When talking about the most brilliant filmmakers of our time, you’d be hard-pressed to find yourself in a conversation where Michael Bay’s name makes an appearance: unless you’re talking to Sir Anthony Hopkins, of course.
During a recent interview with Yahoo! Movies about the upcoming fifth installment in Bay’s Transformers film franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight (which marks the first collaboration between Hopkins and Bay), Hopkins had nothing but praise for the much-talked-about, little-respected director.
The actor said, “[Bay] was telling me about the work he did on [the Transformers bots] – how he would refine them and go into the special effects guys and design them and get all the details of light on metal and all that. He told me all that at breakfast before I started on the film. I thought ‘This guy’s a genius. He really is.’ He’s the same ilk as Oliver Stone and Spielberg and Scorsese. Brilliance. Savants, really, they are. He’s a savant.”
Hopkins also said that he had seen 2007’s Transformers and 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen before coming on board The Last Knight and caught up on the two most recent films after signing on for the role of astronomer Sir Edmund Burton.
Bay has fans, which is proven by the fact that nearly every Transformers movie has hovered around the $1 billion mark at the box office, but his critics certainly tend to be more plentiful. Even so, while positive reviews of Bay’s Transformers films are somewhat scarce, his work outside of the franchise has been met with at least mild acclaim. Although he’s not a critical darling, between Pain & Gain and 13 Hours, Bay has been commended for his distinct visual style and fast-paced storytelling.
Most wouldn’t speak Bay’s name in the same sentence as Steven Spielberg’s (unless they’re working on a movie together, as is the case with The Last Knight), but Hopkins is, of course, entitled to his opinion.
Transformers: The Last Knight reunites Michael Bay with franchise veterans Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, John Goodman and Peter Cullen, while new additions to the cast include Isabela Moner (100 Things to Do Before High School), Jerrod Carmichael (Bad Neighbours), Laura Haddock (Guardians of the Galaxy), Santiago Cabrera (Merlin), Liam Garrigan (Once Upon a Time), Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files) and Anthony Hopkins (Thor: The Dark World). The film hits theaters on June 23rd, 2017.
Originally published April 9, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
