Christopher Nolan: Not fit to shine Michael Bay's shoes!
In recent years it has become the fun/cool thing to hate on Michael Bay. Somehow he is the worst director alive and yet his movies still make hundreds of millions of dollars. For me personally, I have always put Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan in the same category, albeit Michael is obviously far superior. They both started in the 90's, they both are known for their big budget blockbusters, and they both reinvigorated stale properties and turned them into box office gold. Now that we are about 20 years into both of their careers, I figured we should do a recap and really see which star shines brighter.
Michael Bay: Kicking Ass and Taking Names!
Back in the dark days of the early 1980's, on the set of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, worked a 15 year old Michael Bay. Michael filed story boards for the film as an intern. He would go home and talk to his friends about how Steven Spielberg was making this film and how he thought it would suck. When Michael Bay finally seen the film in theaters he was blown away and knew at that moment he wanted to be a director. This is an important story not because Michael Bay was turned onto directing by Steven Spielberg, half of the filmmakers in Hollywood can say that, it's important because Michael Bay the filmmaker was born on the set of one of the greatest blockbuster flicks of all time.
Bay now had a dream in sight. To accomplish this dream he needed to know how to do more than just file story boards. So in 1986 Michael graduated from Wesleyan University with a double major in Film and English. After also completing graduate work at Art Center College of Design, he went on to work for the highly successful Propaganda Films. During his time at Propaganda he would direct his first national commercial for the Red Cross. This effort would go on to win a Clio Award in 1992. Bay's greatest gift to the advertising industry was when he directed the now famous Aaron Burr "Got Milk?" commercial. This started a campaign that would go on to become a cultural phenomenon. At the same time that Michael Bay was leaving his mark on advertising, he was also finding success with music videos. Michael Bay has directed videos for Lionel Richie, Divinyls, Vanilla Ice, Meat Loaf, and more.
His success with music videos caught the attention of some big names in Hollywood. One of which was the great Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer would finally give Michael Bay a shot at making his feature film directorial debut. However, before we start comparing tit for tat, we need to find out what brought Christopher Nolan to the same point in his career.
Christopher Nolan: The Sad Early Days
Christopher Nolan was that dorky artsy kid that everyone loved to pick on. Compared to Michael's Paul Newman good looks, Nolan was much more of the Dustin Diamond type. He holds both American and British citizenship. This came in handy as he was constantly moving back and forth between London and Evanston Illinois, due to the fact that no one really wanted him around. Not having the brilliant insight of Michael Bay, Little Chrissy was not able to find work on a real Hollywood set as a child. He instead resorted to filming his action figures and making pathetic Star Wars ripoffs such as Space Wars. This contrast is incredibly important. Nolan was pretending to have friends and making disgraceful parodies of beloved George Lucas films, while Big Dick Mike was working with Lucas and Spielberg to create Indiana Jones.
Unlike Michael Bay, Nolan struggled to find success in the film industry. He made 2 short films in college that are no longer available to the public. It's unconfirmed, but the rumor is that he burned every copy in a rare moment of kindness. He knew that no one would ever want to see them. After graduating, there were no big job offers waiting for him. He resorted to working as a script reader, camera operator, and occasional male fluffer. The benefit to his frequent unemployment was that he was able to make a short film that was worthy of keeping out of the fire. In 1997 we were given Doodlebug. Doodlebug is about a man chasing around a bug in his apartment. Once he kills it, he realizes the bug was a mini version of himself. As one can imagine from that detailed synopsis, the short film did little to boost him up the career ladder. When talking about the stacks of rejection letters he received at this time, Rolly Polly Nolly likes to blame the entire U.K. for being a "very clubby kind of place". After constant failure, Nolan knew he had no choice but to fund his first real film himself.
Debut Films
In April of 1995 Michael Bay released the now classic Bad Boys starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Both of whom were making transitions from television into film. Made for 19 million dollars, Bad Boys would go on to earn 141 million! On the other side of the success coin we find Christopher Nolan's debut film. Made on a laughable budget of just 3,000 euros, he couldn't even afford dollars, Following was filmed on weekends over the course of a year. Not being a real filmmaker, and not having a real budget, Christopher was forced to write, shoot, and edit the film himself. This extra work helped keep his mind off of his erectile dysfunction and the fact that he would never get laid again. The film would go on to make less than a quarter of a million dollars. At this point in time, Michael Bay was spending more than that on cocaine and sports cars. However, Following did outshine Bad Boys in the long run. It was added to the beloved Criterion Collection in 2012. This was done by the Criterion Collection folks as a favor to Michael Bay, a filmmaker with TWO films in the collection. Michael says he wanted Chris to feel important, but leaks from his inner circle suggest it was just a cruel joke on Criterion Completionists. Based on their debuts alone, Bay wins hands down, but lucky for us both of these filmmakers would go on to achieve much greater heights.
Rising Stars
After delivering an absolute Classic in Bad Boys, Michael Bay wanted a challenge. He had proved that he could make a movie star out of then TV Actor/Musician Will Smith, but he wanted to work with a living legend. His next film would be the heart wrenching drama The Rock. The Rock is a timeless film starring two academy award winning thespians. Sean Connery and Nick Cage star in the film about a terrorist threat operating out of the most famous prison on Earth, Alcatraz. The Rock would go on to earn over 335 Million dollars, as well as inspire the career of today's highest paid actor, Dwayne Johnson.
Christopher Nolan followed up his debut with another timeless film. However, instead of standing the test of time, Memento was edited with such poor timing, that it sadly made Mr. Nolan known for "non-linear films". Not having the skills or clout of Michael Bay, Christopher didn't have the luxury of working with Oscar caliber talent. Instead he had to settle for off-brand Brad Pitt, A.K.A Guy Pearce. The film was made for just 9 million dollars, and would go on to earn just under 40 million. Not bad for the special education half Brit.
Michael Bay had become a sure thing in Hollywood, making nearly 500 million at the box office with just 2 films. Coming as a surprise to anyone who had seen his movies, Christopher Nolan had become known as "shockingly profitable". Nolan would go on to prove that he is not capable of directing top tier talent in the underwhelming Insomnia, while Bay would conquer Sci-fi in Armageddon, World War II dramas in Pearl Harbor, and the greatest sequel of all time, Bad Boys II. As a side project and homage to his former mentor, he would even give the fans a re-imagining of THX-1138 in 2005's The Island.
Bring on the Franchise Money
Both directors would make their way to the franchise world of the 2000's. Christopher Nolan did not inspire confidence from the big studios, so he was given a property that could not fail, Batman. Michael Bay, known for loving a good challenge, took on The Transformers, a quirky 80's cartoon and toy line. Batman Begins would hit theaters in 2005. Batman Begins would go on to earn 374 million dollars on a 150 million dollar budget, failing to surpass the the 411 million made by the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film. A film made on a budget of just 35 million. This was a huge success for someone like Chris Nolan, but would be an utter failure for a master like Michael Bay.
Looking to make a point, Michael Bay made his Transformers film with the exact same budget of 150 million, despite the studio essentially offering him a blank check. To give himself an even greater challenge, he decided to cast his lead strictly based on Disney Channel actors. This was mind boggling for even his strongest supporters. With Shia LaBeouf signed up, he made one more shocking decision. He decided that the Transformers will look almost nothing like their TV show counterparts. He had purposefully stacked all of the chips against him. Despite all of these things, and to no one's surprise, Transformers went on to make over 700 million dollars. More than doubling the "success" that Christopher Nolan had found 2 years earlier.
Both directors would go on to make multiple sequels in their respective franchises. Christopher Nolan, as predicted, would fizzle out after just his third film. Meanwhile, Michael Bay has released 5 Transformers films through 2017. To date the Transformers series has made a whopping 4.4 billions dollars; while the so called "Dark Knight Trilogy" has made just 2.4 Billion. Christopher Nolan disgraced the Batman brand so hard that DC was forced to start over with an entirely new cinematic universe. They just could not bring their other characters into the Nolan fold.
Michael Bay: Parallel Trains of Success
After the success of Transformers in 2007, Michael could have rode off into the sunset as one of the greatest directors of all time. Instead he decided to maintain an incredibly profitable franchise and focus on tear inducing true stories. His first post 2007 non-Transformers film was 2013's Pain & Gain. This incredible true crime drama made fans laugh, cry, and masturbate all in just 129 minutes. To prove he still had "indie-cred" he made the film for just 26 million dollars. The same amount he would spend on a weekend staycation. Michael Bay even gave away free tickets to the film, vowing to make no money off of the project. Of course with him being the stud that he is, the film still earned nearly 90 million dollars at the box office. His next non-Transformers effort was 2016's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Any other director would have called the film "too soon" or said that it didn't have enough meat. Michael Bay knew that this was a story that needed to be told and gave us the most historically accurate war film of all time.
Christopher Nolan: Trying to Recover
After just the first film of Nolan's Batman Bonanza, he knew he would need to try something new. His first attempt at reinventing himself was with a film that was a blatant ripoff of the far superior The Illusionist. He would again work with Bruce Wayne actor Christian Bale in the poorly developed The Prestige. This film is only 10 years old, but has aged very poorly. Considered by many to be a corny, cheesy, poorly written, atrociously acted flop. This failure didn't take the usual toll, as Mr. Nolan had grown accustom to it by this time. Instead he went back to the Batman well. This trend would continue for years. Putting out a Batman film and then following it up with a movie that had high brow ambitions, but lacked the creative mind to deliver. This year the self proclaimed British Chode gave us Dunkirk. A pathetic attempt to capture the World War II magic that Michael Bay had found a decade and a half earlier with Pearl Harbor.
Tit for Tat
Today in 2017, Michael bay sits as the 3rd highest grossing filmmaker of all time. His movies have earned over 6.4 billion dollars. This is 1.7 billion more than Baby Brain Nolan. To put this another away, Michael Bay is superior to Christopher Nolan by more than 7 times the total earnings of Stanley Kubrick's filmography. It's not really a competition, but simple minded fans like to act like it is. Film is subjective, but success isn't. Michael Bay is success incarnate.