaker Michael Bay and a friend. (Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times)

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post had an incorrect release date for the third robot movie.

Wow, this seems like a million years ago. Go to the seven-minute mark to see a moment that (sorta) melds the spirits of the two biggest show-biz stories of the moment...

-- Geoff Boucher

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In "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," motorcycles, bulldozers and toasters transform into a menacing militia, but it's the robot with a more feminine side that stands out among the heavy metal soldiers. Alice, a "pretender" Decepticon, emerges in the form of a sexy coed who shares a near-fatal kiss with Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) via her titanium tongue. "We had to take a beautiful girl and turn her into a nasty killing machine in a short time," said Matthew Butler, visual effects supervisor at Digital Domain in Venice.

The transformation begins with her face eroding away, revealing the components  inside. "We didn't want her to look like she had a skin disease," Butler said.  So, a zipper-like effect was created. 

No green screen or motion capture  was  used when shooting actress Isabel Lucas.  But it took seven months for a team of 20 to create countless layers of effects, devised with complex equations and meticulous rendering with the software Houdini to create the six-second shot.

-- Liesl Bradner

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How big will "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" get? The movie was closing in on $400 million on Monday, a number that surprised even some of the people at Paramount Pictures. We've had tons of coverage on the film, which is breaking records at the box office, and we're not done yet. Here's a longer version of the Los Angeles Times Calendar story I have in today's paper on one of the new faces in Hollywood, Ramon Rodriguez, who plays Leo Spitz in the No. 1 movie in America right now. A lot of people are expecting big things from Ramon in the future, including Michael Bay, who hinted to me that the third film in the franchise will have a meatier role for the new cast member.

It turns out that filmmaker Michael Bay runs an audition a lot like he makes movies.

Last year, Ramon Rodriguez visited Bay’s Santa Monica offices seeking a key role in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and, instead of a sedate line-reading, the young actor was told to basically run for his life.

“For 90 minutes, he had me jumping, running, diving over the furniture in his office -- that was the audition,” said Rodriguez, who was adept enough to land the role of Shia LaBeouf’s sidekick in the biggest movie of the year. “I was drenched in sweat. He told me, ‘OK, hide behind the desk!’ ‘Now, run over here!’ And man, I was looking in his eyes, and he was enjoying it. He’s got a passion for action. It shows in the movies too.”

Critics may cringe, but audiences are feeling it: “Revenge of the Fallen,” as of Monday, was closing in on $400 million worldwide. That's a staggering number, and the domestic gross, $201 million, fell just short of the five-day record of $203 million set last year by “The Dark Knight.”

It’s been dizzying to watch from a distance, but it’s an especially wild ride for newcomer Rodriguez, whose career surged this summer with the “Transformers” role as well as his work in Tony Scott’s “The Taking of Pelham 123,” which put him side by side with Denzel Washington and John Travolta.

“I’m coming out of nowhere this summer,” Rodriguez said on recent bright afternoon on a basketball court in Studio City. “At least that’s how it seems to people. It feels that way to me sometimes too. And it’s been a major education.”

For Rodriguez, this summer is the equivalent of a half-court shot that hits nothing but net.

The actor, who grew up on Manhattan’s lower east side but also spent much of his youth in his family’s native Puerto Rico, was a college and prep-school basketball star but didn’t have the height needed to achieve his NBA dream.

After picking up a sports-management degree at New York University, he was working for the New York Knicks in their community relations department but hating it. “You would think I would love it, but working for a team that’s losing is just no fun,” he said. “It was so gray, so dark, there were layoffs and turmoil."

A friend coaxed him to enter a Nike basketball-trick competition and, with the lure of a free pair of sneakers, a disinterested Rodriguez agreed. He ended up winning by spinning a ball, putting it on the tip of a pen and then gripping the pen with his teeth without interrupting the revolving ball.

It was a heck of a trick: It led to the ballplayer joining the Nike freestyle team and a tour of Asia and Europe as a sort of latter-day Harlem Globetrotter. At NBA games, Rodriguez performed in front of stars he had hoped would be his peers.

“They were checking us at halftime, I could see out of the corner of my eye that they were smiling,” he said. “We got paid, we traveled, people cheered. And then there’s another thing: When you’re the halftime show, you never lose.”

His work in Nike commercials gave him a foothold in a new sector: acting. That path became more than a lark in 2005 when Rodriguez had an eye-catching, two-episode guest appearance on “Rescue Me,” FX's firehouse drama, in which he played a young man who had been molested by a priest.

“The firefighters went to the priest and at the end of the story arc, in front of everyone, I kill myself,” Rodriguez said. “I put a gun to my head in the middle of the church. I was finding out what it meant to be an actor.”

Rodriguez then immersed himself in acting studies even as he did an eight-episode run on “The Wire” in the role of Renaldo, the dangerous lover of stick-up man Omar Little. Next was Rodriguez’s memorable turn in Alejandro Gomez Monteverde’s “Bella,” the 2006 film that won the people’s choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

That set the stage for “Transformers,” which allowed Rodriguez to get in touch with his youth – he used to watch the cartoon series while munching on sugary cereal. The role of the fast-talking Princeton freshman Leonardo Ponce De Leon Spitz – who is the new college roommate to LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky — makes Rodriguez the comic relief in the film about giant alien robots.

Director Michael Bay has a third "Transformers" film in mind, and if it plays out as he expects, the next installment would have a more substantial role for Rodriguez. The filmmaker, speaking at his office a few weeks before "Revenge of the Fallen" was released, seemed to have some pride of discovery when talking about Rodriguez.

"I've worked with big stars, people like Will Smith, Sean Connery and Bruce Willis, but casting is a weird thing, it takes you places you don’t expect," Bay said. "We went looking for a sidekick in this movie, Shia’s sidekick, and we find this new kid who really pops on screen. I think he’s going to have a real bright career. It’s great to work with big stars, but it’s always fun to discover people."

Bay said the actor is a mix of rough charm and refined intellect.

"He’s got a street edge and a realness to him," said the director, whose past films include "The Rock" and "Bad Boys.” "He’s a New York kid with a street feel to him. He adapted to the actors very well, which isn’t always easy in a big movie, a sequel, where a lot of the cast chemistry has been set already. He’s funny, charming, comes off cool and accessible.”

Rodriguez is eager to diversify his résumé and do arty films and ensemble pieces as well as the huge summer fare. But he said, no matter what comes next, he won’t soon forget this summer.

“It was the full deal: I remember flying to Egypt to climb the Pyramids … and then taking a Blackhawk helicopter to Petra to shoot there,” he said. “We shot on an aircraft carrier. I mean, all of it, it was just mind-blowing. I got my shot and, man, it was a good one.”

-- Geoff Boucher

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Images, from top: Ramon Rodriguez in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Credit: Paramount Pictures. The cast poses in Japan, with Rodriguez at top left and director Michael Bay at center front. Credit:  Getty Images.  Other images from Paramount.

Wow, what a weekend for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." It's north of $360 million  worldwide and counting. We've had tons of coverage on the film that is breaking records at the box office and we're not done yet. Today, on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section, John Horn takes a look at the staggering disconnect between the critical reception and commercial fortunes of Michael Bay's summer juggernaut. -- G.B.  

 

Director Michael Bay has never been a critics' favorite, but the thrashing he received for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was the worst of his eight-film career.

Reviewers ridiculed the new sequel about battling robots as "beyond bad" (Rolling Stone), "bewildering" and "sloppy" (the Village Voice) and "a great grinding garbage disposal of a movie" (the Detroit News).

The early notices were so uniformly disapproving that after Bay's traditional opening-night dinner party at Beverly Hills' Mr. Chow, the 44-year-old director wondered aloud to executives at distributor Paramount Pictures about the possible impact of the drubbing. He needn't have worried: Rarely have critics been more disconnected from what audiences want and love.

Since it arrived early Wednesday just past midnight, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" sold more tickets in its first five days -- an estimated $201.2 million -- than any other movie in Hollywood history except one: last year's "The Dark Knight" (which grossed $203.8 million in its first five days and went on to earn $533.3 million at the domestic box office). By the end of this week, "Transformers" likely will surpass "Up" and "Star Trek" to become this summer's most-attended release.

"I think they reviewed the wrong movie. They just don't understand the movie and its audience. It's silly fun," Bay said over the weekend of the many "Transformers" critical detractors. "I am convinced that they are born with the anti-fun gene. The reviews are just so vicious. A lot of them are more personal than anything else."

His film's strong debut cements Bay's reputation as one of the town's most consistently commercial directors. A colorful personality who drives fast cars, dates knockout models, wears his shirts unbuttoned and is infamously demanding on and off his movie sets, the boyish Bay possesses one of the highest average theatrical grosses among Hollywood's best-known directors.

Bay's seven movies ("The Rock," "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor," "The Island," the two "Bad Boys" films and the earlier "Transformers") before the sequel averaged $152.5 million in domestic theaters, according to the website Box Office Mojo. That places him alongside "Transformers" producer Steven Spielberg (average gross: $156.9 million as a director), "Titanic's" Jim Cameron ($163.8 million) and "The Lord of the Rings' " Peter Jackson ($159 million). What's more, all of Bay's previous movies have grossed more overseas than they have domestically.

Movie review aggregator websites assigned the film average scores ranging from 21% positive to 40% positive, with Rotten Tomatoes giving the sequel the lowest marks in Bay's career.

Audiences saw the movie quite differently. At the AMC Puente Hills 20 on Friday night, the majority of the film's showings were sold out, and some "Transformers" fans waited two hours to get into an open screening.

Fred Aldaco, 23, was visiting from Phoenix, and said Bay had respected the Transformers legacy, which includes toys, comic books and an animated television series. "He did a good job with it," Aldaco said. "They took their time and knew how they were going to do the story. You can hardly say that about any other comic book" movie director.

Although La Puente's 27-year-old Diana Salazar didn't know that Bay had directed the movie, she praised its execution. "It had a lot of action. It was really interesting to see the good fight scenes," she said. "Either I like the plot or I don't. It makes absolutely no difference who the director is."

Paramount's national exit polling revealed several notable facts. While the first "Transformers" film, released in 2007, skewed 60-40 toward men over women, the split in the new film was more even at 54% male, 46% female. More than 90% of those surveyed said the new movie was as good as or better than the first film...

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-- John Horn

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CREDIT: Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
 

"The Dark Knight" might not have beaten "Slumdog Millionaire" in last year's Oscar race, but it would've been interesting to see it given a chance.  And "Iron Man" versus "Doubt?"  Many would've chosen the Golden Avenger.  Now we will get to see these types of matchups since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expanded the best picture field to 10.

Of course, even with the expansion, some movies will still never have a chance in this category ("Watchmen," probably way too polarizing), and aside from a couple of crowd- and critic-pleasers, many may not have the quality to compete. But as this news gently wafts over the awards world, we wonder how it can/will benefit the fanboy community.

-- Jevon Phillips

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I remember a few years back when I first heard that Michael Bay was going to launch a "Transformers" franchise. My first reaction? That has to be the worst movie idea I've ever heard. I thought that the premise was flimsy at best and that, in a live-action film on a big screen, any giant, shape-shifting alien robot would simply look silly. And the notion of handing the project to the director of "Pearl Harbor"? Hah! A disaster in the making, clearly!

Ahem.

Once again, I'm clearly baffled by Hollywood, the American moviegoer and, well, life in general.

The first film, released in 2007, merely pulled in $708 million worldwide. And now its sequel looks even more robust: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" premiered Monday night in Hollywood (that's Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox at the red-carpet event in the photo above) and as it opens wide today it appears poised for massive box-office success. Some studio executives are predicting $175 million in its first five days. Here's what my colleague Ben Fritz is reporting on our sister blog, Company Town:

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is generating huge interest among males, particularly young men, just like 2007’s first film based on Hasbro’s shape-changing robot toy line from the 1980s. That movie sold $319.2 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada, and $389 million overseas.

But "Revenge of the Fallen," which cost just under $200 million to produce, is also showing strength with a new demographic: young women. According to a person who has seen pre-release audience polling, females younger than 25 are just as interested in the movie as males older than 25. That's likely because of the growing appeal of 20-something stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox.

With that extra audience group in mind, Paramount is primed for a huge opening. The current five-day-box-office record for a movie debuting on a Wednesday is "Spider-Man 2," which grossed $152.4 million in 2004. Executives who closely follow tracking say "Transformers" probably will earn roughly $175 million in its first five days. That's a huge start, albeit short of the five-day record of $203.8 million set by "The Dark Knight" last year. It's possible, albeit unlikely, that "Revenge of the Fallen" could topple that mark.

It has a better shot at beating the all-time record for a Wednesday of $44.2 million set by "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in 2007. "Transformers" has already sold out more than 1,000 midnight shows through the websites Fandango and MovieTickets.

Big money, but the reviews have not been kind. Los Angeles Times critic Betsy Sharkey called the film a numbing experience for anyone except the most forgiving fanboy. "'Revenge' is in-your-face, ear-splitting and unrelenting," Sharkey wrote in her review. "It's easy to walk away feeling like you've spent 2 1/2 hours in the mad, wild hydraulic embrace of a car compactor -- exhilarating or excruciating, depending on your point of view." The Village Voice called it "blockbuster porn" and the Wall Street Journal dismissed it as "glittering junk."

Even some of the true believers walked out dazed and unsatisfied. Empire magazine gave the movie a halfhearted endorsement in a review by Nick de Semlyen that riffed on the fact that Bay put something akin to metallic testicles on one of his towering metal warriors: "It’s just a shame there aren’t more ideas behind the spectacle, since we’re not given much in the way of compelling reasons to root for one pixelly pugilist over another. Long before the final minute it’s become a numbing, wearying viewing experience. Next time could we have less balls and more brains?"

I'm eager to hear what you readers think of the film -- and I'm already curious how many more "Transformers" films will be rolling off the assembly line in the seasons to come.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Top photo: LaBeouf and Fox at the premiere. Credit: Associated Press. Bottom photo: Fox in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Credit: Paramount Pictures. 

When I interviewed Michael Bay last month, he certainly seemed unfazed by all of his many critics. Now I know one of the reasons -- or maybe even 75 million of them. Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz, who delve into the money matters of Hollywood, have a report in today's Los Angeles Times about the bombastic filmmaker's sweet payday on the first "Transformers" movie and the windfall he has coming with its sequel. --G.B.

Paramount Pictures' upcoming film doesn't hit theaters until June 24, but Hollywood is already buzzing that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” could be the biggest movie of the summer and net one of the richest paydays ever for a director.

Director Michael Bay agreed to forgo his normal percentage of ticket sales and a portion of his upfront fee in exchange for an even bigger piece of total profits from all revenue sources after Paramount recoups its costs. This kind of deal is increasingly common in Hollywood as studios attempt to avoid situations where they lose money on a film or eke out a tiny profit while big-name talent walks away with tens of millions of dollars, as happened with Paramount's "Mission Impossible III" and star Tom Cruise.

Bay cut a similar deal on the first "Transformers" movie in 2007 and walked off with about $75 million after the sci-fi event film grossed $708 million worldwide and became one of the year’s top DVD sellers.

Though the bar is higher for "Revenge of the Fallen" to go into the black since it cost more than its predecessor, Bay could make an even bigger killing this time around if the sequel does significantly better.

Several executives who have seen the most recent pre-release audience surveys are predicting a five-day domestic opening exceeding $160 million. That would beat "Spider-Man 2’s" $152 million in 2004, currently the five-day record for any film debuting on a Wednesday.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is also opening day-and-date in most major foreign territories. If it follows the pattern of the first film, it will earn even more money internationally than in the U.S. and Canada. The original "Transformers" earned 55% of its box office revenue overseas.

Tracking is never a surefire indicator of a film's performance, of course. But it's rare when a film is the No. 1 most anticipated offering three weeks from its opening -- which "Transformers" was last week.

The movie has a good shot at being the summer's top grossing worldwide hit. Warner Bros. July 15 release, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince," is the only other competitor for the crown.

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-- Ben Fritz and Claudia Eller

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I'm a big fan of lists, so is Jevon Phillips, a star contributor here at Hero Complex. Here's his take on a recent tally of the women of sci-fi....or is that sigh-fi? -- G.B.

As usual, there's a lot to dispute about anyone having a top so-and-so list, but Totalscifionline.com's 25 women who shook up sci-fi isn't too startling. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Battlestar Galactica" and "Star Trek" are the only franchises with multiple entries on the list (and rightfully so). Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley of "Alien" fame was named First Lady of Sci-Fi.

Of course, there were parameters, which the site laid out like so:

We've limited ourselves to TV and film - SF and fantasy literature probably warrants a further list all of its own - and in those instances where multiple actresses have portrayed a character, we’ve written who we believe gave the most definitive performance in brackets. No doubt there are many characters you feel we’ve left off.

Yeah, yeah -- and the site does include a more in-depth examination of each choice. There will be debate over ones who didn't make it. I really like River Tam on "Firefly" -- but it was short-lived -- and the women of "Cleopatra 2525" and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity in "The Matrix" and ... well, let's stop there.  And there may be some on the list who deserve to be higher. Wonder Woman and Xena, 22 and 23? Hey, I like Leeloo and Claire bear, but not over those two icons.

Again, it can be debated (Lois Lane! "Bionic Woman!") until we're all breathless, but give the site credit for taking on the task. Here's their final list. Let the comments flow.

The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi:

1) Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, "Alien" series)

2) Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer")

3) Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff, "Battlestar Galactica")

4) Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson, "The X-Files")

5) Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton, "Terminator," "T2")

6) Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher, "Star Wars" series)

7) Rose Tyler (Billie Piper, "Doctor Who")

8) Sam Carter (Amanda Tapping, "Stargate SG-1")

9) Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, "Star Trek")

10) Leeloo (Milla Jovovich, "The Fifth Element")

11) Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere, "Heroes")

12) Storm (Halle Berry, "X-Men")

13) Pris (Daryl Hannah, "Blade Runner")

14) Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer, "Batman Returns")

15) Barbarella (Jane Fonda, "Barbarella")

16) Sarah-Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen, "The Sarah-Jane Adventures" / "Doctor Who")

17) Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox, "Transformers")

18) Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian, "Babylon 5")

19) Number Six (Tricia Helfer, "Battlestar Galactica")

20) Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, "Star Trek: Voyager")

21) Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer")

22) Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter, "Wonder Woman")

23) Xena (Lucy Lawless, Xena: "Warrior Princess")

24) Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner, "Alias")

25) Marina (Stingray)

-- Jevon Phillips

Photo credits: "Aliens" - 20th Century Fox. "Star Wars" - Lucasfilm Ltd. "X-Men" - 20th Century Fox.  "Xena Warrior Princess" - Reuters.

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"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will make its American premiere on Monday, June 22, at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by the Los Angeles Times, will run from Thursday, June 18, to Sunday, June 28. Michael Bay's alien-robot adventure will hit the rest of U.S. theaters on June 24.

Tickets to the premiere of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" can be obtained now by purchasing a Discovery, Industry, or Fast pass to this year’s festival. In addition to screenings and events, festival passes at all levels provide access to a series of networking receptions.

General admission tickets to individual films go on sale beginning Friday.  Contact the Festival Ticketing Center for passes, tickets and event information by calling 866-FILM-FEST (866-345-6337) or visiting LAFilmFest.com. Festival passes and tickets can also be purchased in person beginning on Friday, June 12, at the Festival Ticketing Center at 1038 Westwood Blvd.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Bumblebee image from "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," courtesy of Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures. Michael Bay portrait by Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times.

Michael Bay is a lightning-rod figure in the movie industry, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I went to visit him in Santa Monica at his sleek workshop, where his team is in finish-line mode on "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." I found him to be smart and personable if a bit defensive, which is no surprise considering all the Bay-haters. "There's a lot of poison on the Internet," he told me through a tight smile. He also said he's barely going to be able to finish this new film, which gobbled up a mind-boggling 140 terabytes. This is a longer version of a story that will appear this Sunday on the cover of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section.

Michael Bay is lean, walks with purpose and carries his chin and shoulders at an imperious tilt, and on a recent afternoon at his work compound in Santa Monica it was easy to envision him as some proud matador. Perhaps that's fitting -- Bay, like those bullfighters in distant Barcelona -- thinks of himself as a mayhem artist in the crowd-pleasing business.

Bay is back in the ring on June 24 with his eighth film, " Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," which many industry observers expect to surpass the first "Transformers" film, which grossed a staggering $708 million worldwide in 2007. "The pre-tracking is huge," Bay said of surveys of audience interest in the movie that stars Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox and an army of two-story alien robots.

He rolled his eyes, though, contemplating the last-minute labor that needs to be done. "This one," he said, "is barely going to make it to theaters. You have no idea how complicated my life is." The 44-year-old chuckled about his stress level, which fits his industry reputation as a director who thrives on pressure and adrenaline. Bay makes huge movies with high concepts and so many explosions that you expect the filmmaker to reek of cordite when you shake his hand.

His films, such as "The Rock," "Bad Boys" and "Armageddon," may make film critics cringe (Kenneth Turan in The Times called him a "world-class noisemaker" who leaves audiences "feeling pummeled, not exhilarated"), but Hollywood executives view them as spectacles that are big enough to lure consumers away from their home theaters. With this new film, Bay describes the "huge canvas" of its visual effects in terms of computer memory -- at Industrial Light & Magic, the San Francisco effects house, the first "Transformers" movie took up an astounding 15 terabytes; the new one required 140 terabytes. "That breaks every record," said Bay, who is far more Barnum than Bergman.

You might expect that his pursuit of massive entertainment would lead to humongous budget overruns, but in fact it's a point of pride for him to wring every bit of bang out of each buck. The lanky, lupine filmmaker came from the world of television commercials (he did work for Budweiser and Nike, but the classic was his Aaron Burr "Got Milk" ad, which you can revisit with video at the bottom of this post) and even after 15 years of making feature films, he still positions himself as a contrarian outsider who is offended by peers who, as a group, he views as too slow, arty, wasteful and indulgent.

"The way I do it, we work hard, we work fast," Bay said. "We shoot 12-hour days. . . . One thing I can't stand about Hollywood is waste. I've gotten to be a very, very efficient shooter. On average, these type of sequels run in the $230-million to $240-million range, and we're shooting this for a flat $200 million. A lot of these directors have second unit the entire time -- that's millions of dollars just wasted. We do it all ourselves."

Bay likes to conserve his budget so he can film in exotic places that other directors find too difficult to access and, along with emphasis on pyro work and stunts, gives his productions the vibe of daredevil tourism. On this new film, he "weaseled" his way into the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt ("We were the first movie in 30 years to shoot physically on the pyramids"), where he shot with a 150-member crew for three days and, a few days later, he took his team to the top of the rock-carved architecture of Petra in Jordan, where military helicopters ferried 36 loads of gear to the perilous perch.

The choppers, by the way, were thanks to a Jordanian prince who loved Bay's first robot movie, while in Egypt it was Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, who turned out to be "a big fan of 'Transformers,' " Bay said, sounding surprised himself. (Bay seems to enjoy more support abroad than at home, perhaps because an explosion is easily translated; "Pearl Harbor" and "The Island," for instance, pulled in $251 million and $127 million abroad, respectively, far more than they earned during disappointing releases in the States.)

There may be very little mystery to Bay's movies, but he himself is a figure of fascination in Hollywood...

SPOILER ALERT: I watched about 20-25 minutes of footage from "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and although I describe the scenes only in VERY general terms below, you might want to stop reading if you want to save all the surprises for when the film opens on June 24. 

I visited with Michael Bay last week and got a rare chance to sit with him in the editing bay and check out several sequences from "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," which most of Hollywood expects to be one of the mammoth money-making films this year.

Bay was a pleasant host but I could tell he didn't really have the time to be entertaining visitors, not with the big finish-line looming for a movie that he has been working on "every day for two years," as he put it. "This one is going to be close," he said of the last-minute labors that remain.

A bit about that footage...

He showed me a comedy sequence with the Witwicky family getting young Sam (Shia LaBeouf) ready to go off to Princeton University. There was a lot of "empty nest" humor with Sam's mom, Judy (Julie White), and dad, Ron (Kevin Dunn), and then the house is all but leveled by an unwelcome metallic visitor. The scene has a lot of humor in it but Bay said the film, overall, is darker than its 2007 predecessor. "This one," Bay said, "is less quippy."

There was the first scene in the film for the nubile Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and of course she was wearing very little and posed like a grease-monkey hottie on a garage pin-up poster. "Of course we had to get that out of the way," Bay said with mock resignation. There was plenty more of Fox in seductive mode and a romantic rival as well -- at Princeton, a curvy mystery girl pounces on Sam in his dorm-room but there's something a little alien about her. Maybe it's the nasty steel tail that suddenly emerges from under her skirt like a scorpion's stinger.

(My mind flashed on the director feud between Bay and McG on whether "Terminator Salvation" was just a Nine Inch Nails version of "Transformers" -- this particular Bay baddie seemed to be channeling a bit of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," so maybe McG will be firing back pretty soon...)

    

The hardware is impressive but it's characters and story that generate the word-of-mouth that can carry a film into its second, third and fourth week as a box-office powerhouse, as "Iron Man" and "Star Trek" prove. Bay said he is mightily pleased with the performances in this film. The actors, he said, have sharper interactions this time around because of the previous experience of working together and in character; he said that's one of the underappreciated benefits of this make-a-sequel era.

"People I've shown this to instantly feel like, 'Hey, I know that family, they’re fun to watch.' It’s like when you watch a favorite TV series, there are things about familiarity you like and it can be satisfying. There are other benefits from doing it a second time. Movies do take a life. Things spark and take a life, things you thought would be important drop away and a tone is set. With the sequels, you know the tone. That’s a huge thing."

Perhaps, but sequels can also spend so much time being "familiar" that they become numb, pointless encores. We'll have to wait and see the whole film in order to judge this particular $200-million enterprise.

Bay showed me an intense action sequence in Shanghai and I have to say he's right when he boasts that the robots this time around are more impressive in their movement, intricacy and emotives...

How big will "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" be this summer? On June 24, the 'Bots are back with Megatron among them and, according to screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, one inspiration for the film was "The Empire Strikes Back" and the dark ordeals it presented for all the characters who triumphed in its popcorn predecessor. That may be promosing for casual film fans, but for some truly obsessed followers of the Autobots and Decepticons, their interests in the shifty big guys requires more than meets the eye at local theaters (yes, we had to use the line...).

We're talking about the fans who covet a 1984 Optimus Prime in a pristine box or spend hours privately polishing their rare Voyager Class Autobot. For them, there's the 2009 Transformers fan convention, better known as "BotCon," which will be held on May 28-31 at the Pasadena Convention Center.

To celebrate Hasbro's 25th Anniversary making those wily "Robots in Disguise," the convention will feature the new 2009 Transformers toys just in time for the new movie. There will be the opportunity to buy, sell or trade the one's you already own or perhaps pick up some new toys so you can practice the difficult task of going from robot to vehicle and back to robot again. 

A story from the Associated Press or, perhaps, a screenplay for a Michael Bay film that's just waiting to happen:

TOKYO (AP) — Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Specifics of the plan, including what new technologies will be required and the size of the project's budget, are to be decided within the next two years, according to Japan's Strategic Headquarters for Space Development, a Cabinet-level working group.

Development of a lunar robot is part of a broad framework outlined by the group, which is charged with plotting a new course for Japan's space strategy. As a next step, joint exploration of the moon involving robots and astronauts will be considered.

The framework is to be finalized late next month, after the public has a chance to comment on the proposals.

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-- Geoff Boucher 

This fun piece of pop parody is the handiwork of Tim Doyle and if you wanna buy one, go right here.

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MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE ... AGAIN: Does anybody blow it up bigger (or more often) than Michael Bay? (Just check out his truly awesome self-spoofing Verizon commercial.) Anyway, during the Super Bowl on Sunday there was a brief but, er, energetic preview of "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen." How did it look? Well, I don't think it will be ushering in a new era in cerebral cinema BUT it did have giant alien robots on skates! Here you go ...

UNDER THE GUN ... AGAIN: I kind of forgot there was a "G.I. Joe" movie coming this year. Seriously. But there it was, a trailer for "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra" during the biggest U.S. sports broadcast of the year, with slow-motion hot chicks and dour military men making hard decisions in a hard world. The move is directed by Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy," "Van Helsing"), which is not necessarily a great thing, but it does have Dennis Quaid as Gen. Hawk, one-time "Doctor Who" star Christopher Eccleston as Destro and Ray Park as Snake Eyes.  Lock and load ...

Hmmm. I know this is not the intended effect, but as I watched that "G.I. Joe" trailer all I could think about was this ...

BEHIND THE WHEEL ... AGAIN: Action star Jason Statham, who has a flair for laconic exasperation, drives more sweet rides than a valet at the Four Seasons. The actor (who told the Hero Complex he wants to portray a certain Marvel superhero) has made a specialty of gas-pedal films ("Transporter," "Transporter 2," "Transporter 3," "Death Race.") and he's in a great new Audi commercial that aired during the game Sunday. Here's a look; it's really fun ...

ON THIS DATE: Today is the 60th birthday of actor Brent Spiner, who has appeared in major films such "The Aviator," "Independence Day" and, uh, "Dude Where's My Car? but will be forever remembered as Mr. Data, the earnest android from "Star Trek: The Next Generation." The mechanical man with the positronic brain is one of the great characters on a great series (and in four films) and with his relentless logic and sweet naivete he was a sort of yellow-eyed hybrid of "Mr. Spock" and "Pinocchio." You Southern California readers have a chance to see Spiner on stage soon -- he will be starring in "Man of La Mancha" at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA beginning on Valentine's Day and continuing through March 1. Also, the Houston native has a tricked-out personal website. Check it out. In honor of Spiner's birthday, let's treat our friends to a surprise rendition of "Blue Skies" today ...

Thanks for reading, have a great day.

-- Geoff Boucher