1. Pain & Gain (Paramount, 3,277 Theaters, 130 Minutes, Rated R): My first thought on how to approach writing the blurb for this film was how awkward a fit Michael Bay was for directing this film. After all, the ads portray it as a wacky crime comedy about a group of bungling bodybuilders who engage in an extortion plot as revenge against a particularly obnoxious client. That is almost a story that Elmore Leonard would write. It was a film that would be better suited being directed by a Barry Sonnenfeld or a Steven Soderbergh, not the master of the explosion.

Then, thanks to the Internet, I was able to read the articles that inspired the film. You can read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 by clicking those links. If you have enough time, I’d recommend you do so. You’ll find a fascinating retelling of the true story that is being dramatized on the screen. What you won’t find is a wacky comedy. Yes, there is bungling. But there is also brutal, inhuman torture of the character Tony Shalhoub represents. There is also a second crime done by the same crew that ends in the murder of two people and their corpses being cut up and sunk in a culvert. The victims of the second crime are listed on IMDB in the cast listing, so that gruesome crime will be addressed in the film.

The true story the poster takes so much pride in stating it is adapted from doesn’t seem like the buoyant fun-filled romp that the trailers make it out to be.  That means one of several things. It could mean that Paramount is misrepresenting the film as a goofy comedy instead of a pitch-black comedy/drama the real story would be. This kind of bait and switch is always unctuous.

Or it could be that the Hollywood has taken liberties with the story so it is now a wacky crime caper. This is likely, because Dwayne Johnson’s character appears to be a composite of numerous other accomplices of the Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie characters.

Either way, this is an event where people died. People who were loved and respected by their friends and family were brutally murdered and the bodies underwent the ultimate disrespect after their demise. And while some of the incompetence about the muscle-headed plotters can lend itself to dark humor, you need a master of setting a tone to ensure the film stays respectful to the victims. And Michael Bay is anything but a master of setting the tone, unless it is coming from loud explosions.

2. The Big Wedding (Lionsgate, 2,633 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated R): You know, you don’t often get casts like this one in your remake of a French farce. I mean, you have four Oscar winners, and Prince Caspian! How could you lose!

This is a remake of France’s 2006 film, Mon Frère Se Marie. The plot consists of a family whose adopted son is getting married. The son has been writing home to his biological mother, a devout Catholic, about the wonderful family he was raised in. Only problem is that the story is a lie. His parents are divorced, his siblings are crazy, and his life is anything but perfect. But his birth mother is coming to the ceremony so the man’s family has to pretend to live up to the idealized version he relayed to his mom.

Now, right off the bat, I can pick a bone about the premise. Not that I am one to judge, but I think a Catholic who got pregnant out of wedlock and gave her son up for adoption should be able to cut a divorced couple a little slack. And the semantics of the son’s lie is troubling for me. Why would he have to address his family life in any sort of detail? And if he did, couldn’t he find something positive about his family to relate? In other words, why did he lie when he could have just not admitted the whole truth?

Anyway, farces usually have plots that work best if you don’t think about them. And this all-star cast could make anything good. Might be a fun film if you just take it at face value and run with the concept.

Director Michael Bay has cast Irish actor Jack Reynor to appear opposite Mark Wahlberg in the next installment of the ongoing Transformers franchise.

Apparently, Bay liked Reynor’s Horatio Alger story and says so in the announcement he made on his website -

I just hired a great new actor for Transformers 4 to star against Mark Wahlberg. Jack Reynor, he is an Irish kid that came to America with 30 bucks in his pocket. Pretty ballsy. Seriously who does that? Anyway I spotted him in a great little Irish movie WHAT RICHARD DID. This kid is the real deal.

Bay also takes the time to address the rumor that the new film might be a reboot of the franchise -

Transformers 4, is not a reboot. That word has been floating around on the net.

This movie takes place exactly 4 years after the war in Chicago. The story makes a very natural transition, and reason as to why we have a whole new cast. This Transformers will feel very different than the last three. We are embarking on a new trilogy.

Transformers 4 is scheduled for a June 27, 2014 release.

As Michael Bay’s Transformers 4 gets ready to shoot next spring, we’re going to be spending the winter hearing lots more about the project. It has already been announced that Mark Wahlberg will be leading up the human cast for the film, and now Michael Bay has given an indication of when the film will fall in relationship to the past three films.

The movie is going to continue 4 years on from the attack on Chicago which was in the last movie. So it’s going still to have the same lineage but going in a full, new, different direction and it actually feels really natural how it is going in that direction.

The folks at Bleeding Cool, who braved the original TMZ Live show for the quote, hazard a guess that perhaps there may be some ‘post 9/11’ subtext in the film. But let’s be real about that. As a filmmaker, the last word I think anyone would label Michael Bay with is subtext. As it is, his films barely have any text, little alone subtext.

That’s not to say that a big science-fiction adventure film couldn’t have some deeper meaning than just two hours of visceral thrills. Cloverfield does that quite well as post-9/11 reworking of the original Godzilla story.

We’ll see what, if any, relevance this will have on the story as we get closer to Transformers 4 summer 2014 release.

A film called Dark Shadows opened last week. It shares the same name and a number of characters with a cult soap opera from the late 60s, early 70s. Both feature time-tossed vampires who join their descendants 200 years in the future. However, the film plays the story as a wacky fish-out-of-water comedy while the soap opera, which was campy because, well, it was a soap opera with a production budget of $5, portrayed the story as a somber Gothic romance.

This week, Battleship opens. It shares its name with a Milton-Bradley board game that was first introduced in 1943. The game is advertised as a game of naval strategy where players try to sink each others armadas first by guessing location of ships on a grid. The film, which was based on the game, features the U.S. Navy combating a sea-based alien invasion force.

Now, this won’t be the kind of post that criticizes Hollywood for their lack of originality. Hollywood has always adapted  works from other media for the screen. That is not necessarily a bad thing. To prove my point, let’s take a look at the Top 10 films on the 2007 version of AFI’s “100 Years…100 Movies” list.

Now, you can argue semantics about this list all night–this film should be higher, that one lower, this film included, that one not–but we can pretty much all agree that these are great films. What do we see here? We have five films based on novels or plays (The Godfather, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Vertigo, and The Wizard of Oz), four films based on or inspired by the lives of real people (Raging Bull, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List and Citizen Kane, which was a fictionalized account of William Randolph Hearst’s life) and one inspired by Hollywood’s history (Singin’ in the Rain). Not one wholly original, but great films nonetheless.

But those were adaptations done right. Unfortunately, Hollywood has the nasty habit of wanting to put their own stamp on properties they adapt, usually with not-so-good results. And Dark Shadows and Battleship take this habit to a dangerous and puzzling new level.

Now, I’m not naive as to think that every original work should be adapted to the screen with no changes. I realize that it would be impossible for eight seasons of a TV series, 300 pages of a novel, or 200 issues of a comic book to be squeezed into one two-hour movie. But doing a good adaptation means keeping the stuff that works, keeping the same tone and characterization, and if you are going to change anything, change it to the better. The problem lies in the fact that the film studios definition of better doesn’t really end up as being better.

This problem, unfortunately, is nothing new. Studios have been making changes to classic works from other medium for decades. Whether it be modern literature, like The Bonfire of the Vanities (Does the journalist need to be British? Why can’t it be Bruce Willis? And does Sherman McCoy have to be such a erudite jerk? Why can’t he be nice, like Tom Hanks? And why have spot-on, social satire? Wouldn’t broad comedy be better?), classic literature like The Scarlet Letter (You know what would make kids pay more attention to the book in school? If Hester diddled herself in the tub.), comic books like Jonah Hex (What? The character is basically the cowboy antihero archetype that led Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson to stardom? That will never work in films. Give him superpowers, have him stop an anacronistic weapon of mass destruction, and, please, make it campy), or video games, like Super Mario Brothers (You know who the best actors to play a pair of Italian plumbers would be? An British Cockney and a Latino American! And Dennis Hopper playing their turtle nemesis! It’s like printing money!), more than one film adaptation was ruined by studio’s “improvement.” But Dark Shadows and Battleship take these kind of changes to an entirely new, and dangerous level.

Dark Shadows is the latest example of a film trying to present a property that is loved by a large, cult audience while having the studio, or, in this case, the director put their own stamp on the project. But what it really is just an unnecessary form of this type of marketing.

While I don’t deny that Dark Shadows does have a following, the fans of the show are not exactly in the 18-35 demographic that make films a hit. It was before my time and I’m way out of that demographic.

And, really? Do you need help marketing a movie where Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp again? You could have kept the fish out of water/man out of time plot, you could have even kept the main character a vampire,  you could have kept the premise the same and not have it tie into Dark Shadows at all and people would most likely still have come to see it.

The real reason that the film is called Dark Shadows is because Tim Burton was a fan of the series and wanted to do his own take on it, a take even he knew that fans of the TV show wouldn’t like. I’m sure Burton probably sold the idea to studios using the TV shows built in fan base. But this was Burton co-opting an existing property for his own use when he could have, and should have, created something original that would have still allowed him to say what he wanted to say. Dark Shadows fans have a right to be upset.

The case with Battleship is even more absurd. It’s not really a case of an adaptation being screwed up by Hollywood, because, really, if there was any way to adapt that particular board game, it would probably an even worse film than this one.

One of the producers of this film is Hasbro, the toy company that bought out Milton Bradley and owns the rights to G.I. Joe, Transformers and, you guessed it, Battleship (And Candy Land, which also has a film in the works). What happened was that Hasbro saw how much money they could make on films with the first two properties, so they decided to make a film out of every piece of intellectual property they own, whether making it into a film made sense or not. Personally, I cannot wait for Easy-Bake Oven: The Movie.

Battleship, like Dark Shadows, is a film that could have been released under another name and still do probably the same amount of business. Also, like Dark Shadows, the demographic of the source material will probably not follow it to the big screen even it was an exact representation of the game. What we have here is a generic alien invasion flick with the twist that the invasion takes place at sea.

Yes, rumor has it that there will be a scene in the film that mimics the gameplay of the original game, and I’m fairly certain that at some point in the film we will see a character, most likely Liam Neeson’s, pull a pair of binoculars away from their faces, squint off into a point just past where the camera was placed, and utter with grim, steely reserve, “They sank my battleship” (or some variation there of). But other than that, the film could have been called Aliens At Sea and it would not have made a bit of difference, except that it would have been mocked slightly less in the press.

So this is what the state of the film adaptation is today. The source material is reduced to a name only, a name Hollywood can use to practice a new kind of originality. The names become tools for directors to work out the issues they had with the original source or companies to earn a quick buck from their intellectual property in by any means necessary. Hollywood has always been accused of not caring about the books, TV shows and comics they adapt. At least now, they are being honest about it. And they get to have the best of both worlds–a film with a recognizable public image that is an “original” creation by the Hollywood establishment.

Unfortunately, this trend will not stop here. By now we should all be familiar Michael Bay’s Ninja Turtles, which every one from Bay to co-creator Kevin Eastman have promised fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would deliver “everything that made [them] become fans in the first place.” Everything except the characters being Teenagers (they will be a bit older) or Mutants (they’re aliens). They couch these changes as “building a richer world,” as if the world that made the Turtles a pop culture phenomenon for thirty years wasn’t rich enough.

And you thought Demi Moore writhing in a bathtub was bad.

Michael Bay vowed that he would never return to the Transformers franchise after completing the third film and yet he is signed on for the currently in development fourth installment. Might star Shia LaBeouf, who made a similar vow, have a similar change of heart?

If he does then he may be out of luck. The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Paramount film group president Adam Goodman who explained that the screenplay is currently being written by Ehren Kruger and as of right now there are no plans for an appearance of LaBeouf’s Sam Whitwhicky character.

The story is going in a different direction now. Ehren Kruger [who wrote the past two Transformers movies] is writing it for us, and we’re starting to engage, but I can’t say anything more.

Bay will be back to work on his fourth film about giant robots beating the crap out of each other just as soon as he finishes his current project Pain & Gain, a dark comedy about boxers, human beings who beat the crap out of each other.

Last week, producer Michael bay stirred up the internet equivalent of a hornets’ nest of trouble when he announced that the titular stars of a new film adaption of the classic 80s indie comic book Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would not be mutants so much as they would be aliens. It is now look as if Bay has chopped another adjective off of the title as Bleeding Cool is reporting a rumor that the film may now be titled simply Ninja Turtles.

We haven’t been able to get a definite statement as to why this title change is occurring, and our sources are not 100% clear on whether or not the Turtles will indeed be adolescents. One of our sources has said: “It seems to be driven by marketing. Think of John Carter and how Disney wouldn’t allow for a title with either “Princess” or “Mars.”

Now I understand that the kneejerk reaction is to criticize such a move. I’m not even a fan of the franchise and it sounds pretty stupid to me. But this simply might be a way of testing the waters on certain potential elements of the film’s story. It has happened before and will happen again.

Or it could just be a way of stirring up interest in the project before even a frame of film has been shot. And considering that the most recent screen appearance by the Turtles was the poorly received 2007 computer animated TMNT, Bay and company certainly have a tough road ahead of them on that front. But is even negative publicity good publicity? Or is Bay being even more Machiavellian by floating some rumors about big changes in the film and then placates fans by saying that said changes will not happen after all. Considering that his films aren’t that complicated, I would doubt it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Perhaps one of the most accurate names of any property to come out of comics. Let’s take a second and dissect that name, shall we? The first word refers to the characters ages.They’re teenagers. Got it. Let’s look at the third word, ninja. While the characters aren’t the stealthy, silent, kill-you-in-your-sleep type ninjas, the term does apply to their martial arts expertise. It’s close enough to let it slide.

Now, let’s look at the remaining two words: Mutant Turtles. This forms perhaps the most descriptive phrase of the characters’ name. Those words tell you who the characters are and how they came to be. They are turtles who have been exposed to toxic waste and have mutated into humanoid, intelligent creatures. Well, at least that was their origin.

Michael Bay, who is in someway attached to the forthcoming live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, was speaking at the Nickelodeon (current owners of the rights to the Turtles) up-fronts, where he had this to say about the new Turtles film.

“When you see this movie, kids are going to believe one day these turtles actually do exist when we are done with this movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely loveable.”

Alien race? When I hear that I had to check the calendar to see if I slept for a week and a half last night it was April 1st. I didn’t and it’s not. Here is a video of Bay making that very same announcement.

Michael Bay talks Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by stuffwelike

Now, this all came down yesterday and I seem to have missed it. But a lot of other TMNT fans didn’t. The new practically ripped the Internet in half as angry fans expressed their rage. There were posts on message boards, a Facebook page set up to let Bay know the Turtles aren’t aliens and even the actor who voiced the Turtle named Michelangelo in the first series of films, Robbie Rist, wrote an open letter to Bay accusing him of “sodomizing” the original film trilogy and “raping” many a person’s childhood memories. Yikes!

Bay decided to answer the questions the way most conflict negotiators recommend calming an opposing side down: through arrogance and condescension:

Fans need to take a breath, and chill.  They have not read the script.  Our team is working closely with one of the original creators of Ninja Turtles to help expand and give a more complex back story.  Relax, we are including everything that made you become fans in the first place.  We are just building a richer world.
Michael

That statement is odd on a number of levels. First, everyone knows that the last thing you want to tell a group of people who are upset, be it a rational or irrational rage, is to calm down. That usually has the opposite effect.

The phrasing “one of the original creators” is odd too. There are two creators of the comic book the Turtles came from: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. So, the “original creator” is either one or the other, and therefore should have been named. Unless there is a reason why Bay didn’t name the creator in question. Hmmm.

And that final sentence? That would work to ease concerns if A) the fact the Turtles are now aliens which is not what made the fans fans in the first place, and B) savvy moviegoers had any faith that Bay had the skill to “build a richer world.”

To outsiders, the fact that the TMNT fandom would get so up in arms over such a minor change is perplexing. Well, look at it this way. The Turtles might be to you an aspect of pop culture while you were growing up, to others of the same age it was the defining cartoon or film of their childhood. It could very well be the first property they became a fan of. If they loved something with all their hearts as a kid, it’s hard to let that go of that love when they get to be an adult.

For me, I was never as big a fan of the Turtles as I was of, say, Star Wars. My main problem with Bay’s announcement is that the change is unnecessary and would not make the story any better. Forget the fact that ”Mutant” and “Turtles” are in the character’s names, the Turtles’ origins had been essentially the same for almost 30 years. It was good enough to make billions of dollars in a wide variety of industries. While the fact they were mutated by toxic ooze is outlandish, it’s more grounded in reality than them being aliens. It is a change that serves no other purpose other than allowing Bay and his writers to put their personal stamp on the property.

It should be interesting to see how this all plays. Bay’s rebuttal to the controversy, issued on his official forums to his loyal fanbase, might do more harm than good. Sometimes bad publicity, even this early, can kill a film dead in the water.

It has only been a few days since director Michael Bay and Paramount Studios officially announced that there will be a Transformers 4 film and that the director will be the one in charge, so it is probably way too early for any real concrete news about casting yet. But that certainly isn’t stopping people from talking about it though.

The folks at E! Online caught up with franchise co-star Josh Duhamel and asked him about who would be coming back for the franchise’s fourth film and he opined that none of them were.

I don’t think anybody’s doing it. I know Shia [LaBeouf]‘s not doing it. I don’t think Tyrese or Rosie [Huntington-Whiteley] or anybody else is doing it… Whenever these movies make that much money they’re going to make as many as they can. [But] I haven’t heard anything about it.

Well, LaBeouf has been vocal before about not planning on returning for a fourth film, but that was back after the third had just been released. And it wouldn’t really make too much sense for Huntington-Whiteley to return to her role as LaBeouf’s character’s girlfriend if LaBeouf bows out.

But honestly, I think that Duhamel may be jumping the gun with his prognostications as to who will or won’t be back for a fourth film. There hasn’t even been any word as to who may write the project and it is probably fair to assume that there has been little to no discussion as to plotlines or what human characters may be needed for the film.

Depending on whether you were happy or sad when Michael Bay announced that Transformers 3 was going to be his last installment of the giant-robots-punching-each-other franchise, you will probably be either sad or happy to hear that that is now not the case. It should come as no surprise, though. Rumors were swirling late last year that the studio was looking to bring the director back for a fourth film, even though everyone denied it at the time.

The director confirmed on his official site that he has signed on with Paramount Pictures to do a fourth film.

There has been a lot of speculation about what I’m going to do next and when or if I will do another Transformers. So let me set the record straight.

I have just concluded a deal with Paramount to do two movies, but it won’t be two Transformers.

I will first do ‘Pain & Gain‘ with Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

Then I will do the next Transformers for release on June 29, 2014.

-Michael Bay

So, Transformers 4 doesn’t have a script or a cast, but it has a release date. That always bodes well.

Let’s face it. No matter what the critical and fan response may have been, when a movie like Transformers: Dark Of The Moon makes the bags of money that it made, everyone involved is going to want a sequel. And the folks at Transformer toy manufacturer Hasbro have been clear that they want more films, and there have even been rumors circulating that Hasbro and studio Paramount Pictures are possibly contemplating making a fourth and fifth film back-to-back.

However, the question remains whether franchise director Michael Bay will be back for another turn or two.

Earlier this morning, Vulture broke a story citing “insider” sources that Bay was “in final negotiations to direct a new Transformers film.” Not really a surprising story, if true. There has already been some chatter that Hasbro and Paramount want the director back and that even talks between all parties may have already begun. Allegedly, Bay would first film his long held passion project Pain And Gain early next year before returning to the franchise and that a deal finalizing that return could be in place as early as next week.

But if this true, Bay himself isn’t confirming. On his website, the director stated that while Pain And Gain is definitely set for a spring shoot, he has nothing planned beyond that.

Right now I’m not decided on Transformers 4… Studio’s are passing rumors but I’m not sure what I’m doing? I know I’m going to do Pain and Gain early spring but that’s it for right now. I’m leaving all my options on the table. I’ve got several Studio meetings in the next two weeks.

So was Vulture‘s “insider” source leaking a story under orders from the studio in order to perhaps goad Bay a bit? It’s possible. Studios and talent agents have been known to float rumors to in the press all the time in order to gain some sort of advantage. In fact, I think that if we’re seeing this kind of rumor being floated out there, it is a tacit admission that negotiations are indeed happening. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of these types of stories right up until an official announcement that the film is officially going forward.