“It’s no wonder that Michael Bay is gun-shy,” a 7.22 Telegraph profile observes. “Newsweek has said he embodies ‘Hollywood’s capitulation to mindless, meaningless razzle-dazzle — a poster boy for the death of cinema.’
“The New York Times described Bad Boys as ‘stitched together, like some cinematic Frankenstein’s monster, from the body parts of other movies’. In a recent episode of Entourage, the mention of Bay’s name as the director of the main character’s next film drew on-screen groans, the implication being that even fictional creations don’t want to work with him.”
“Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, have made a running gag of deriding Bay, starting a song in their film Team America with the line, ‘I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor‘ and having a character quip in one episode of their cartoon series, ‘Job has all his children killed, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies? There isn’t a god.'”