Michael Bay Believed Transformers Was Terrible During Test Screenings

Paramount’s Transformers movies were a lot of things, but good films are not one of them.  Fans, and critics alike hated most, if not all, of the Bay helmed films. Funnily enough, the director knows that his films based on the Autobots and Decepticons were terrible. In a recent interview with Screen Rant, the Transformers director revealed that he went to test screenings for the film and that’s how he found out that they were terrible.

“I’m telling you, here’s a little trick. When directors go pre-screen their movies, we’re testing them, you see what [audiences] feel and whatnot, and I’ve got the sound thing there, you want to throw up,” Bay told the good folks at Screen Rant. “Every director wants to throw up the first time a big audience is looking at that thing. And you’ll see people walking down slowly in the test, and you want to grab them, ‘No, no, no. Hang on. There’s a big scene. If you miss this scene, you’re going to miss the whole thing.’ So it’s intense, like Transformers…So two houses, 400 people in each house, starting 15 minutes difference or something like that. I’m now watching it with a whole bunch of families and kids, and I’m like, ‘Okay, dumb robot movie. Oh my God. It’s just a kids’ movie. Oh, man. Oh, what did I do?’ It gets a huge score, and it was unfinished.”

Bay went on to reveal that he went to another theater that featured a more adult audience, and that’s how he found out his Transformers movies were bad. “Then I go to the next theater, and I’ve got the sound thing and there’s an empty seat and there’s a guy, whatever. This is more of the adult kind of room, and I look to the guy and I [ask], ‘Do you like this movie?’ And he goes, ‘[meh hand motion].’” Bay went on. “And I’m like, “Oh, this is terrible. I just made a terrible movie.” Whatever. Huge matching score, like a 94. That’s a spectacular movie score.”

The five films that Bay directed, starring the likes of Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and Mark Wahlberg, grossed over $4 billion globally, with 2011’s Dark of the Moon and 2014’s Age of Extinction each earning more than $1 billion at the box office on their own.

What did you think of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @NateBrail up on Twitter!