“Transformers: Age of Extinction” open in theaters this Friday, guys, and from the horse’s mouth himself Michael Bay says, “The best way to see this movie is definitely in IMAX 3D. By far.” See it in the highest-priced version you can possibly watch it in? You don’t say! “Why? Because for one, we did technically-excellent 3D in this film,” he wrote on his website. “We conceived and shot this movie with 3D cameras. So many movies use 3D as an afterthought.”
A far cry from his 2009 statements when he said, “I think 3D is going to be a fad. I personally don’t like 3-D. The glasses impair your peripheral vision.” But time and technology do improve. Meanwhile, remember when Michael Bay was attacked by an air-conditioning-wielding zombie in Hong Kong on set of ‘Age Of Extinction’? Well, Bay now says he might’ve instigated the brawl.
“I might have started the fight,” he told Collider. “This guy was extorting us. He really screwed up my shoot for two-and-a-half hours, and we’re very organized. When we come to a location, we spend a year coming in, we pay off all the store owners, everyone got a very fair wage for their little shops. This guy had a shit-burger shop. He sold parts of air conditioning—it was junk. You look in there and it was just junk. And he had this saw, it was like metal, and he was just grinding it. And he’s yelling, and he’s wacked out on drugs, and he attacked one of my actors, he threw some bricks at some of my other crew.”
The short version is this guy wanted more money than all the other vendors wanted, and Bay said no. “So an hour later he came by my crew as we were shooting, carrying a long air conditioner unit. He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away. That’s when the security jumped on him. But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a zombie in Brad Pitt’s movie ‘World War Z’—he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them. He actually bit into one of the guards Nike shoe, insane. Thank god it was an Air Max, the bubble popped, but the toe was saved.”
Thank god, indeed. And finally, where will all the Transformers and Mark Wahlberg and his family go for ‘Transformers 5’? Bay is thinking Europe might be a nice change of pace and specifically Paris (but what will they do about all the lack of American flags in shots?). Don’t forget that ‘Age Of Extinction’ is a whopping 165 minutes long, so make sure to hit the bathroom before it starts (or plan accordingly). Below, a new clip, and four new TV spots and more (apparently they’re on TV spot #26). “Transformers: Age of Extinction” opens on 4,000 screens this weekend and many are betting it can beat “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” for the biggest opening weekend of 2014.
