Official Poster for Michael Bay Hate-fest 2009, aka ZOMG OPTIMUS PRIME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has arrived in theaters, and to no one’s surprise, Michael Bay has stayed true to form and given us a loud, action-packed summer blockbuster. Also to no one’s surprise, critics have savaged his latest work: the Rotten Tomatoes aggregated review score comes in at a meager 20%. And again, to no one’s surprise, the idiot savants of the blogosphere have, as if by reflex, piled on the Bay hate and lampooned his heavy handed filmmaking techniques and lack of sophistication.

The Overthinkers are by and large of the same opinion: we see Michael Bay movies as the epitome of style over substance, cleavage over character development, and explosions over elegance. He does make a convenient whipping boy for the shortcomings of mainstream commercial cinema these days, and as such he’s been the butt of jokes on several occasions on this site.

That being said, I’d like to use this occation, the release of Bay’s latest fil…er, movie, to take a step back and examine his body of work more objectively. How bad is Michael Bay, really? And how does he compare to some of the greatest directors of our time?

As you’re probably aware, almost any effort to objectively analyze the inherently subjective nature of movie quality involves turning to the vast database of user ratings on IMDb. It’s an imperfect methodology, I know, but it’s better than nothing. This is not the time to argue the merits and meanings of the IMDb user ratings (if you’re interested in such things, you should probably check out this earlier piece of analysis on the topic). This is time to take the data we do have, fire up the Excel, and get to work.

[Note: all IMDb ratings used in this article are current as of June 29, 2009]

Part 3 in a series of disgruntled rants.

So towards the beginning of the movie, Dr. Jones tells us:

Legend says that a crystal skull was stolen from a mythical lost city in the Amazon, supposedly built out of solid gold, guarded by the living dead.

But guess what? When they get to the city, it is NOT guarded by the living dead. Instead, it’s guarded by the cast of Apocalypto.

No, George Lucas! Bad Lucas! You do NOT promise your audience zombies in the first reel, and then flake out!

And If any of you are feeling generous towards Lucas, you might suggest, “Well, just because they don’t look like zombies or act like zombies doesn’t mean they’re not immortal, magical guardians.” But the official novelization of Crystal Skull describes these guys only as “Ugla warriors” (p. 272) and “tribesmen” (273). And more importantly, when Indy first mentions the legend, the novel entirely omits the part about the “living dead” (p. 86). (By the way, I didn’t buy the book. I just looked at it in a Barnes and Noble. I just want people to know that.)

Survey the damage after the jump.

So a while back, I complained about the relative lack of violence in the latest Indiana Jones film. Indy doesn’t shoot a single person. I blamed this on Lucus – the only person in the galaxy who believes that Star Wars is a better film when Greedo shoots first.

Anyway, I’ve edited together a little protest. Here’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, getting the Lucas “Special” Edition treatment:

By the way, a couple months ago, there was a very strange photo floating around the internet.

That’s George Lucas, on the set of Crystal Skull, wearing a “Han Shot First” t-shirt. This is basically the same as George Bush wearing a “No Blood For Oil” t-shirt. Does not compute.