How much stuff can a director blow up during his career? If you’re Michael Bay, clearly a lot: close to a thousand explosions, actually.
Someone did the thankless job of adding up the explosions in Bay’s movies, which had to be an ear-splitting and utterly mind numbing task, but just like adding up the F bombs in Scarface, somebody had to do it, and we thank you for making the sacrifice.
Bay of course has always been known for being over the top, especially with special effects, pyrotechnics, gratuitous bimbos, and on set slave driving.
It’s also important to remember, this is what blows up in his movies, not how many times he blows up on the set (good luck totaling those explosions), but here are the numbers according to FrankenSpace.com.
Bay’s debut, Bad Boys, had a mere 18, The Rock 22 (could have sworn there were more than that, but what do I know?), Armageddon had 121, Pearl Harbor 162, Bad Boys II went down to 31, The Island is Bay’s career low with 16, the first Transformers has 128, Transformers 2 has 211, and Dark of the Moon has 283. All total, 992.
There will certainly come a day the total will go past a thousand, but you’re going to have to a wait a while. As we’ve reported here on TG, Bay’s next film is Pain and Gain, where he’s trying to make a smaller, Pulp Fiction style comedy.
Reportedly, there’s only one car crash the whole film, and he’s working on a much reduced $20 million dollar budget. Guess those waiting for some classic Bay big bangs in deafening THX will have to wait a few more years, but there’s always Transformers 3 in IMax to keep you satisfied ’til then.
