8 Subtle Ways Michael Bay's Movies Are Even Worse Than You Thought

3. Brutish Product Placement

Every major movie has product placement. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was pretty blatant with its endorsement of Chevrolet and people recently went crazy over a Turkish airlines ad shoehorned into a Batman V Superman trailer because it gives us a new shot of Wonder Woman. It's just a rule of Hollywood. But Bay seems insistent to draw attention to it to a horrible extent. Transformers was built on this - not content with it being a big merchandising exercise, the movie is full of more brands that a shopping mall - but by the fourth film (Age Of Extinction for the two of you keeping track) is got nasty. The placement was obvious, almost mocking the audience, and used in increasingly nasty manners. 13 Hours has nothing quite as bad as Mark Wahlberg trashing an innocent guys car to smash open a Bud Light, but it still has copious swinging shots of cars lined up like they're ready to sell and a key emotional scene playing out in a McDonalds drive-tru (an achievement for a film set in Libya). He either doesn't realise it neuters a movie's integrity or is so in the respective company's pockets that he doesn't care. And neither of those is a very attractive solution.