Michael Bay is a patriot. If he wasn't a filmmaker, he'd make his own flags out of leather while driving down a high street in an SUV and firing a gun in the air. And his movies bask in that - they are American Movies, through-and-through. In Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, the big weapon is destroyed not by the robots, but the US military. In Armageddon a bunch of blue collar workers save the entire world. In 13 Hours, six heroes from 'Murica represent an entire way of life. Yet there's another side to the films that reveals something; all this flag-framing is accompanied with a massive mistrust of authority. US officials with their "procedure" and "rules" get in the way of all of his love of slow-cooked ribs glazed with the sweat of real American soldiers. 13 Hours can't form a coherent argument against anything that happened in Benghazi, which means that any attack on US policy skips political agenda and attacks at the heart of America regardless of party allegiance. In Transformers: Age Of Extinction this was even played up against an overall love for the Chinese government (even if that just was to sell tickets). It leaves the movies a conflicting moral mess and shows that, if you ever for a second thought he was tying to make some grand, pro-Republican argument across his filmography, that he's actually far too inept for that. What do you make of Michael Bay's movies? Do these tricks make you want to claw your eyes out or do you actually respect his directorial style? Sound off down in the comments.
