1. Supposedly there are academic papers that argue Michael Bay is some kind of cinematic abstract-expressionist, throwing color and shape (explosions, explosions) onto film’s unique canvas, his palette knife the quick edit. A kind of three-dimensional painting in the fourth dimension. Good luck finding those papers.
2. In the far future, the museums in which Bay will be displayed, via a technology that lets you experience a 2-hour movie as a single visual object, and lets you experience the effect Transformers has on the nervous system in the instance of a glance, is a future which will have let so many other horrors come to pass in the name of art and entertainment, technology and progress, that Bay and what Bay meant to 21st century filmmaking won’t compare, and I’m glad to be excepted from that future.
3. So I’m glad that for now Michael Bay is the worst of our things, which aren’t too bad when you consider what comes after.