When it comes to massive stunt coordination and blowing things up on film, director Michael Bay knows his stuff better than almost anyone on the planet.
In a new interview with Empire, Bay has called ‘bulls—‘ on the James Bond franchise for holding the Guinness World Records for one the largest explosions ever filmed.
Daniel Craig’s two final Bond films managed to snag separate records. The destruction of Blofeld’s desert base in “Spectre” set the record for the largest film stunt explosion with a total yield of 68.47 tonnes of TNT equivalent.
The more recent “No Time to Die” also set a Guinness World Record for the most high explosives detonated in a single film take to depict the island base explosion at the end. For that, a total of 136.4kg TNT equivalent was detonated (the previous record was 65kg).
Bay however says his historical war epic “Pearl Harbor” has an even bigger explosion during the central attack sequence:
“[Producer] Jerry Bruckheimer showed Ridley Scott the movie, and the quote [from Scott] was, ‘F–k me’. No one knows how hard that is. We had so much big stuff out there. Real boats, 20 real planes. We had 350 events going off. Three months of rigging on seven boats, stopping a freeway that’s three miles away. James Bond tried to take the ‘largest explosion in the world.’ Bulls—. Ours is.””
Bay says explosions require a “special sauce” and many today on film “look cheesy, or they won’t have a shockwave.” He adds:
“There are certain ways with explosions where you’re mixing different things, and different types of explosions to make it look more realistic. It’s like making a Caesar salad.”
Bay returns to cinemas with “Ambulance” which opens on April 8th.
