Guillermo Del Toro Responds To Michael Bay's "Rip-Off" Slam; Bay Responds To Del Toro's Response
It's Autobots and Decepticons versus Jaegers and Kaiju. Sort of. Earlier this week at CinemaCon, Michael Bay made some vague comments about the "rip-off" robot movies that have followed his Transformers franchise. While he didn't name names, folks wondered if he might be dissing Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Pacific Rim. Del Toro seemed to take it that way, too, giving a snarky response to press.
But Bay has now clarified that he wasn't talking about del Toro at all, and in fact that he and del Toro have already squashed their supposed feud. An epic war for the fate of the world, this isn't. Hit the jump to keep reading.
We are far, far, far away from that in a very willing fashion. For good or bad, this is my movie. This is my universe and my creation, and I do not create through comparison.
Del Toro then took the opportunity to get in his own dig at Bay.
The fights don't occur in well-lit, supercool, car commercial-looking environments. They occur in the middle of a raging sea storm or in a savage snowstorm. They happen in a universe that is incredibly saturated.
Pointing out that robots have been a sci-fi staple for decades, del Toro added, "And to some degree, the source of all artificial life is Frankenstein."
And the source of this artificial battle, according to the Bay, was the press. In a blog post, he explained that he'd never meant to start trouble with his fellow filmmaker.
Well today, Hollywood Reporter stated that I was in a feud with Guillermo del Toro and his Pacific Rim. Absolutely to the contrary.
I was talking about another movie, at another studio that will remain nameless, while I spoke at CinemaCon in Vegas this Monday.
I love how reporters put false words in people's mouths without doing their proper research. Well 'cause of that sloppy reporting, I thought Guillermo was mad at me, and he thought I was mad at him. We both exchanged calls today and realized nobody was mad at anybody except we were both mad at that reporter!
Basically, it was all a big misunderstanding that the parties involved have now settled like grownups. (That, or Bay's just intimidated by del Toro's terrifying Jaeger army — del Toro did tell THR they could beat any "robot in the history of mankind in a toe-to-toe showdown," after all.) Feel free to enjoy both Pacific Rim and Transformers 4 when they drop July 12, 2013 and June 27, 2014, respectively.