Dialogue is not usually what people remember about Michael Bay movies, but consider how vital it is that the characters say the right lines to explain all the fantastic action going on around them. It’s hard for actors playing soldiers to remember how to describe the battle with giant robots when real bombs are going off around them.
"Transformers" star Josh Duhamel recalled, "A few times I remember [Bay]’s like, ‘Okay, the bomb’s going to go off and this is where you’ve got to give the [speech]…’ It’s like [BANG] and ahhh, ahhh, sh*t, I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say."
In Bay’s defense, he prepped the boys on exactly what was coming, but sometimes words aren’t enough, said Tyrese Gibson. "You can’t explain that a one pound bomb or a two pound bomb is about to go off," he said. "He just says it. ‘Yeah, one pound bomb is going to be off over here. Then it’s going to rat-a-tat-tat along the whole edge and then duh duh duh duh…’ But I don’t know what a one pound bomb is. I don’t know what a two pound bomb is."
And Bay likes to do those sweeping tracking shots where you see it all in one take. If the line doesn’t come, there could be hell to pay. "When these one and two and three pound bombs went off, you were just trying your best to remember your dialogue," said Gibson. "If you forget your dialogue and it was all done in one fluid shot, then it’s a problem. Now they’ve got to go reset all of these bombs. And you’re sitting around."
