405 - Armageddon, United States, 1998. Dir. Michael Bay.

Friday, February 8, 2018

405 - Armageddon, United States, 1998.  Dir. Michael Bay.

Imagine how mundane and esoteric an advertisement could potentially be.

Let us say that you wish to promote dairy.  You are a member of the 1993 California Milk Processor Board.  Your reach is local.

I am asleep already.

You partner with the national Milk Processor Education Program to expand your reach nationally.

Wake me up when it is over.

You decide to make a television commercial that takes place in a museum.  I like that, but you have just lost half your audience.

It will feature classical music.  I love that, but you have just lost half more.

It will focus on a quasi obscure moment in America history.  The duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Aaron who?

Everyone watching TV has now gone to the bathroom.

You have no audience.

Your campaign will go the way of all goody messages that have earnestly admonished schoolchildren, only to have them go out and do the opposite.

Unless you make it cool.

Unless you ask a 28-year old music video director to direct your commercial.

And ask a simple two-word question?

Got Milk?

And suddenly rock stars line up be photographed with a milk mustache.

And your ad campaign runs for twenty-one years.  And is copied and parodied by brands the world over.

And is directly responsible for the sales of billions of pounds of fluid milk per year.

And is cited as one of the greatest ad campaigns in history.  With that one commercial named one of the top ten greatest commercials ever made.

That is the power of Michael Bay.

Yes, the ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners stumbled upon the initial genius.

But they hired the right man to launch it.

If Michael Bay had not directed that first commercial, the whole campaign might never have been as effective as it came to be.

And an entire generation of people might have more brittle bones today.

When your doctor tells you your calcium levels are good, you know whom you can thank.

In 1981 Michael Bay was a Production Intern on Raiders of the Lost Ark.  He was 15 years old.

Within a few years he was directing music videos.

Tyler Collins, Gregg Allman, Donny Osmond, Poco, Richard Marx, Vanilla Ice, Slaughter, The Neville Brothers, Styx, Chicago, Winger, Great White, Divinyls, House of Lords, Young MC, Tina Turner, Wilson Phillips, Lionel Ritchie, Meat Loaf, Aerosmith.

Ah, yes.  Aerosmith.  I wonder if that Aerosmith music video had an impact on Bay's career.

Then he made those commercials.

Got Milk?  Nike.  Miller Lite.  Bugle Boy.  Victoria's Secret.  Levi's.  Isuzu.  Mercedes-Benz.  Saturn.  Chevy.  Some say as many as 300 of them.

Michael Bay invented a unique visual style and influenced a generation of filmmakers.

When you hear people refer to "MTV-style editing," they are not referring to a filmmaker who was influenced by MTV.  They are referring to a filmmaker who helped make MTV.

Whatever you think of him, he is an auteur.  A man with a singular vision.  A man who changed the way people watch things.

But he also makes money.

And ladies and gentlemen, in the world of show business, the business is just as important as the show.

In 1995 he began making movies.

Bad Boys (1995).  The Rock (1996).  Armageddon (1998).  Pearl Harbor (2001).  Bad Boys II (2003).  The Island (2005).  Transformers (2007).  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).  Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011).  Pain & Gain (2013).  Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).  13 Hours (2016).  Transformers: The Last Knight (2017).

Let us look at these films from a financial standpoint.

How many of them have lost money?

NONE.

Which ones underperformed?  Only two.  The Island and 13 Hours.

And what does underperforming mean?

The Island only made a 29.37% return on investment, and 13 Hours only made a 38% return on investment.

Only.

What businessman would not spring for that kind of action?  And those are the underperformers?

Someone please give me an investment that performs that poorly.

The current average savings account has an annual percentage yield of 0.06%.

The current core interest rate year over year is 1.8%.

If you have a dollar in your savings account today, then this time next year it will be worth $1.0006, rounded to $1.00.

But the product you wanted to buy for a dollar will then cost $1.018, rounded to $1.02.

Multiply it out.  $100.06 vs. $101.80.  $1000.60 vs. $1,018.  $10,006 vs. $10,180.

You can no longer afford it.  Your purchasing power is going backwards.

How is that savings account working out for you?

I know a good firepit you could throw your cash in.

But if his underperformers made 29% and 38% ROI, what did his other movies make?

ALL THE REST OF HIS MOVIES HAVE MADE BETWEEN A 110% (Bad Boys) and a 642% (Bad Boys II) return on investment.

That means at worst you double your money and at best you get seven times as much in return.

The average ROI on all thirteen of his movies is 283.2%.  The average ROI not counting The Island and 13 Hours is 328.57%.  The average ROI of the four Transformers movies he directed is 348.74%.

If you put $20 million into something and get $80 to $120 million back, or if you put $120 million and get $300 to $500 million back, or if you put $200 million into something and get $1 billion back, what do you call that?

A sound investment.

More reliable than Bitcoin.

So for those who roll their eyes and complains that they are already working on Transformers 7 and Transformers 8, we have one question for them.

Are you stupid?

Michael Bay has created a machine for making money and you are complaining?  How about the thousands of people who have jobs because of him.

What are you doing to provide incomes for thousands of other people?

Michael Bay is only 52.  That is astonishing.

He did much of his most influential work in his 20s and 30s.

But let us get back to the movie at hand.

And discuss the aesthetics.

If you saw Armageddon twenty years ago, you may have enjoyed it at the time.  Then, over the next twenty years, you may have grown to laugh at it.  How silly.  How unrealistic.  How outrageous.

Let us all make fun of Michael Bay because that is the thing to do.

But when was the last time you watched it?

Watch it again.

Armageddon is entertaining.

It is not Ingmar Bergman, but it is not trying to be.  It is a Summer Blockbuster.

And as Summer blockbusters go, it is up there.  A great ensemble cast filled with major movie stars.  A high concept.  A monster soundtrack.  Special effects which frankly hold up quite well for the time period.  An impossible task without enough time to do it.  A love triangle, in this case between father, daughter, and boyfriend.  Drama.  Self-sacrifice.  Heroism.

And the quick cutting is not that big a deal.  And not as quick as you might remember.  We are so used to that style by now that this application of it seems tame.

The cutting certainly seems slower than a Jason Bourne movie directed Paul Greengrass.

And for those of you who love J. J. Abrams, the director of both Star Wars and Star Trek movies, the creator of Felicity and Alias and Lost, do not forget that he co-wrote the screenplay for Armageddon.

There is a lot about Armageddon that is not great.  Underwritten characters.  Bad lines.  Weak acting.  But it has a solid narrative structure and it hits all its beats.  And Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis are solid.  Doing what they do best.

There are times when you want fine dining and times when you want a cheeseburger.  This movie is a cheeseburger.

Lacking the nuances of flavor that a great chef would put in it.

Made for mass consumption.

Something to grab at a drive-through when you are on the go.

And yet it is hot and juicy.

And you love every bite of it.

As you smack your lips in the car on the way to your next errand.

This is a movie to watch with your family and friends on a Friday night on a big TV with the sound turned up loud.

When you don't want to close your eyes.
When you don't want to fall asleep.
Cause you'd miss your baby
And you don't want to miss a thing.

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Look at this cast:

Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton,  Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, William Fichtner, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie, Lawrence Tierney, and Charlton Heston.