>Famous “contrarian” critic Armond White took a verbal beating for going on an Inception review podcast and insisting that – when it comes to styles of filming motion and action – Michael Bay is a better director than Chris Nolan. White’s theory (of how Nolan misuses editing and framing to cover his inability to capture action and motion) seemed impossible to absorb at the time of Inception‘s unstoppable hype, but in the years since, other voices have joined that same chorus – including THIS famous analysis of The Dark Knight’s now-iconic truck chase sequence:
>That video above by critic Jim Emerson almost perfectly dovetails what White was saying nearly a year before him. They both seem to point out that Nolan’s penchant for sophisticated and sharp editing often covers his shortcomings as a director.
Do you agree? Does Michael Bay really have better command over the nuts and bolts of film-making than Nolan?
Bay is baysed, but it's easier to think in memes and hate whatever Sup Forums insists you should hate.
Aaron Jackson
Bay says he makes movies for only a particular demographic.
If he has a good script, he can make a great movie. He just doesn't give a fuck about critics and makes movies for the lowest common denominator.
Daniel Campbell
A lot of the content in Bay's movies is never commented upon by his supposed target demographic so I can't really trust him in this case. He was probably being cheeky.
Liam Brooks
A lot of Nolan's actions scenes ARE just as poorly shot as Michael Bay's.
This might not be a coincidence, as according to his regular DP Wally Pfister, Nolan takes inspiration from Bay's action directing.
Christopher Watson
>Michael "I can't stop spinning my camera around my characters" Bay >better than Nolan
Thomas Price
Bay is an incredibly talented director and most people for some reason don't comprehend that he doesn't write movies
Also Nolan is openly a fan of Bay
Josiah Gomez
Nolan can't film fight scenes to save his life. Snyder's fight scenes involving Batman were a million times better than Nolan's.
Nicholas Johnson
Nolan makes a lot of very amateurish mistakes like breaking the 180 rule constantly.
Charles Smith
>Armond White He gave fucking Jack & Jill a positive review, fuck that nigger. He's being contrarian on purpose to get a rise out of people.
Thomas Garcia
You're a moron.
Colton Rodriguez
>Bay >shooting anything poorly
Good example of someone talking about something that they have no fucking idea of.
Henry Brooks
There are some serious continuity errors in that sequence but the criticism that all shots have to be reverse shots is stupid.
Nathan Diaz
He's right, bay is an objectively good director, and a better cinematographer than Nolan. Normies like to bash him because they don't realise he knows exactly what he's been doing- churning out profitable blockbusters for almost 20 years
Thomas Carter
That video's one of the worst cases of "look at me I did film school" I've ever seen.
"I'm already feeling disorientated because an extra is sitting in a position where a main character was a minute ago!" Give me a break you fucking pretentious dork.
Isaac Price
There's three webms you can rewatch and always notice something new and bizarre.
One
David Bailey
Two
Jayden Murphy
Three
Levi Hall
Bay directs better action sequences, but at the end of the day all that work is going into Transformers 17 or whatever. If he cared about making movies as imaginative as Inception or Memento he could salvage his image.
Luke White
The Transformers series has some of the worst looking action sequences I've ever seen.
Nicholas Morris
That video is stupid. Millions of people saw that scene and didn't have a problem with where the characters were sit or what in what van Harvey was. So it doesn't matter if it's better or worse edited, it works.
This kind of videos are cool when they analize things that work and tells you why they work, like the great yt chanel Every Frame A Painting. But when you just talk shit about something that everybody loved, you just look like a fucking retard that spend his time in a basement editing youtube clips while Nolan shoots his WWII movie.
Justin King
>Snyder's fight scenes involving Batman were a million times better than Nolan's
THIS. And this is not just due to Snyder being *relatively* better than Nolan. Snyder is a good action direction in absolute terms.
James Lee
>That video's one of the worst cases of "look at me I did film school" I've ever seen.
Jim Emerson is one of the best mainstream film critics in US today. Idiot.
Michael Reed
The main issue for me is that the robots looked weightless. I could never get over this.
Connor Thompson
What about dialogue? music? atmosphere? heroic quest presentation?
Almond white chocolate may be right about Bay's superior framing, but that's not why people like Nolan. I have a feeling people like Nolan for the same reason they like video games. He "gets" the heroic build up.
Kevin Mitchell
Michael Bay has nearly gotten his crew members several times in pursuit of the perfect shot. Nolan shoots everything in three takes max no matter how sloppy it looks.
Cameron White
crew members killed*
Ayden White
90% of the action sequences in Transformers are busy overdesigned CGI things smashing into other busy overdesigned CGI things in a heavily CGI environment.
Compared to his non-Transformers movies, at some point with those things he's just handing off to some ILM CG people who decide how things work, not him.
Evan Adams
He's also never run over budget or over schedule despite being a perfectionist too
Kayden Nelson
His brother writes too much exposition.
Nicholas Jackson
Holy shit thanks for posting this, gonna watch more.
Bentley Bell
Dude I'm one of those people who considers Nolan one of my favorite directors, thinks he's one of the last real auteur blockbuster directors there are, and I hope nobody would try to argue against that.
Snyder's great at cinematography and good at action scenes, and Nolan has a number of notable blind spots:
1. He's simply not good at action 2. He doesn't seem to understand the concept of women beyond "dead wife/dead girlfriend" 3. He has a baffling poor handle on sound direction for someone as talented as he is in other regards
Cameron Hughes
Interesting.
Hmmm sunshine or interstellar in terms of visual directing?
Sebastian Taylor
>They both seem to point out that Nolan’s penchant for sophisticated and sharp editing often covers his shortcomings as a director.
Err, are they trying to imply this a bad thing?
Tyler Lopez
Michael Bay's action scenes are completely incomprehensible. Also, anything Armond White says is the opposite of realty. That's kind of his character.
Do you think this is incompetence or just laziness?
>He doesn't seem to understand the concept of women beyond "dead wife/dead girlfriend"
This is true for most "blockbuster" movies today.
>someone as talented as he is in other regards
I have pulled my hair out trying to find what these "other talents" might be. The best I could come up with was that he has a knack for finding big, interesting premises or *gimmicks* to build his stories around. But beyond this conceptual development, on his own, he can't build a coherent. He again tries to rely on other gimmicks - like the reverse narrative gimmick in momento and gimmicky production choices like his refusal to use digital, not shooting 3D etc.
For some reason people seem to be enamored by this.
Tyler Robinson
He really doesn't, they're both shit at it. The only films by Nolan I genuinely like are Memento and Prestige. None of them are great in any way.
Benjamin Martin
>Michael Bay has nearly gotten his crew members several times in pursuit of the perfect shot. > Nolan shoots everything in three takes max no matter how sloppy it looks. So that's how legend was born.
Hunter Scott
>CGI things smashing into other busy overdesigned CGI things in a heavily CGI environment. Did you know that the characters are just actors, pretending?
Jose Sullivan
Everything Nolan's done since The Prestige has had some really oddly directed scenes, case in point the bane plane sequence. They shouldn't have given him such massive budgets, he worked better without them
Leo Lewis
The plane sequence is impeccable other than le CIA guy meme and Bane being unintelligible in it before someone told Nolan to go back and redub it
Wyatt Davis
This Never saw Interstellar (heard about the Love scene though), and Inception was pretty tight, it's mostly been just the Batman movies that have been oddly shot for some reason.
Christopher Moore
I can't think of anything in Interstellar that would count as an oddly directed scene
There's nothing wrong with the direction of the 'love' scene. It's more that it's a scene talking about the importance of love and empathy that feels like it was written by a robot who doesn't quite understand either concept entirely and is trying to make them fit into it's robot logic.
Nolan's a pretty emotionally cold director and Interstellar is him trying to do warm.
Levi Lopez
Yeah, when he's trying. Transformers 2, for instance, has some of the worst action editing of all time
Andrew Moore
Nolan is the Pizza Hut of movie directing.
When you haven't had it in a while, it tastes real fucking good.
Luke Allen
I generally condemn movie analogies but this is way too good.
But he's right that shot would've been much better if they shot both men in a single shot I'm not sure about the truck at the end though. Isn't it implied that the lorry continued to smash it until it had almost done a 360 turn which explains why it comes off looking like it changed direction?
Cameron Ortiz
Really not that good
Benjamin Flores
t. redditor
Wyatt Peterson
so cheesy
Samuel Walker
Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Armageddon is still shit either way.
Camden Morales
nah teenage redditors and self described "cinephiles" whose favorite film is inception all just blindly hate Bay. The Rock, Armageddon and Bad Boys are all legitimately good films and he's got a few other good ones like Pain & Gain and The Island
the only really shitty bay films are Pearl Harbor and Transformers 2
Chase Phillips
He is probably autistic. I can tell this by the way he directs basic conversation scenes.
Wyatt Anderson
Armageddon and Bad Boys are not "lemiegititlarely" good films, they're fucking shit. Nver seen Pain and Gain, but The Rock and The Island are fine films.
Luke Jones
>dialogue
"I’m an agent of chaos"
I feel bad for ledger for having to say garbage like this.
Carter Turner
HONKA HONKA
Jaxon Williams
Nolan is a piece of shit director, but that "critic" is a massive idiot. If it were up to him, every single film has to be shot in the exact same "textbook" way. Yeah, let's kill all creativity and artistic freedom. Idiots like that guy are what started the New Wave in cinema in the 60ties, so, in way we have to thank the idiot.
Luis Barnes
Pain and Gain is actually quite good. A lot of fun.
>As his DP Wally Pfister remarks, “What I do is not complicated.” Comparing their production method to documentary filming, he adds: “A lot of the spirit of it is: How fast can we shoot this?”
James Morales
Pearl Harbor might be tremendously flawed, but anyone who speaks against the actual attack sequence is a total jackass. That shit is SPECTACULAR.
This is the weirdest thread ever. Did Bay ever make a movie that wasn't trash? No.
He MIGHT be a better director, but he doesn't show it.
But I'm certain he isn't.
Armond White says contrarian shit so people pay attention to him.
Isaac Thompson
Anyone who has ever read a Armond White review would know that he reviews films almost solely on the merit of their ethical or political stance. He knows nothing about filmmaking.
Adam Thomas
The whole "he's the hero we need" also makes no sense
Luke Cooper
top kek
Daniel Turner
Comparing Nolan and Snyder is apples-to-apples comparison if we're talking about Batman fights.
Anthony Butler
He does it on purpose...watch bresson or lynn ramsey to realize why
Aiden Anderson
This one is the absolute greatest >chinky eyes man >old timer clearly having a heart attack >his brother getting up with the look allied forces must have had avter Dunkirk >scouser getting red in the face >that """woman""" with glasses looking like she just smelled rotten cabbage
Hunter Brown
>So it doesn't matter if it's better or worse edited, it works. this
to some degree, if this scene didn't deliver suspense and thrills but rather had you wondering where dent was sitting, the problem most likely lies with you. i mean, it's an action chase scene, did it ever occur to mr. reverse shot that disorientation could have been intentional?
weird to see an actual critic sink to this kind of exhaustive but entirely superficial nitpicking. it really is the fucking pits
no, nolan's not perfect, and bay has earned his eternal free card with the rock, but tally up their track records at the end of the day and i'm way more likely to go see a nolan flick
Lucas Peterson
Pretty good It's barely even Pizza but that doesn't make it not delicious on occasion
Eli Thomas
His sound design is immaculate. Its a good as david leans and Malick
Nathan Ortiz
>Doesn't like Bad Boys >Likes The Island It's like opposite taste day
James Powell
>Did Bay ever make a movie that wasn't trash?
Just having a good or bad director doesn't make a film good or bad. When you are making a big summer blockbuster, there a hundred different things to consider. You are not making an art-house independent film. There are decisions to make which are more important than the purely artistic considerations.
But if you look at the fundamental film-making competency, Bay is better than Nolan.
Hypothetically, if you give them an identical script to make a single short (~5 minutes) scene out of, Bay would do a better job.
Brandon Mitchell
But in those instances, there it is an artistic decision, not ignorance of spatial logic or attempt to hide incompetence.
Julian Brown
The Michael Bay camera on the ground as someone gets out of a car shot alone makes him better than Nolan.
Kayden Clark
If I had money to buy only 1 ticket, I'd go see the Nolan film too.
But you are missing the point here.The point is who is a better director. Not whose films would you go and see. Those are entirely different questions. Whose film you go and see depends entirely on your subjective opinion. But whose a better director depends on who has, objectively, better grasp of the cinematic technique.
And BTW, that video was done by Jim Emerson, not this film critic.
Isaac Ortiz
Bresson and ramesy dont do it for thematic intentions. The artistic decision is to catch moments photgraphically in a documantry verite style and lets sound dictate the mood needed to create. watch this. youtube.com/watch?v=KjY9kf7TuUU
Nathaniel Russell
No, Bay is just as terrible
David Bordwell's analysis of Fury Road's cinematography is great
Hunter Cooper
Yeah, three movies in a row where people are frequently unintelligible, but it's ok because he totally meant for it to be that way
Actually, it's shit.
Ryder Hill
David Lean and Malick don't care what people say in a movie. Lynne ramsey nor Bresson do either. I could make a gigantic list of people who dont care about dialogue to tell a story and would much rather hinder the dialogue to allow the fusion of images and sounds to dictate it.
Carter Barnes
None of those guys got anything on Lynch, the master of sound design pur sang.
Christian Cook
When it comes to filming motion and action, Bay is undeniably better than Nolan. Anyone who thinks Nolan's action scenes are better than Bay's is a complete moron.
Isaiah Cruz
That editing analyzing video is so lame. Its almost like someone was taught "editing is continuity" and blankets it on every film. Editing is a part of a film, and he picked the worst sequence to disprove Nolan because the editing there plays to Nolans strengths. The two plans of cops and Joker, and the idea of chance, go up against each other in reverse and subsequently displaces known elements to create a slight disorientation.
Sebastian Cox
No ones Lynch he's arguably the greatest artist of the 20th century. I only listed people that directly influenced Nolan.
William Flores
>the greatest artist of the 20th century. You know the 20th century goes back to 1900 right?
Asher Brown
His point still stands
Noah Johnson
Lynch is my personal favorite. Look at his painting , listen to his music and watch his movies. Picasso, Matise and Bacon are interchangeable for 2nd place.
Isaiah Thompson
Who the fuck is this idiot and what has he got on Jim Emerson?
Chase Moore
When you're a kid you like batman but when you grow up you understand the joker was right
Blake Jones
that guy still can't understand why the 180 rule is visually confusing?
is he fucking kidding?
Alexander Baker
What he apparently has is a lack of brain damage because you'd require that to find that Dark Knight scene incomprehensible and hard to follow
Instead of appealing to authority, how about you point out how his response is wrong?
Hint: you can't
Joseph Rodriguez
>Sup Forums webms >none of the college b-ball kid taunting the crowd waving his jersey at them
That fucking gif. Always something new. It's the gift that keeps giving.
Justin Foster
It ISN'T visually confusing. Why on earth would you assume that, because you're seeing the same action from the opposite side, which results in an on-screen change from left to right or right to left, the action itself has changed directions? Anyone with half a brain will conclude that the action itself has continued in the same direction unless there is something in-frame that shows or suggests a directional change in the action itself. Camera placement is obviously important, but this 180 rule is almost 100% horseshit...an academic argument generated for the purpose of having something to talk about, not because it's an actual issue. Certainly there are filmmakers who have violated this 'rule' and it has resulted in some genuinely confounding visuals. But making a blanket statement about it and pretending it applies in every instance is mindless and lazy.
Jackson Martin
the only line I can't stand is when he says something like "i'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it" I mean shit like that should be implied or said by another charactar, it's so cheesy when he's like "hahah look how crazy i am lol" other than that i agree with the general consensus that he's best joker
