Michael Bay Says It’s “Bullsh*t” That ‘Spectre’ Holds Guinness Record For Largest Movie Explosion Over ‘Pearl Harbor’

Michael Bay prides himself on the stunts and explosions in his neverending string of action films throughout his directing career. He’s likely best known for intense highway chases and an avalanche of destruction in his movies, and there are a lot of wheels in motion to keep a safe set with all that going on. A particular record held by Sam Mendes’ second James Bond installment, “Spectre,” gets under the filmmaker’s skin.

“Spectre” is the Guinness Book of Records holder for the largest on-set movie explosion, and Bay takes issue with that. While speaking with Empire Magazine to promote his upcoming film “Ambulance,” Bay believes his lesser-known 2001 WWII actioner “Pearl Harbor,” starring Ben Affleck, Josh Harnett, and Kate Beckinsale, should be the film with that honor given how hard it was to execute their explosions.

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“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.’ Bullshit. Ours is,” Bay tells Empire in their latest issue.

Bay also believes there is a “special sauce” to making convincing explosions for the big screen, “There’s a special sauce for explosions. It’s like a recipe. I see some directors do it, and they look cheesy, or it won’t have a shockwave. 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.”

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As the “Transformers” franchise is chugging along beyond the Bayverse, the director recently made the rarely talked about Netflix film “6 Underground” starring Ryan Reynolds and has the upcoming Universal heist thriller “Ambulance” that releases in theaters on April 8.