I was sitting in one of New York's mega movie theaters a few months ago when a preview for the The Island cued up. As is typical in previews for action movies, there was plenty of noise, flashing lights, and epileptic fit-inspiring editing. But something made this preview particularly interesting, setting it apart from the two other previews I'd just watched: the words "From Director Michael Bay," hovering on the screen in white and gold lettering. These words caused goosebumps to break out along my forearms and a shiver to run down my spine. They caused a little voice in my head to scream "Sweet!" and made me feel a sudden urge to urinate. Michael Bay! Michael Bay! The name was a trigger, invoking Pavlovian-like responses in me. I knew, I just knew, this movie was going to be big and loud and totally flippin' AWESOME.

Something nagged at me, however, something curbing the excitement that seconds before was flooding my veins and squeezing my bladder. This was the thing — while I was familiar with the name Michael Bay, I actually didn't have any idea who he was or what movies he was famous for directing. Most people reading this article will think I'm a complete idiot who's been living under a rock for the last 10 years. Who could forget the line in Team America: "I miss you/More than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor?" But that's how brain farts go. My mind was utterly blank and the harder I dug into it for information on Michael Bay, the darker and blanker it became. So who is Michael Bay?

The easy answer is he's one of the most bankable directors in Hollywood, right up there with James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. The five movies he made before The Island (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys II) grossed around $1.7 billion dollars worldwide. Michael Bay makes blockbusters and audiences around the world love them. Movie studios love him, too, because everything he touches turns to gold ... or at least it did until he made The Island. The sci-fi thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson opened in fourth place last weekend with a pathetic $12 million dollars. With a $124-million production budget, The Island has proved itself to be one of the most expensive duds of the year.

What happened? Michael Bay blames it on several factors, including poor marketing efforts and the fact that McGregor and Johansson are not hugely recognized stars. He thinks one of the movie posters made Johansson look like a "porn star," though personally I am at a loss as to how that fails to attract the demographic this movie was obviously after, young males.

The more plausible answer for the underwhelming impact of The Island is audiences have built up a tolerance, if not downright fatigue, for the Michael Bay style of movie over the last 10 years. Rapid-fire cuts and high-octane automobile chase scenes leaving you breathless and sweating in your seat are Michael Bay's signature effects. He comes from a long background of shooting commercials and MTV videos, both mediums that require hyper-kinetic energy and fast sequencing. When he brought that style to the theaters in 1995 with Bad Boys, he blew audiences away. The Rock and Armageddon were no different. The essence of Bay's style was not the incredible story line or the careful character development; it was instead the visceral thrill he was delivering visually and, as is the case in the new mega theaters with THX and Dolby Digital surround sound, aurally. You left a Michael Bay movie simultaneously exhausted and pumped, with a dull ringing in your ears as if you'd just finished watching an Aerosmith concert.

Years ago this was something of a phenomenon. These days it seems almost every blockbuster movie utilizes Bay's techniques. Faced with a onslaught of bang-'em-up movies like The Matrix trilogy, the new Star Wars, and the Mission: Impossible franchise, it's difficult to remember what made Michael Bay so special to begin with.

But special he was. Critics hate Bay, comparing him to the devil and accusing him of destroying the cinema as an art form. That all depends on how one defines the art form. If cinema is defined as solely a medium through which an engrossing story is told, rich with realistic and well-defined characters, that teaches the audience a moral lesson, then Michael Bay completely misses the mark. Bay is all about style over substance and doesn't pretend to be otherwise. He has been quoted as saying, "I don't believe movies should deliver messages." This statement can either be taken as a glib remark or as a shout-out to the pioneering days of moviemaking, when cinema was a new art form seeking to distinguish itself from its much more established and respected brethren, the theater and the novel.

Specifically I'm referring to the Soviet movement in the 1920s, a movement called Kino-eye, which means "cinema-eye." The philosophy of Kino-eye was that cinema was a new art form capable of communicating ideas and sensations to audiences in ways theater and novels — and even painting — could never dream of. Because of its uniqueness, cinema should seek to break away from other art forms. To use cinema as merely another storytelling device was to hamstring it. Let psychological and moral dilemmas be left to the likes of Dostoevsky. Kino-eye sought to find cinema's "rhythm, one lifted from nowhere else, and we find it in the movements of things."

This rhythm was illustrated through rapid editing and spectacular visual effects. The Kino-eye founders took the camera places audiences had never been, such as under train tracks and inside smoke stacks. Cinematic tricks like split screen, jump cuts, and variable speed were developed. Do these techniques sound familiar? Imagine the Soviet audiences watching a train rushing by from a point-of-view they never thought possible: under the tracks. Now remember the scene in Bay's Pearl Harbor, when you saw a bomb dropped from a Japanese plane onto an American battleship — from the point-of-view of the bomb.

In some sense, then, Michael Bay is continuing the work started by the Kino-eye movement. Special effects and blue-screens have allowed Bay (and other directors) to show audiences things that can be seen in no other art form. Modern theaters with their deafening surround sound have heightened the experience. Bay's goal is not to deliver a message, it's to deliver an amazing experience. "I don't feel like films always have to deliver the big picture. That can be preachy and boring," he says. "I just hope people have a good time when they watch it. It's a trip."

The success of an artist can often be measured in his influence on the art form, and there is no denying Bay's influence on current cinema. It is for this reason the Criterion Collection, a DVD publisher focused largely on art-house films by Kurosawa, Renoir, and Fellini, includes Armageddon and The Rock in its catalogue. The Criterion website states its mission is "to pull the treasures of world cinema out of the film vaults and put them in the hands of collectors."

The Rock is a treasure of world cinema? You bet it is. Now, I doubt many would argue The Rock is an example of wonderful storytelling. It's nothing more than a popcorn flick, light on substance, heavy on style. But it's a treasure because The Rock spun cinema (at least blockbuster cinema) in a new direction. Whether this direction is worthwhile is something I leave up to audiences to decide.

From The Island's dismal opening weekend, it seems to me audiences have had enough of the Michael Bay style of movie. This is not to say Bay is worthless as a filmmaker; rather, audiences are ready for cinema to be spun in yet another direction. Hollywood has been pumping out Bay-inspired movies for the last few years and box office sales have been slumping alarmingly. Audiences want to experience more in their movies besides fast editing and loud explosions. What that is remains to be seen.