Transformers 3 and the reused images of Michael Bay

Transformers: Dark of the Moon It had a budget of just under $200 million, but that didn’t stop Michael Bay from recycling some old material

Although the third installment of the series Transformers by Michael Bay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011’s big-budget film, it strangely recycled footage from an earlier entry in the director’s filmography. The films have become some of the filmmaker’s best-known projects and it’s hard to imagine the franchise Transformers without the participation of Michael Bay. However, Bay enjoyed a long and successful career before the first Transformers will hit theaters in 2007. While the director has returned to familiar themes and tropes several times, it seems that Transformers: Dark of the Moon was inspired by more than just a previous Michael Bay project.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon sees Optimus Prime and the other Autobots compete against the Decepticons to recover a powerful piece of Cybertronian technology from the moon. Like all the movies Transformers before and after, Dark of the Moon It’s full of action. Despite offering many new scenes, one chase scene in particular may feel familiar to fans of Bay’s work prior to Transformers.

Michael Bay used images of The Island in the car chase Dark of the Moon

The Island, from 2005, tells the dystopian story of a man who begins to question the authenticity of the world around him when he stumbles upon a conspiracy involving human cloning and organ harvesting. After earning $163 million on a $126 million budget, The Island It was Michael Bay’s first real failure. The film, therefore, could not be more different from Transformers: Dark of the Moonboth in terms of narrative and box office performance. What connects the two projects, besides Bay’s involvement, is that they both share two plans.

The shots in question appear during chase sequences in both films. In The Islanda chase that takes place about two-thirds of the way through the film’s runtime sees an SUV take a head-on impact from large pieces of debris from a previously destroyed vehicleleaving the SUV completely destroyed. Exactly the same footage also appears in Dark of the Moononly instead of debris from another vehicle, the SUV is destroyed by a CGI transformer. Similarly, moments later, a car flies through the air in a cloud of smoke.

It’s not entirely clear why exactly Michael Bay chose to recycle shots instead of filming new footage. It is possible that Bay thought that no one would notice, since The Island it failed to make much of an impression and considering how short both shots are. At the time of the release of Dark of the Moon, the repeated footage upset some moviegoers, who were upset that Bay’s first fully 3D film contained two converted shots. Since both Bay’s films and those of Transformers have survived the popularity of 3D, this no longer seems a concern. However, Bay’s willingness to steal from himself is a curiosity.

Dark of the Moon It was not the first time that Michael Bay recycled images from another film

Dark of the Moon reusing images of The Island isn’t the only example of Michael Bay copying and pasting from his own catalog. The director did exactly the same thing four years before the release of Dark of the Moon with the first movie Transformerswhich used a take from Bay’s 2001 hit, Pearl Harbor. As in the example of Dark of the Moonthe recycled intake of Transformers It’s very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. However, the film clearly reuses footage of a large ship previously seen in Bay’s war epic.

Michael Bay’s habit of stealing from his own work may seem unnecessary, especially considering how much Transformers as Transformers: Dark of the Moon They had budgets of around $200 million. While Bay could be accused of being stingy or lazy, the practice is largely harmless. In both cases, Bay was not guilty of plagiarism since the rights to the films involved were owned by the same studio. Plus, it takes thousands of takes to create a movie. If only one or two of them are recycled, it doesn’t seem like a big crime.