The Schlock-Off: Michael Bay vs. Roland Emmerich

Hollywood is all about imitation. If something relatively unique makes a lot of money, that film is going to be replicated so many times that it becomes the new norm. While Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film Independence Day may not have been revolutionary per se, it popularized the Hollywood notion that millions upon millions of dollars could be made if a film did one thing really, really well: blow things up. And not just things; preferably large metropolises. Within that formula, Independence Day was kind of perfect. Not only do things explode; they explode convincingly, and when the explosions come they carry quite a bit of meaning. I do not mean to call that film a dramatic powerhouse, but it carries its disaster with the appropriate weight.

It can be argued that without Emmerich’s film, we wouldn’t have many of the overblown summer blockbuster films we have today. Mostly, the oeuvre of Michael Bay would likely be dramatically different. There are shades of Emmerich in many of Bay’s films—particularly the disaster portions of Armageddon and the Transformers trilogy-and-counting—so a comparison is inevitable. Some people even equate the two, as their films may appear similar in theory. However, when one looks beneath the surface, the two handle their action in very different ways. Neither is a great director, but Emmerich is the better one, and by a long shot. Where Bay looks to entertain his audience by exhausting them, Emmerich instead looks to awe them. Which sounds like a more pleasant time to you?

I will begin by admitting that Bay and Emmerich are similar in one key way: their films have the same effect on the human brain as a sledgehammer to the forehead. Neither has made a movie worthy of Academy Award talk, and their relative attempts at prestige pictures (The Patriot for Emmerich, which I’ve seen, and Pearl Harbor for Bay, which I haven’t) ended up being more silly than anything. Yet Emmerich’s silliness is far more palatable than Bay’s for one simple reason: he understands that a good director needs to think in sequences rather than shots. Think back to Bay’s last couple Transformers films: the action scenes are incoherent jumbles, and the only images you really remember come from specific shots. Remember the context to those shots? Didn’t think so. Bay is so concerned with making individual moments look cool that the ultimate impact is diminished to nothing.

A good action setpiece requires that the audience know the geography of the film’s environment, and where the various characters/robots/aliens are in relation to one another. When watching the Chicago sequences in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I found myself deciphering the action scenes rather than enjoying them. Part of this has to do with the incomprehensible geometry of the Transformers themselves, but most of it has to with Bay’s method of presenting action. While one shot may coerce mild appreciation out of the viewer, the next will have them trying to guess what’s going on. Sometimes if you want to create memorable action, you need to use a few establishing shots.

This may seem like a digression, but stay with me. I am a big fan of Never Not Funny, a weekly podcast by comedian Jimmy Pardo. Way back—and I mean waaaaaay back—in December 2010, he had fellow comedian Andy Daly on as a guest. Sharp-eyed viewers of Transformers: Dark of the Moon will know that Daly briefly appears as an office worker who presumably is killed by a Decepticon copy machine. (You can’t make this stuff up.)  During this episode of the podcast, he briefly described his time working on Michael Bay’s set. While he has nothing outright negative to say about Bay, he discussed one particular instance which provides a glimpse at the method behind Bay’s madness:

“I didn’t know when the movie was going to come out when we were shooting Transformers 3, but I am in a scene where there’s a bunch of people packed into an elevator. We get onto the elevator, and the elevator doors close . . . The elevators are closing too slowly for Michael Bay, and he just yells ‘It’s the fourth of July! Nobody wants to watch a bunch of people standing in an elevator so close the door!’” – Andy Daly

Bay seems to be a film believer in not wasting a moment for anything. While in many respects that’s admirable—he certainly seems to know what he’s doing—this is not a process which leads to good film. In fact, he almost seems to be too concerned with assaulting the audience with his “unique” brand of entertainment. Every shot has to be a money shot with Bay; he’s far less interested in building a sequence up to an ultimate climax or catharsis.

In contrast, Roland Emmerich is all about building things up, even if it’s sometimes to a fault. Unlike Bay, who films even his dialogue scenes with a hyperkinetic camera, Emmerich slows everything down so that the audience may take it all in. When the action eventually comes it is filmed from afar, with longer shots and a camera that barely moves an inch for anything. When we watch the White House explode in Independence Day, it is from a singular point and it seems to happen in a real, physical world. The extreme long shots of cities slowly being reduced to rubble are effective because we see the full impact. Even take a look at his later apocalyptic blockbusters The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. He wants the audience to observe the special effects rather than be thrust into them at top speed. Yes, each of those films is weaker than the last—ID4 is the gold standard of dumb, world-ending fun while the other two go too far down the “dumb” road—but I’d take a second viewing of 2012 over another Transformers film any day of the week.

Beyond the aesthetics of their respective films, the ultimate reason Emmerich is a superior filmmaker to Bay is something more intangible. Where Bay’s films come off as calculated commercial products, Emmerich’s films seem to have a childlike enthusiasm that is far more appealing. I will not pretend that Emmerich does not enjoy making money, but he seems to genuinely appreciate the joy of cinema more than Bay. To me, the two men have a very different definition of what constitutes a “fun” time at the movies. Bay, ever the caffeinated one, wants only to assault and be assaulted. The solution to any dull moment is to make it faster and more incoherent, because that—to him—is entertainment. Yet Emmerich recognizes that the best cinematic images are those which inspire reverence rather than a headache. As ridiculous a comparison as this is to make, think about the films of Terrence Malick: they are frequently recognized for their choice to slowly observe beautiful images through the use of a longer shot length. This is the approach Emmerich takes with his epic, city-destroying disasters. He never grows bored with a shot of a wave hitting New York City, and as a result the audience can more readily soak it all in. It is easier to be excited by what you see rather than what you cannot.

Last, there is the ultimate question which can be used to determine the greatness of just about any film: do I actually believe that what I see is happening? In the case of Emmerich at his best, the answer is a definitive “yes.” In the case of Bay, it is almost never the case. While I admit Emmerich’s later films used more CGI than physical effects, Independence Day in particular should be recognized because it almost never resorted to the computers when it didn’t have to. The buildings that explode because of the alien “death ray?” Those were actual models, actually blown up by actual explosives. This all brings it back to the Green Lantern question of weight: it is easier to believe a film when what we see is real. As useful as CGI can be, the audience can always, always tell when something is fake. Where Bay’s films consist of computer-generated conglomerations of metal fighting other computer-generated conglomerations of metal, Emmerich’s films—even when they rely on CGI—seem far more genuine.

As if I haven’t beaten it into the ground at this point, allow me to end with an analogy which—I hope—sums up my entire argument: Michael Bay seems like the kind of person who wants his fast food ready when he walks through the door. As a result, it’s not only unhealthy but shoddily made as well. Meanwhile, Emmerich would prefer that you make his food to order, and that you take your time to make sure all the ingredients are correct. You’re talking about fast food either way, yet Emmerich prefers his with a little more tender loving care. So long as inferior hacks like Bay are around, I will defend the superior schlock artistry of Emmerich until the end of time.