The actor Michael Bay hated so much he gave them a prolonged on-screen death
Being a combative personality has served Michael Bay very well throughout his career, at least in terms of building his brand into that of action cinema’s most outspoken and headstrong auteur.
He might have directed five increasingly tedious Transformers movies that were loaded with wall-to-wall digital effects, but Bay still managed to maintain his preference for practical set pieces by doing as much in-camera in possible when he really didn’t have to.
The filmmaker has rubbed many people the wrong way with a real-life attitude that’s every bit as brash and confident as his explosive contributions to cinema, and he isn’t above incorporating real-life disdain into his work, either. For concrete evidence, look no further than the way T.J. Miller was dispatched in Transformers: Age of Extinction.
In an action sequence where Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager, Nicola Peltz’s daughter Tessa, and Jack Reynor’s Shane Dyson barely manage to outrun a Decepticon attack, Miller’s Lucas Flannery isn’t quite so fortunate. In fact, the argument could be made that the character’s death is unnecessarily protracted, with Bay seemingly luxuriating in dismantling the actor for the sole reason they didn’t get along.
Not content with seeing him vaporised in an explosion, Bay’s camera lovingly swoops around the charred and solidified remains of what used to be Miller, including an extended closeup shot in slow motion. For most giant alien robots that would be the end of it, but the Mark Ryan-voiced Lockdown decides to add even further insult to injury.
After transforming into a vehicle, the car casually drives past the still-smoking wreckage of Miller’s corpse, which in itself doesn’t seem like an affront. However, the car in question is a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700–4 Coupe. Not just any old Lamborghini Aventador LP 700–4 Coupe, though, but one owned by none other than Michael Bay, who lent it to his own production.
Essentially, Bay decided that what Miller deserved was to be killed in the most horrific and extended fashion by the very Decepticon who transforms into his own car. Why did he hold such disdain with Miller? The director has never spoken about it at length, but the actor did offer an insight during an appearance on Doug Loves Movies.
“He has a specific way of communicating with people. Once he said to me, ‘Nothing that you’ve said is funny T.J.! Not one thing all day! We hired you to be funny! There’s 300 people here! None of them are laughing at you! Say something funny! I can still cut you out of the movie!,'” he offered. “And I said, ‘Michael, I would love that because then I would be able to leave right this instant.'”
There was clearly some bad blood between them, and it manifested on-screen in the most blackly hilarious fashion imaginable.
