Michael Bay Re-used Pearl Harbor Footage in Transformers?
Peter over at /Film recently brought up an interesting point about Transformers that not many people have been discussing: its budget. It was reportedly shot for $150 million, which is certainly not pocket change, but for such an effects-driven state of the art film, it does seem a bit on the inexpensive side. In fact, it’s not even in the Top 10 most expensive movies of all time. Back in 1995 Waterworld cost $175 million to make, and the current record holder seems to be Spider-Man 3, hovering somewhere in the realm of $250 million. So how did Michael Bay pull it off?
Well, for starters, there weren’t a lot of big name actors in this movie. But there is also some speculation that Michael Bay may have been taking some sneaky shortcuts elsewhere. In other words, if you thought a lot of the military action in this movie looked exactly like something you’ve already seen in previous Michael Bay films, you might be more right than you realize. It seems that he may have recycled footage from some of his other movies — specifically Pearl Harbor! At /Film you can see two stills of a shot of an aircraft carrier that appear to be exactly the same, save for some CG touch ups. Busted! Granted, it wouldn’t surprise me if Michael Bay was simply replicating exact shots from his previous films either. And it does seem a little strange that Pearl Harbor’s production company Touchstone Pictures would allow its footage to be used in Transformers, which was produced by Paramount and Dreamworks. Still, the shots are remarkably similar. If you look closely, you might even see Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett somewhere in the carnage too!
Comments (4)
When I saw the headline of the story, I thought it couldn’t be but looks like he’s done just that! I guess this was an attempt to save a little more money for more robot FX.
Posted by Marina on July 4th, 2007I have no problem that he did this either. It’s only a fucking shot of the movie. I am sure he’ll recycle the orbiting shots of the pentagon in future films too since he is the best at it
Bay also used a bunch of actors from The Island too, but no one is bitching about that. The fact that he made a 150mil movie look like a 300mil movie is what amazes me.
Posted by Vince on July 4th, 2007God know he reused a hell of a lot of camera angles and shot. Why not CG to boot.
Posted by Grim Santo on July 4th, 2007Grim, are you stalking me?
j/k, but we always seem to comment on the same sites. Something tells me our Google Reader’s look an awful lot alike.
I really don’t see an issue with this. It’s funny and definitely post-worthy, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing – just an interesting one.
Now what he’s done to the Transformers franchise? THAT’S a bad thing.
..and yes, I realize how ignorant it is of me to make that comment without having seen the movie, but fuck it, if you can’t be ignorant on the internet where can you be?
Posted by Jim Squires on July 5th, 2007Leave a Reply