Sir Anthony Hopkins has called Michael Bay “a genius.” He made these claims after working with Bay on his latest high-octane sci-fi action thriller about robots coming to Earth from space to fight on Earth and try to send each other back to space based on a popular line of children’s toys, “Transformers: The Last Knight,” and also called him a “savant” akin to Scorsese. Huh?
‘The Last Knight’ will be released in June
“Transformers: The Last Knight,” directed by Bay, will be released in cinemas in June. It’ll feature some big names in its cast, primarily highly respected (until now) actor Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his chilling portrayal of serial killer Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.” This marks a continuation of Hopkins’ foray into bigger-budget sci-fi in his golden years.
He was recently in HBO’s f*cked-up TV remake of “Westworld” and has been in the past two “Thor” films as Odin.
Hopkins spoke with Yahoo! Movies at CinemaCon to discuss his “Transformers” role as Sir Edmund Burton (a knight played by a knight in the movie “The Last Knight,” how odd), an astronomer and historian who teams up with the Autobots to do whatever with the All-Spark or whatever. He said, surprisingly, that he thinks the “Transformers” films are “terrific” and that they’ve been directed by “a genius.” Presumably he means Bay, but surely he’s mistaken.
But then he mentioned him by name. Hopkins described talking to Bay over breakfast about his work with “the special effects guys” to make sure that “all the details of light on metal and all that” got into the Film to make it look authentic.
And then, for some reason, that made him see Bay as “a genius” and “a savant” of “the same ilk as Oliver Stone and Spielberg and Scorsese.”
Hopkins has worked with the best directors
It’s certainly a surprising claim to make about Michael Bay, but Anthony Hopkins has earned the right to brand certain directors “savants” after working with all of them, and particularly with the greats.
If he says Bay is like Stone or Spielberg, he has to be believed, because he worked with Spielberg on “Amistad” and Stone (who was taught how to direct by Scorsese) on “Alexander” and “Nixon.”
Hopkins has worked with all the greats: Darren Aronofsky, Kenneth Branagh, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Martin Brest, David Lynch, Edward Zwick, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Richard Attenborough, Michael Cinimo, Woody Allen, Robert Wise.
After working with those guys, you know a thing or two about good directing. And in any case, Bay might suck at composing a frame, but he does put a lot of passion into his work, as does Hopkins. Maybe that’s why these guys have hit it off so well. And being in front of the camera, Sir Anthony can’t see the travesty behind it.
This is Bay’s last time directing a ‘Transformers’ film
Bay claims that this will be his final “Transformers” film as director, which will have some jumping in the air with glee (although his departure doesn’t guarantee the films getting any better, frankly, and it doesn’t guarantee the robots won’t still have weird human mouths instead of speakers, but anyway), but hold off on that excitement until another director is in place for “Transformers 6,” because we’ve heard this before, and he always comes back.
This is Bay’s fifth go-around, and he says there’s another fourteen “Transformers” films on their way, which will each be making $1 billion or more each for the next couple of decades, so you can almost guarantee he isn’t completely washing his hands of the franchise and we’ll never see his name in their credits again.
