‘Island’ director disregards jabs from critics

The mere mention of his name is enough to make movie critics hiss and groan. The feeling is shared by many serious film buffs, who argue his style of filmmaking is antithetical to the primal pleasure of movies – an engrossing story populated by characters we can identify with.

Michael Bay is well aware of this, thank you.

Sitting on a couch in a Manhattan hotel suite to promote his new film, the $100 million futuristic thriller “The Island,” the director is engaged and lively – until you utter the word “critics.”

Then Bay immediately detaches, turns away to stare out the window, and begins to speak in a dronelike manner, as if reciting a speech he’s had to say 10 times too many.

“They castrate me,” he begins. “They call me the devil and all that … .”

For a moment, he stops, obviously wanting to talk about something else. But after a little prodding, he begins again.

“The critics were very nice to me when I first began with ‘Bad Boys,’ ” he says. “But I’ve actually stopped reading them. It would be nice if they liked me and didn’t call me the devil. But when you’re successful, everyone wants to see you fail.”

Whether it’s deserved or not, Bay’s reputation in the pop culture arena is of a stereotypically slick, hotshot director whose movies are all assaultive flash and vacuous thrills – a perfect filmmaker, in other words, for the Xbox generation.

It’s a reputation so widespread that in last year’s “Team America: World Police,” South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had one of their marionettes sing the line “I miss you/More than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made ‘Pearl Harbor’ ” – and everyone in the theater got the joke.

But there’s an undeniable counterpoint to all the criticism: The five movies Bay has directed to date – “Bad Boys” I and II, “Armageddon,” “The Rock” and “Pearl Harbor” – have grossed more than $1.7 billion worldwide.

That’s not just enough to keep Bay working. That’s enough to have landed the 39-year-old veteran of TV commercials and music videos a spot on the A-list alongside the likes of James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

It was Spielberg who sent Bay the script for “The Island,” about two people (Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson) in 2050 who discover they are clones bred to supply replacement parts for their “sponsors,” and go on the run to avoid their fate.

“The Island” is easily the most substantial picture Bay has made, with thought-provoking subtexts about identity, the dangers of genetic engineering, and the value of human life.

But it is also, unmistakably, a Michael Bay film, from the dream sequence that opens the film – a hyperkinetic montage of nightmarish images that zip by faster than the eye can register – to a showstopping midfilm car chase involving an 18-wheeler carrying 1-ton metal train wheels, a flying motorcycle, helicopters and lots and lots of shattered glass and steel.

If “The Island” doesn’t feel like quite as much of an onslaught as some of Bay’s other movies, it’s because the times may be catching up with him. The pace of action pictures has quickened tremendously over the past 10 years, and one could argue that everything from “The Matrix” to “Black Hawk Down” owes a small debt to Bay.

And even if reviews for “The Island” end up reviving those devil references, Bay says he doesn’t care.

“I don’t make movies for critics: I make them for the average person to just go there and forget about their problems for two hours,” he says.

“Besides, in a way, it’s like a badge of honor. Quentin Tarantino told me, ‘Hey dude, don’t worry about it. They called me the Antichrist last year!’ “