Updated: Michael Bay has posted a comment on his website clearly stating he was not talking about PACIFIC RIM with his “rip-off” comments. See his full response below.
We don’t often have to take sides when it comes to the works of directors like Michael Bay and Guillermo Del Toro. Both make studio blockbusters, but they come from very different perspectives stylistically. But, sometimes a feud arises that we just cannot sit back and ignore. And when that battle calls into question the quality of TRANSFORMERS, there are some easy pickings.
At CinemaCon, Michael Bay was promoting his film PAIN AND GAIN and took it upon himself to call out all of the “robot rip-off” movies out there. He did not mention PACIFIC RIM by name, but when Guillermo Del Toro presented footage from his movie, he seemed to take Bay’s jab as a direct reference to his film. Here is what Del Toro had to say:
“We are far, far far away from that in a very willing fashion. For good or bad, this is my movie. This is my universe and my creation, and I do not create through comparison. The fights don’t occur in well-lit, super cool, car commercial-looking environments. They occur in the middle of a raging sea storm or in a savage snow storm. They happen in a universe that is incredibly saturated.”
And Del Toro for the knockout! Well said, good sir! I enjoyed the first TRANSFORMERS movie and the Chicago sequence in the third film, but not much else aside from that. Del Toro’s vision for PACIFIC RIM is not robots that are fifty feet tall but rather fifty stories tall. There does not seem to be much competition if these two types of robots were to face off. Del Toro himself said that the jaeger’s in PACIFIC RIM could destroy every “robot in the history of mankind in a toe-to-toe showdown.”
To be fair, Michael Bay was likely talking about movies like BATTLESHIP and REAL STEEL which both appear to be directly influenced by the TRANSFORMERS franchise. But, with no other robot movies hitting this year, I can understand Del Toro’s defensiveness. In the end, we won’t know if PACIFIC RIM is any good until it hits theaters on July 12, 2013. We already know what to expect from Michael Bay and TRANSFORMERS, so unless PACIFIC RIM is an abject and total failure, it will likely become the best Hollywood giant robot movie of all time.
Here is Michael Bay‘s response to this news via his official website.
Well today, Hollywood Reporter stated that I was in a feud with Guillermo del Toro and his Pacific Rim. Absolutely to the contrary. I was talking about another movie, at another studio that will remain nameless, while I spoke at CinemaCon in Vegas this Monday. I love how reporters put false words in people’s mouths without doing their proper research. Well ’cause of that sloppy reporting, I thought Guillermo was mad at me, and he thought I was mad at him. We both exchanged calls today and realized nobody was mad at anybody except we were both mad at that reporter!