Michael Bay is an easy target for film critics like Nickelback is an easy target for music critics. They produce work that’s flashy and lacks substance while they laugh all the way to the bank.

Though Bay’s films usually receive very low ratings, he’s only had one flop, “The Island,” and his financial batting average is phenomenal. He’s giving the masses the movies they want to see, even if they don’t want to think about them. He’s a blockbuster mill.

However, it’s easy to forget that Bay directed “The Rock” in 1996: he made a good movie. As far as action movies go, “The Rock” is everything it should be: explosions, car chases and gun-fights are the reasons to see action flicks. Bay’s work has lost a lot of the appeal “The Rock” had, but he still does a fantastic job on the visual presentation of his movies. He just needs to pick better scripts.

Bay’s visual style is not enough to carry a movie, as demonstrated in “Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor.” It’s not so much Bay’s fault in his actual directing that his films are ridiculous, but rather the ridiculous scripts. The movies were doomed in the critic’s eyes before Bay even got in to the director’s chair.

Bay surprised a lot of people in 2007 by crafting a coherent movie around a 1980’s action figure fad. “Transformers” is not a great movie, but it’s a fun movie and more importantly, it’s not awful.

The sequel, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has a good story buried somewhere underneath the toilet humor.

Unfortunately, the inclusion of two racially insensitive characters and bodily humor that even a third grader would find immature changed what could have been a decent follow-up into a mediocre-at-best bull’s-eye for critics with an axe to grind.

Despite the movie’s ignored potential and degrading reviews, it still did exceptionally well at the box-office. As much as people love to berate Bay’s movies, they keep coming back for more and likely enjoy the movies more than they’ll admit.

Though Bay seems to take the majority of the abuse, his producers should be the ones blasted by the critics. You would think Steven Spielberg would have spoken up about the two racially-stereotyped autobots in the second “Transformers” movie and talked Bay into removing the two characters from the film entirely, but he didn’t.

The characters hardly do anything important in the film and could’ve been cut out in editing and would’ve required shooting three scenes over.

Bay is talented in cinematography and presents visually appealing movies. If he gets a script without “this is really stupid” moments, he can put together a decent film. He just needs his producers to do their jobs and keep him from making bad decisions.