Michael Bay is known far and wide for a couple of things. One is making movies with gigantic explosions in them. Another is co-opting 1980’s nostalgia properties...and putting giant explosions in them. There’s another thing that he’s done quite a lot of in his career that he’s probably less well known for, however. All those reboots of classic horror franchises that you’ve seen over the last 10 years? He’s produced nearly every single one. From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Bay has mutilated, sorry, produced all of them. He was not, however, a fan of all of them. He reportedly walked out of the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th and, interestingly, it wasn’t because it was terrible.
There are a number of reasons a producer might distance themselves from a movie. Significant changes take the film in a different direction than the producer wants, or they just don’t get along with other people involved in the process. However, none of this appears to be the case. The report, from Schmoes Know, is that Bay apparently left the production that his own company, Platinum Dunes, financed because the film had too much sex.
It’s an interesting, if unintentional, glimpse into the psyche of Michael Bay. He produced remakes of every major horror franchise under the sun where people are stabbed, slashed and chopped into pieces over and over again. He’s been at the helm of some of the biggest action movies in history, full of massive explosions where people die (though, granted, not on screen) but the sex is too much. If that’s how Bay feels, that’s fine, we’re not going to criticize him too much, the guy is entitled to his own feelings on the topic, but it does feel slightly out of whack.
Michael Bay also has no problem with sexualized characters. You need go no further than every woman in the Transformers franchise to see that much. Hell, the most recent movie in that franchise had a character with an entire subplot about how it was ok that she was having sex while underage. Implying the sex, even when completely creepy, is ok. Showing it is apparently not.
The Friday the 13th franchise never shied away from sex and nudity, which is not to say the new film needed it. It certainly didn’t help make the actual movie any good, although removing it would not have helped the movie be any better, either. So now you know how to drive Michael Bay off your film project. Too much sex. It’s still not clear why that works, but there you go. If Michael Bay is ever the subject of a horror movie, now we know how to defeat him.
