Michael Bay: No, I am Not Sorry About Armageddon

Before Michael Bay brought Megan Fox to the world's attention, he brought us something else: Armageddon, a movie that Roger Ebert called "an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained," as Vanity Fair fondly recalls. Well, Bay finally told the world he's sorry about that, 15 years after the fact, in an interview with the Miami Herald ... but when the quote started making headlines, he quickly backtracked:

• The original quote: "I will apologize for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?'" But, he notes, "the movie did fine." What that means: It made $500 million, Vanity Fair points out.

• One of the many reactions that popped up: Writes Vanity Fair's Julie Miller, "Now if only he could reimburse us for that expensive dissociation therapy we needed for Aerosmith’s 'I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,' we would be getting somewhere."
• And then there was this: The apology is notable since, Jesse David Fox points out for Vulture, "Bay is not necessarily known as Hollywood’s most self-deprecating director. Hell, he might be the least."
• Bay backtracks: Well, Fox may have been right, because Bay wrote a post on his forum that Vulture spotted. Bay insists that his quote was taken out of context. "I'm not in the slightest going to apologize for the third movie in my movie career, a film called Armageddon," he writes. "Still today Armageddon, is still one of the most shown movies on cable TV. And yes, I'm proud of the movie."

(More Michael Bay stories.)