Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: Director Michael Bay Copy-Gate!

So Transformers: Dark of the Moon was lucky enough to secure July 4th’s weekend.  This was a complete travesty for Captain America: The First Avenger for obvious reasons.  If Buena Vista/Disney owns Marvel now, where were all those bucks to secure what many regard as the most profitable weekend for movies released during the summer?  Upon further review, the Cap Film has no Buena Vista production dollars behind it, merely Marvel Studios, Paramount and Universal (for Cap’s foreign country releases – which I don’t believe will see many favorable returns due to the US’s stellar reputation abroad).  So that explains why Spielberg and Bay get their way (because they ALWAYS get their way) and as a result, a sub-standard film which only sees a mild improvement over the atrocious (and equally profitable) Revenge of the Fallen still makes an absolute killing at the box office. 

But I’m less interested in how much money Transformers 3 made, and more interested about how Michael Bay copied some of the footage from a previous film of his (The Island – 2005) and pasted it in Dark of the Moon.  Apparently, the story is that a stunt woman was paralyzed while attempting some maneuver that Bay called for during the action sequence in question.  In the interest of dignity and class, Bay opted to not include any of those shots, and if that gentleman actually exhibited either of those two characteristics, I might actually believe him. 

Brandon Lee was killed during the filming of The Crow – 1994 (thank you Chinese Triads) and that’s the kind of tragedy that could scrub an entire production, decimate the distributor with litigation and pepper any number of individuals with any level of perceived culpability with death threats.  But that show went on, uncompromised. 

I don’t care if both Bay films have the Spielberg/Dreamworks connection to legally allow this copyright issue.  In this day and age of digital video, once the door is open to copy/paste, the slippery slope is revealed as an extreme way to save mega bucks on filming risky/expensive stunts by re-mixing old footage.  The reasons for why Bay did this are irrelevant to this much larger issue: namely, if ticket prices continue to be more and more expensive, why on Earth would anyone pay to see some special-effect-action film when they may have already seen it (in ANY capacity) before? 

Shame on Bay, but in all honesty, I’m not particularly surprised at this.  Don’t believe me?

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