Remember The Mid ’90s?

Friends. Seinfeld. Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Brett Favre. Alanis Morrisette. Windows 95. Carl’s Jr. ads. Oval Office blowies.

There was something for everyone including big, fun, stupid movies by Michael Benjamin Bay.

Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon: each peak a mid-90s event movie with a great cast, a completely nonsensical story and all the action a Zima drinker could ask for.

What the hell happened to that guy?

I’ll tell you what happened: he made himself a ton of money. Total take on the Transformers franchise is close to $1.57 billion from box office alone.

We can also assume that — as J.J. Abrams did with Star Wars — Bay made just enough tweaks to the Autobots and Decepticons to qualify them as “unique” characters, for which he received generous merchandising royalties.  

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I’d say that’s more than 25% different.

Now Bay Is Back

The Hollywood Reporter says that Bay is in talks with Sony to direct Black Five.

No, it’s not about the sports talk show, Speak For Yourself

Plot details for what is being described as an ensemble thriller have not been revealed although sources have indicated it centers on an elite military team with advanced technology.

It is known that Ehren Kruger, who worked with Bay on several Transformers movies, penned the script and that  a video game is being developed concurrently with the feature project.

This is both comforting and troubling. 

The synopsis sounds like the kind of old-school, apeshit insane action Bay is known for and Sony certainly is making real movies that are released in real theaters, but anything by the writer of a Transformers movie is suspect.

Plus they are putting the merch before the movie with the video game development.

Outside of the Transformers series, Michael has only made a couple of small, diverse offerings, 13 Hours and Pain & Gain

Those are both serviceable movies but they barely move the needle.

Has hundreds of millions of dollars and directing toy movies for the last decade made the mid-90s Michael Bay soft?

Well, we’re going to get a chance to find out soon enough when Netflix drops Bay’s 6 Underground, a big-time actioner starring Ryan Reynolds, Tom Hardy and Dave Franco playing billionaires who fake their own deaths and form an elite vigilante squad in order to take down notorious criminals. 

The $150 million 6 Underground is due to be released in December of 2019.

Then we’ll see if Bay can still bring it.