Sometimes the battle for movie supremacy doesn’t occur at the box office but in words on the internet. In this case it’s Michael Bay vs. Guillermo del Toro with regards to robot rip-offs.
Both directors are in Las Vegas at CinemaCon plugging their respective films to theater owners. However, during Bay’s presentation of his ‘Transformers 4’ film, he made a comment telling the theater owners that there have been a few “rip-off” robot movies that have been made since making his ‘Transformers’ films and that the audiences are savvy to know better. While no specific movie was called out by Bay, many took the comment to be directed at del Toro’s ‘Pacific Rim.’
Apparently, so did del Toro.
In an interview with THR, del Toro responded to Bay’s comments saying:
“We are far, far, far away from that in a very willing fashion. For good or bad, this is my movie. This is my universe and my creation, and I do not create through comparison… The fights don’t occur in well-lit, supercool, car commercial-looking environments. They occur in the middle of a raging sea storm or in a savage snowstorm. They happen in a universe that is incredibly saturated.”
In what seems to be an effect to decrease the sting of his words, del Toro did point out that throughout the years, robots have been a mainstay of science fiction and “to some degree, the source of all artificial life is Frankenstein.”
But in the end, the director does jokingly make it known that his Jaegers could take down every “robot in the history of mankind in a toe-to-toe showdown.”
Insiders close to Bay say that it was “highly unlikely” that the director was targeting ‘Pacific Rim’ and some say that he was referring to the films ‘Real Steel’ and ‘Battleship.’ What some fail to remember is that Bay was a producer on ‘Battleship’ so to say that he ripped-off his own film seems a bit nonsensical.
Therefore, judges call: Round 1 to del Toro!
What do you think? Are you on Team Transformers or Team Jaeger?
