Michael Bay apologizes that Armageddon did not have the thoughtful denouement you'd expect from Michael Bay

By Sean O'Neal | April 22, 2013 | 9:56pm

Aux Features Film

Adding a somberly reflective coda to a squealing guitar solo of a career, blurred visionary Michael Bay has sifted through the hastily toppled rubble of his oeuvre, and discovered at least one charred reminder of a time he wished things had exploded differently. “I will apologize for Armageddon,” Bay said to the Miami Herald—a statement that was, in typical Bay fashion, an unexpected cut-away from a larger discussion about the upcoming Pain & Gain, and how it differs from his past films by giving audiences great, whopping seconds at a time to look at things. Still, Bay argues, “If you could do a graph on my movies, you would see how my editing has slowed down over the years.” And that creative evolution would surely have happened even sooner, were it not for several things that happened on Armageddon—things that Bay then proceeded to point out in rapid, bludgeoning succession before quickly moving on to something else.

“We had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking,” Bay said of the production, which was likely accelerated by having to compete with the similar Deep Impact. “That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’” Bay then took a hard right into saying, “But the movie did fine,” speeding away from thinking about this much longer than necessary or than could be handily blamed, as with his sort-of apology for Transformers 2, on the quick pace of the deadline forced upon him. Because if there’s one thing that we know about Michael Bay, it’s that he likes to take things slow.