Here's the new ad:

And here are his previous contributions to the Victoria's Secret advertising ouevre:

Bay, Kurtzman and Orci's Batman
Pros: You'd get a new Batman movie every two years, even if Michael Bay would complain and tell people that he didn't want to make it but the studio offered him so much money he couldn't say no. Plus, with Bay attached, you know that they'd get to Catwoman as soon as humanly possible instead of this whole "I am a nihilist Joker" crap from The Dark Knight.
Cons: Kurtzman and Orci would probably take their Daddy issues (Fringe's Walter/Peter complicated relationship, Star Trek's Kirk trying to live up to his dead father's memory by self-destructing but then coming through as the hero he was destined to be, even Transformers' Optimus as Tough-But-Fair Robot Daddy to Shia's Sam Whitwicky) to pop culture's most parent-obsessed character, leading to the risk of a third act emotional breakthrough where Batman cries. There are enough Batman characters to make Revenge Of The Fallen seem understaffed, and the various personality tics of said Batman characters could lead to more unfunny schtick like the Twins and/or Jazz from the Transformers movies. Michael Bay possibly already sees himself as Bruce Wayne. Also, there's every possibility that the movie would make no sense whatsoever (See: Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen).

JJ Abrams' Terminator
Pros: Abrams' sense of kinetic, fun filmmaking is just what the franchise needs after Terminator Salvation - He's a sci-fi nerd who knows how to make successful popcorn movies full of tech that are really all about people; in other words, he's a younger James Cameron, before Cameron fell more in love with the tech involved in making movies. A Terminator-ized "Bad Robot" logo would be awesome. There'd probably be a Simon Pegg cameo.
Cons: Abrams' inability to not have a happy ending would mean that Skynet would be completely defeated by the time he was done, whether it was a movie or trilogy. The time travel core concept would allow him to reboot the series whenever he wanted, with Zachary Quinto as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. There'd probably be a Keri Russell cameo. Actually, fuck the cons. I really want to see Abrams do Terminator, the more I think about it.

Christopher Nolan's GI Joe
Pros: If anyone could give GI Joe some critical credibility, it's Christopher Nolan.
Cons: Nolan's attempt would probably be called A Real American Hero and would likely be three hours long, most of which would be spent filled with actors who should know better (Yes, Gary Oldman, we're looking at you) telling the audience how difficult it is to be a real American hero in a morally ambiguous world. There would be at least one subplot about abuse of military power to underscore the moral ambiguity until we move into the third act when the audience needs to get pumped and then Duke would abuse military power to stop the bad guy and then walk away in disgust in order to make a point that will be lost on the majority of an audience who were excited to see shit blow up finally. Cobra Commander would be so compelling that you'll start to wonder if he's wandered on set from a different, better, movie. Purists would complain about Snake Eyes' closing monologue about how difficult it is to be a ninja in the US military. No child would ever want to buy a GI Joe toy ever again.

Bryan Singer's Transformers
Pros: Singer's mix of geek cred and understanding of human drama/cheap angst is exactly what the Robots in Disguise need. His X-Men movies show that he can deal with large casts, and also keep the core of the original concepts and characters without getting weighed down by nostalgia. His Superman Returns shows that he, uh... knows Kevin Spacey, who could probably do a good Megatron voice? Okay, maybe not that last one.
Cons: Tom Cruise would end up playing Optimus Prime, and Ian McKellen would cameo as the Matrix of Leadership/Allspark/Creation Matrix/whatever the hell it's called these days. Singer would leave before the last film in the trilogy to go and make a Go-Bots movie about Leader-1 really being Jesus and stalking his ex-girlfriend.

McG's Dollhouse
Pros: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!
Cons: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!

In these clips from next week's DVD release, we get a peek at trying to film in Egypt, blowing up a college campus and the enduring mythology of the Transformers in their 25th anniversary year.

Best part? Megan Fox sharing that Michael Bay is about as fun-loving as we'd expect.

"There's no, like, 'Oh, he would like for us to try (a scene) at least.' That's not it, - we weren't giving the option.
"You do it, or something bad is gonna happen to you."

Revenge of the Fallen's release comes hand-in-hand with the 25th anniversary of the toys, and that fact is reflected in the DVD and Blu-Ray releases next Tuesday.

Separately, another DVD box set called Transformers: The Matrix Of Leadership Collector's Set comes out on Oct. 20 and offers a retrospective on the original cartoons, including some rare PSAs and complete annotated scripts for some episodes. Here are four clips the studio released, which include Bumblebee playing video games, Dinobots in training, and Starscream on the run:

On the two-disc Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen DVD, there are five special features.

The first is called The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen, a documentary chronicling the entire creation of the film and featuring interviews with the cast and crew. The doc is separated into chapters discussing the design of the film, Bay's extraordinary military access, and of course a portion devoted to the visual effects full of fun facts.

For example, on Fallen, the effects for Devastator alone required 83% of Industrial Light & Magic's total render capacity. The special goes in depth about ILM's design of the robots for the sequel and the differences from the first.

Other features include:

• A Day with Bay: Tokyo - An intimate and fun all-access journey with Michael Bay as he travels to Tokyo, Japan for the world premiere of the biggest film of the year.
• 25 Years of TRANSFORMERS - Access an all-new featurette celebrating a monumental milestone for one of Hasbro's most successful and popular franchises.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub - Explore conceptual artwork created by the production for 12 of the most popular AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS from the film.
• Deconstructing Visual Bayhem with Commentary by Pre-Vis Supervisor
Steve Yamamoto - A series of multi-angle pre-visualization sequences allowing viewers to learn how some of the film's most spectacular scenes were created with an introduction by Michael Bay.

On the DVD version, NEST is an interactive feature similar to one you'd find on a DVD-ROM, covering a few robots and allowing the user to learn about each of the Transformers. The Blu-Ray version covers the robots' history, from their first appearance to those (if any) in the original animated series and comics and finally in recent films.

The Blu-Ray also features a crew-made film, appropriately titled "Giant Effing Movie," their own take on making the movie. Also, there is "The ALLSPARK Experiment."

Viewers get their chance to unleash the power of the recently recovered ALLSPARK shard on Earth vehicles. Begin by selecting and customizing a vehicle with a selection of parts and accessories. Then apply the ALLSPARK to this creation and watch what happens. Applying the ALLSPARK to certain custom combinations enables four new robot characters with special powers. If viewers discover all four, they unlock a fifth vehicle, which reveals a top secret message about the future of the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise.

Ooooh, is that what foretells the death of Fox in T3?

InTouch Magazine is reporting that after Megan Fox talked smack about the Transformers crew, and vice versa, the director Michael Bay has decided to put an end to this silly squabble once and for all.

"Michael's pretty much discovered Megan and now he's very quietly looking for her replacement," said the insider. "He hasn't decided if he's going to kill her off in the next movie, but he just wants to be prepared."

Some sources are even claiming Fox's character, Mikayla, will be killed off towards the start of the next movie, just to set a cheery tone.

Granted this is a tabloid, so grain of salt people. But then again, she did kind of blow off an entire crew, so I can see why'd they'd all want her head before wreaking destruction on yet another robot heaven set. Plus isn't it time for a human to die, what with the murdering of Jazz and a few others? Time for human blood.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman explained to reporters at the Paramount DVD junket that they left Transformers 3 simply because they were spent on the subject matter. By contrast, the two are diving into the View-Master movie, and they've got a strong story to provide a vehicle for the toy.

"We've been working on Transformers for longer than I was in college," Orci said. "I feel like we have our degree in Transformers now."

Alex added: "The franchise is so wonderful that it deserves to be fresh, all the time. We just felt like we'd given it a lot and didn't have an insight for where to go with it next, and said, 'You should do it right.'

Which isn't to say the studio didn't want the duo back. Bob said Paramount and Hasbro were more than happy to have them back, but that without an idea, the writers wanted the story to stay strong and so they're handing over the reins.

Meanwhile, they're working on a movie based on the classic View-Master toy. And yes, they fully grasp the absurdity of that statement.

Alex said they hear the critics, but they fully expect to surpass all expectations. The writers were approached with a story without any connection to the toy, and it sounds like they simply dropped the toy in there for a better story.

"What I'll say is that some toys should be movies and some toys should not be movies, and I'd like to believe we know the difference between those things. The movies that work, work when there's a story there that you could take the toy out of. But then, when you put the toy in, it becomes an even more amazing experience, for whatever reason."

He added, "If you want to be cynical about View-Master, great, because we're so confident in where it's going to end up going that we feel like there's nowhere to go but up."

Posting to his blog, Bay revealed that work is already underway for the third in the Giant Robots In Disguise series:

Well its official: We have a great Transformers 3 story. The release date is now July 1st 2011. Not 2012.

Today is Day One. This morning started with an ILM meeting for five hours in San Francisco. Currently I'm flying with writer Ehren Kruger to Rhode Island to talk to Hasbro about new characters.

P.S. Megan Fox, welcome back. I promise no alien robots will harm you in any way during the production of this motion picture. Please consult your Physician when working under my direction because some side effects can occur, such as mild dizziness, intense nausea, suicidal tendencies, depression, minor chest hair growth, random internal hemorrhaging and inability to sleep. As some directors may be hazardous to your health, please consult your Doctor to determine if this is right for you.

For fans of large scale explosions that render things like "coherent plot" worthless, this can only be a good thing. Guess Bay realized that he liked that whole "getting paid a lot of money" thing after all.

Transformers 3: July 1st, 2011 [Shoot For The Edit]

First up, this new concept art from Ben Proctor's work on Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, is utterly beautiful. There's no doubt about that. So when did the writers, director of producers just decide, "You know what? Let's go to Egypt, and to hell with plots — we'll have these King people just make a coffin house out of their bodies, that works right?"

It's almost a shame how beautiful some of the concept art is, because we never really got to appreciate the finished product with everything moving so fast and Shia going to robot heaven and all.

But even more interesting is this concept design of the Cement Mixer, with Brendan Gleeson's face next to it? Um....why? I love that they picked a totally random actor to inspire this also totally random transformer. I wish they had done it with all the bots, it could have made them stand out more while on screen.

While promoting Jennifer's Body, Megan Fox unleashed the latest in her long line of faux-controversial statements intended to get her as much attention as humanly possible, when asked about working with Transformers director Bay:

He's like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him.

Fox's comments weren't considered so endearing by the crew who'd worked on Transformers, and they wrote a letter in response, which was posted on Bay's website. Here're some "high"lights:

Michael found this shy, inexperienced girl, plucked her out of total obscurity thus giving her the biggest shot of any young actresses' life. He told everyone around to just trust him on his choice. He granted her the starring role in Transformers, a franchise that forever changed her life; she became one of the most googled and oogled women on earth. She was famous! She was the next Angelina Jolie, hooray! Wait a minute, two of us worked with Angelina – second thought – she's no Angelina. You see, Angelia is a professional.

We know this quite intimately because we've had the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox on both Transformers movies. We've spent a total of 12 months on set making these two movies... Megan has the press fooled. When we read those magazines we wish we worked with that woman. Megan knows how to work her smile for the press. Those writers should try being on set for two movies, sadly she never smiles. The cast, crew and director make Transformers a really fun and energetic set. We've traveled around the world together, so we have never understood why Megan was always such – the grump of the set?

So when the three of us caught wind of Ms Fox, pontificating yet again in some publication (like she actually has something interesting to say) blabbing her trash mouth about a director whom we three have grown to really like. She compared working with Michael, to "working with Hitler". We actually don't think she knows who Hitler is by the way.

And who is the real Megan Fox? She is very different than the academy nominee and winning actors we've all worked around. She's as about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom. She shows little interest in the crew members around her. We work to make her look good in every way, but she's absolutely never appreciative of anyone's hard work. Never a thank you. All the crewmembers have stopped saying hi to Ms. Princess because she never says hello back. It gets tiring. Many think she just really hates the process of being an actress... Megan really is a thankless, classless, graceless, and shall we say unfriendly bitch. It's sad how fame can twist people, and even sadder that young girls look up to her. If only they knew who they're really looking up to.

(You can read the whole thing here.)

After people started noticing the letter and wondering if the whole thing was some bizarro publicity ploy, it disappeared from Bay's site and was replaced with this zen commentary from the man himself:

I don't condone the crew letter to Megan. And I don't condone Megan's outlandish quotes. But her crazy quips are part of her crazy charm. The fact of the matter I still love working with her, and I know we still get along. I even expect more crazy quotes from her on Transformers 3.

Internally, of course, he's trimming his metaphorical moustache and preparing revenge on Fox for her non-"condoned" quotes. But we can't help but feel that everyone comes out of this well - Fox gets her publicity and seems "edgy" again, Bay appears to be the peacemaker who can take being called Hitler in his stide, and suddenly we're talking about Transformers again. Job well done, crazy Hollywood rumor mill!

Variety reports that Bay and Dreamworks have brought Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Miller on board to script I Am Number Four, the Bay-produced adaptation of A Million Little Pieces author James Frey's new novel (co-written with Jobie Hughes) announced a couple of months ago.

Four, due to be published later this year by HarperCollins, is the first novel in a young adult series about a group of aliens who escape the destruction of their home planet and disguise themselves as teenagers on Earth, only to discover that those responsible for the destruction of their homeworld have followed them and are hunting for them on their adopted planet. It's still unknown if Bay will direct the movie, although it's expected that Steven Spielberg will come onboard to co-produce.

Gough, Millar Adapt SciFi for Bay [Variety]

Talking to IESB, the director said,

Obviously, Michael Bay had tremendous success following Transformers, in a very short window. Sometimes people like to take time off, but I'm excited about the next installation of the story, in the Terminator idea. So, for me, it's terribly exciting to get back out there and show a different face of that idea, and perhaps get out of the apocalyptic world and into a contemporary world. I think the audience is going to be very excited about our way in.

Is that a hint that the next movie will abandon Salvation's "No time travel! All apocalypse all the time!" hook for a return to the traditional set-up of the first three movies?

Meanwhile, McG's also busily listening to critics of the last movie and setting up straw-man arguments to respond to:

I listen to everything. It's interesting because a lot of people don't like me, but a lot of people just don't like my name. I can't take that too seriously because that's been my name my whole life. It's not something that I prescribed myself.

Really? Your parents really called you "McG"? You didn't come up with that one yourself?

McG Tells IESB He's Currently Prepping Terminator 5 and Says He's Taken his Lumps in Stride [IESB]

As Michael Bay's second Transformers movie slowly crushes all opposition, the Wall Street Journal notes that projections are for Transformers owner Hasbro to sell 25% more Transformers-related toys than they did during the first movie's boom period, offering up anywhere between $550 million and $595 million (at least) in revenue. Except not all of that money will go into Hasbro's pockets, despite their owning the franchise.

The relationship between Dreamworks/Paramount, Hasbro and Michael Bay is oddly incestuous when it comes to money. Dreamworks/Paramount, of course, have to pay Hasbro a license fee to use the Transformers brand and characters in the first place, but in turn, Hasbro has to give up money on movie-related merchandise; many people have already made a big deal out of Bay's profit-sharing on the Transformers movies - He'll make way more than his $75 million share from the profits of the $708 million-grossing first movie on Fallen - but he also makes an estimated 8% of the profit of every movie-related toy released, as well.

Considering that Bay is heading towards a payday of somewhere in the region of (and this is more than a little conservative) at least $150 million in addition to his actual fee for directing Revenge of The Fallen, two things become clear - Firstly, that Bayhem is an extremely lucrative career, and secondly, that - desire to do something smaller or not - there's almost no way that Bay will be able to refuse the lure of a similar pay day with a third installment.

Talking to the Wall Street Journal, Bay repeated that he's not looking to jump into the next Transformers movie right away despite Dreamworks' announced release date:

I just want to take some time off. It's been almost three years that I've devoted myself entirely to this world of robots. At some point, enough is enough-and I literally carried this movie on my back. I only finished it in the last week [before release... but] I don't know who [would] want to take on my shoes with this franchise. We might just take a year down.

One thing you shouldn't expect from a Bay-directed Transformers 3 will be 3-D, apparently:

I prefer the flat screen. I'm not jumping to do 3-D at all-it's a pain in the neck to shoot it and I actually like the flat image. I've heard that some people can't even see 3-D and, moreover, that a major side effect of watching it is feeling exhausted. Can you imagine how you'd feel watching one of my movies in 3-D?

And, judging from the tone of his comments about Transformers star Megan Fox, maybe we shouldn't expect her in the third movie, either:

She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, "Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it." But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in "Armageddon." Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did "Transformers"-and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from "Bad Boys." Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in "Transformers."

He made you and he can break you, Megan. Not that he's outright saying that last part, or anything. Well, only kinda sorta.

Master of Machines [Wall Street Journal]

In honor of the latest example of Bay's cinematic genius, Twitter spent Wednesday offering up evidence of the director's more heroic qualities, inspired by Fake Michael Bay himself:

justinmilam: Michael Bay once made an explosion so big it never went out, we now call it the sun

ashwinpande: Michael Bay wears special glasses which help him see the real world exploding in CGI and dollar signs all the time.

scriptdreric: Before sex, Michael Bay always says in his best Sean Connery voice, "Welcome to the Rock."

lucascarlisle: Michael Bay makes the best ribs because his BBQ only has one setting - slow motion.

Spidey004: Michael Bay makes approximately $175 million on every one of his bowel movements (which smell a little bit like popcorn).

BobCervantes: For his morning workout, Michael Bay blows up buildings and runs away from the explosions.

mroberts940: Michael Bay lost his virginity before his dad did.

mrbs: Michael Bay was preceeded down the birth canal by a dove in slow motion. And followed by a column of flame.

eddidit: The real reason there are so many tornadoes in the Midwest is because Michael Bay is allergic to cats.

Aimee_B_Loved: Michael Bay has 2 speeds: Slow motion and on fire.

Obvious jokes? Yes. Cheap humor? You betcha. But admit it: Somewhere, you're as convinced as I am that the real Michael Bay is sitting back, loving the attention.

Michael Bay Facts [Twitter]

The two films lying ahead of Michael Bay's giant robot sequel are 2005's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith and last year's The Dark Knight, demonstrating that genre sequels are apparently the way to go get a big opening number at the box office. Transformers' haul was only $2.5 million below The Dark Knight's $18.5 million, and the two movies flip positions when it comes to IMAX screens - Transformers took that particular top spot with $1 million, against Dark Knight's previous record of $675,000.

Coming so soon after last weekend's stunning international debut, the question is now whether the movie will turn out to be critic- and word-of-mouth-proof, and if so, whether we're looking at the movie that's going to dominate the summer.

'Transformers' rakes in $16 million [Hollywood Reporter]

Oh, and I would warn you that there'll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I'm not sure how much I can spoil it.

Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.

Michael Bay understands that summer movies are about two things: male anxiety, and pure id. That's why he casts Shia LaBoeuf, that supreme avatar of pure male inadequacy, in the lead role. LaBoeuf projects a pathetic, wall-eyed dorkhood, when he's not babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen's prostate that somehow achieved sentience. I imagine the DVD of ROTF will include a whole disk of outtakes where they had to stop filming because LaBoeuf was drooling on camera. As it is, the film includes several extreme closeups of LaBoeuf's dazed stare.

Where was I? Oh yes. So LaBoeuf, who's actually a fine actor, is the stand-in for the male viewers' greatest fears about themselves. No matter how great a loser they might be, they can't be as losery a loser as Sam Witwicky. And yet, Sam has awesome giant robots stomping around telling him he's the most important awesome person ever. And he has the hottest girlfriend in the universe, Megan Fox, for whom banality is a huge aphrodisiac. The more pathetic Sam gets, the more Fox's lips pout and her nipples point, like little Irish setters.

To make matters more awesome for the insecure males in the audience, Sam actually tosses aside his giant robot fanclub and his walking-pinup girlfriend, so he can have a normal life. Of course, this only leads to other robots and hawt chicks (who turn out to be robots too) throwing themselves at him and telling him how important he is. In the end, everybody learns to appreciate Sam just a bit more than they already did, and a booming voice tells him he's earned the "matrix of leadership" through his courage and stuff.

And then there's the "id" part, which is the part where stuff blows up real good, and huge machines smash each other up. And every single performance is so ridiculous that it looks down on "over the top" as if from a great height. It's the part of your brain that thinks it would be awesome to see robots with giant dangling testicles, or hot chicks turning into robot tentacle monsters, or "ghetto" robots that talk in inept hip-hop slang and smash each other playfully, or funny Jewish men who talk about their "schmear" and randomly strip to their G-strings. Is that going too far? Then let's go 100 times farther than that and see what happens!

Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement.

And yet — and here's the part where I really think ROTF approaches "art movie" status — the movie's id overload reaches such crazy levels that the fabric of reality itself starts to break down. Michael Bay has boasted about how every single shot in the movie has so much stuff going on in it, it would take your PC since the dawn of time to render one frame. After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul. Nothing is solid, nothing is real, everything Transforms.

The closest thing I can think of to this movie is the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, which had a similar kind of CG image overload, although it was only five hours long as opposed to ROTF's nine.

And around hour six of ROTF, something curious happens: the two components — male enhancement and pure id — start to clash, badly. Usually, in a summer movie, the two aspects go together like tits and ass: Jason Statham plays someone who faces the same insecurities as regular dudes, but he overcomes them, and in the process he blows up everything in the world. But creating that kind of fusion requires enslaving the id to the male enhancement, and that in turn means only going way over the top instead of crazy, stratospheric over the top. Michael Bay is not willing to settle for going way over the top, like other directors.

So you have a movie that tries to reassure men that they can actually be masters of their reality — but then turns around and says that actually, reality is not real. There's no such thing as the "real world," and the only thing that's left for men to dominate is a nebulous domain of blurred shapes, which occasionally blurt nonsensical swear-words and slang from ethnic groups that have never existed. If you're drowning in an Olympic swimming pool full of hot chewing gum fondue, do you still care if Megan Fox likes you?

So yes, ROTF approaches the sublime, and then just keeps rocketing. Next stop: total anarchy. In a sense, it's the first war movie ever to convey a real sense of the fog of war, the confusion that comes with battle. Somewhere around hour nine, you will understand why friendly fire happens in wartime.

So I've gotten almost all the way through this review, and I still haven't summarized the movie's plot. Here goes. It's a couple years after the first movie, and Sam is going off to college, leaving his transforming car and his hot girlfriend, whom he still hasn't told he loves her. And meanwhile, the soldiers from the first movie are running around with a bunch of late-model GM cars and trucks, which turn into robots and fight other robots sometimes. Sam sees weird symbols which make no sense (and they still make no sense at the end of the movie) and they turn out to be the key to the location of a thing that can control another thing, that will enable the bad guys to destroy the sun. Sam has to embrace the heroic destiny he's rejected, so he can save us all from solarcide.

But that bare plot summary doesn't include the twenty or thirty other storylines that could also claim to be the movie's plot. There's the whole thing where someone from Washington D.C. wonders why the U.S. military is running around the globe with a bunch of late-model GM cars from outer space, and tries to put the kibosh on the military-Autobot complex. There's the teenager who's got a conspiracy website, that competes with another conpsiracy website which turns out to be the work of a secret agent who's decided that the best way to keep things secret is to put them on a website. (It works. I post secret stuff on io9 all the time.) Various robots die and then come back to life, and there's a whole strand about whether Decepticons (the bad ones) can become Autobots (the good ones). And there's the Fallen, who's sort of the movie's villain even though he barely shows up. And people from 17,000 BC who had weird teeth and fought robots. And the ancient Egyptians did stuff. And Sam's parents go to France except that they meet a robot and then they're in Egypt.

Really, I could go on and on. This movie starts out with a coherent storyline, for the first half hour or so, and then it just starts to spin faster and faster until the centrifuge of random events slams you into the walls. It doesn't help that there are 500 robots in the movie and they all look kind of the same.

Oh, but that's the other thing about ROTF. It's actually quite funny, a lot of the time. Some of the jokes fall flat, like the "twin" robots with the ghetto speak, and a lot of the stuff with John Turturro. But the movie's relentless silliness is mostly pretty hilarious, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, and almost nothing in the movie seems intended to be taken seriously.

So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF.

Women as well as men, everyone watching this film will feel the dissolution of all their certainties, all their illusory grasp on the world... but after you fall into a brazen despair that the walls of reality have become toxic ice cream of a million flavors, you will gasp with a greater realization: that once the world is reduced, forever, to a kaleidoscope of whirling shapes, you are totally free. Nothing matters, effect precedes cause, fish spawn in mid-air, and you can do whatever you want. Let yourself go in your adult diaper, Michael Bay invites you. Feel the music of total excess stir inside your deepest core. It is your Allspark, your cube. And you are a Transformer.

FREAKY WEATHER:
Yeah, it's raining tadpoles in Asia. You gotta take care of that.



STAR WARS ARCHITECTURE: This week we learned how much Star Wars influenced modern architecture, but I wanted to point out a couple of important examples that were left out.
More than meets the London Eye as it were...


And who can forget Bollywood's excitement for the re-releases. They added some much needed improvements to one of their most famous landmarks. R2's head even projects a little film about the building's history!


And did you know that George Washington was not only our founding father but the 2nd biggest Star Wars fan ever? I say second biggest because the biggest fan ever was...


STOP IT SNORG:
... this guy!!



VINTAGE DISASTER:
With Transformers 2 coming out this week I want to take a moment to remember the good old days of terror before we discovered that Transformers would be the finest example of rock em sock em robotry to meet the silver screen. The days of FLAMES ON OPTIMUS?! BEE IS A CAMARO?! And of course... Transformers In Name Only.


MICHAEL BAY IS AWESOME:
Seriously. They have begun scientific testing on Michael Bay and are beginning to prove that awesome is just hardwired into his biology. There is nothing he can do about it. Look at this example. Scientists are hoping they can develop a drug, or at least a therapeutic routine, from these studies that can be administered to individuals who fail to Shut Up and Eat Their Awesome.



CURRENT DISASTER:
The upcoming film Event Horizon 2 changed its title this week and released a new poster showing off some of its assets as it were.



Later kids. This is Garrison Dean signing off.

Promoting Fallen, Bay has been saying that he longs for quieter, less Bayhem-filled projects, entirely devoid of anything more than meets the eye:

After the three and a half years I've spent making these movies, I feel like I've had enough of the Transformers world. I need to do something totally divergent, something without any explosions.

Given that Bay has already claimed that his comments were "press spin" and that he just meant a vacation, it's fair to say that his bluff may have been called by Paramount already. But, let's face it - if Bay did walk, how much of a hiccup would that really cause for Paramount's announced 2011 date for the third movie? We're unconvinced that Bay is irreplaceable for the franchise, especially if writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman can be persuaded to stick around for the third act. As much as we enjoy Bay's over-the-top action sequences and pyrotechnics, the hard work of designing the world of the movie robots has already been done in the first two movies, and various big budget movie franchises from Harry Potter to Batman have managed to change directors without impacting the box office too much (Of course, it could always end up being another X-Men: The Last Stand...). Would a Zack Snyder or even a McG (Now, there would be a decisive victory in this summer's quasi McG/Bay egofest... Although, for which side, we're not sure) be able to step in and take the franchise to all new heights... and, as long as the robots remain giant and violent, would anyone even notice?

Bay To Quit Transformers [WENN/Yahoo News]

Both clips run just over a minute and are dubbed in German, but then, who watches Michael Bay films to grok the dialogue? Not us. We merely demand things to be AWESOME!

The first clip is a too-cute, Gremlins-y scene with Wheelie that illustrates the build-a-better-moustrap adage and is redeemed by a few moments with Megan Fox. (Turns out she's just as hotttt in German; maybe more so, if you pick up a little dominatrix vibe amid her stern Teutonic consonants... Wait, where were we?)

The second is a conventional battle scene involving humans and robots, with Josh Duhamel leading what appears to be an international squadron in combat at a construction site in Asia:

So, having seen the clips, who's inspired to get in line now for Transformers 2? And who thinks that a typically incoherent Michael Bay narrative would be much more fun to watch in German? [via Superhero Hype]