Sometimes, filmmaker Michael Bay’s self-described “Bayhem” is just a little too much. With his first Netflix film, 6 Underground, this certainly seems to be the case – except it’s actually a lot of too much. It stars Ryan Reynolds leading a group of mercenaries trying to take down criminals and terrorists that governments won’t touch. It’s perhaps Bay’s his most bombastic and frenzied work to date. 6 Underground essentially would be every teenager’s favorite movie – in 2003.
From the moment it begins to the time the credits roll, 6 Underground features non-stop Bayhem, even in simple dialogue scenes. Depending on how you feel about the work of Michael Bay, this is either unwelcome news or a ringing endorsement. As a true fan of Bay’s work – for better or worse – it’s hard to deny that he’s gone a little too far over-the-top on several occasions. While 6 Underground is pretty much two hours of over-the-top everything, here are 12 times Michael Bay wronged us in his movies.
Cover Photo: Netflix
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6 Underground and 12 Times Michael Bay Wronged Us
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Making Ben Affleck Get Rid of His Baby Teeth – ‘Armageddon’
As one of Michael Bay’s better movies, the making of Armageddon was a tumultuous shoot. However, no issue was more prevalent for Bay during production than star Ben Affleck’s so-called “baby teeth.” To mend this obviously inescapable problem, the director made Affleck sit in a dentist chair for eight hours a day for a week to get a new set of camera-ready pearly whites. The cost? A cool $20,000.
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Bumblebee Pees on John Turturro – ‘Transformers’
Think about this: Michael Bay hired respected character actor John Turturro for Transformers, only for him to get peed on by Bumblebee. What a shame.
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The Death of Jazz – ‘Transformers’
Leave it to Michael Bay to make the only “ethnic” Transformer in the movie a stereotype largely associated with African-American people and to then unceremoniously kill that beloved character. Not a good look, bro.
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Everything Besides the Attack on Pearl Harbor – ‘Pearl Harbor’
Pearl Harbor isn’t a good movie. Not only is the thought of Michael Bay telling a love story repugnant, but the actual execution is also downright disastrous. Despite Bay’s pervasive issue of glorifying the horrors of actual tragedies like the bombing of Pearl Harbor for cheap entertainment value, the titular sequence of the film is still spectacular. It’s just too bad that everything else is not only historically inaccurate, but just plain bad.
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John Turturro’s Ass in a Thong, in IMAX – ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
Nothing screams Transformers more than John Turturro’s ass in IMAX. Aside from the ridiculousness that is the “sector 7” thong (or is it a cup?) that he’s wearing, this wouldn’t be the most precarious position that Bay puts him in during this movie.
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Using Corpses For Laughs – ‘Bad Boys II’
While the entire subplot of Bad Boys II revolves around drug cartels running product into Miami through the use of corpses, Bay takes it a step further with an entire action sequence that uses dead bodies for laughs. Preceded by a mortuary scene where the top of a corpse’s skull falls of his head like a Looney Toons cartoon, the film stages a five-minute sequence where our heroes must comically avoid corpses that are falling out of a hearse. Oh, the class.
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Skidz and Mudflap – ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
Only someone like Bay would double down on the Jazz controversy by creating arguably the most unlikable Transformers characters ever with Skidz and Mudflap, not to mention pretty obvious stereotypes. Thanks, no thanks.
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The Entire Second Half of ‘The Island’
Just when you thought that Michael Bay might actually make it through a movie without blowing something up, he had to go and, well, be Michael Bay. It’s a shame, really, because the first half of The Island is a fairly reserved science-fiction film that serves as some of Bay's most interesting work. Then he had to go and throw all that away.
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Decepticon Balls – ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
These wrecking balls speak for themselves. Of course, none other than John Turturro has the honor of being under the enemy scrotum.
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The Moral Ambiguity of ‘Pain & Gain’
Pain & Gain is one of Michael Bay’s more interesting and personal movies. It’s also a deeply flawed exercise that tests how willing audiences are to be sympathetic to absolutely reprehensible characters. While the story of the so-called “Sun Gym Gang” is stranger than fiction, Bay’s film took huge liberties with the facts of the story, like decorating the warehouse set where the gang keeps their kidnapping victim with $75,000 in sex toys that were personally purchased by the director himself. Although Bay originally intended to return many of the toys, much of the sex paraphernalia started to disappear from the set. Ironically, the culprit was never found.
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The Romeo and Juliet Scene – ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’
Although nearly every one of the scenes on this list is representative of Bay’s worst tendencies, there’s no scene more deplorable than the infamous “Romeo and Juliet” scene from Transformers: Age of Extinction. Does your sci-fi adventure movie need a consensual relationship between an adult and a minor? No worries, just cite the “Romeo and Juliet laws” and stop the forward momentum of the entire movie to justify why one of the main characters is having sex with a minor. Maybe sexualizing a teenage girl wasn’t the best idea?
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Stanley Tucci as Drunk Merlin – ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’
While the idea of Stanley Tucci playing a drunk, belligerent version of Merlin is one of the best ideas that he’s ever had, the real transgression here is that he only has a few minutes of screen time in the final film. Like, seriously, the idea of watching 2 1/2 hours of Stanley Tucci as drunken Merlin is far more interesting and engaging than whatever the hell The Last Knight ended up being.
