Director Michael Bay has admitted that some of the CGI in his new film Ambulance is "s--t." Bay began his cinema career as a populist filmmaker to the highest degree, making well-regarded blockbusters like Bad Boys, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor. However, his career veered into more controversial waters when he began directing CGI-laden action extravaganzas like 2008's Transformers and several of its sequels. Now it has become popular in many corners of the internet for film fans to slam Michael Bay's style for being too over-the-top and unrealistic.
His newest film seems out of step with that assessment, however. Ambulance, which hits theaters on April 8, 2022, is a thriller about two adoptive brothers who are running a bank heist that has gone terribly wrong. They're forced to kidnap a first-responder and attempt to escape in the ambulance. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the two brothers and Eiza González as the EMT. The rest of the cast is filled out by Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell, Colin Woodell, Jesse Garcia, and Grey's Anatomy's Jessica Capshaw.
During an interview with the French outlet Les Cinémas Pathé Gaumont, Michael Bay took a rather unusual approach when promoting Ambulance. He frankly admitted that "some of the CGI is s--t," slamming the final product that he ultimately had approval over, and even saying "there’s a couple shots that I wasn’t happy with, okay?" However, this is in service to his larger point that there is almost no CGI in the film, and that they largely relied on practical effects including "all those explosions and cars flipping." Read his full quote below:
All those explosions and cars flipping, that’s all real. That’s all live, real, ratchets. It looks very dangerous [and] it could be very dangerous if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Most of it is real stunts. There’s very few blue screen shots on the movie. There’s not a lot of CGI. Some of the CGI is sh*t in this movie. There’s a couple shots that I wasn’t happy with, okay? Alright.
By criticizing the CGI in his own film, Bay has opened himself up to meme mockery across the social media sphere. Considering his history in drenching the Transformers films in CGI, some of which has aged very poorly in the intervening decade and change, many of his detractors are likely going to make a meal out of this statement. However, if enough people see and like the movie, they might be able to use those jokes as a springboard to launch their own support for the film online.
Ambulance does seem like the most pared-down film from Bay in quite some time, at the very least since his more character-focused 2013 film Pain & Gain. By focusing in on what is essentially one long car chase, he has eliminated his need for big splashy effects. With this film, he can prove he still has what it takes to make a practical film feel kinetic and exciting, and maybe reverse some of the derision that has come his way in recent years.
Source: Les Cinémas Pathé Gaumont
