Michael Bay Reused Footage From "The Island" In "Transformers 3"

Close enough.

Jermain Odreman noticed a similarity between Transformers: Dark of the Moon and another Michael Bay movie, The Island (2005), and it wasn’t just the similarity between all Michael Bay movie plots.  What Odreman noticed was that a couple action sequences included recycled footage.  The video and some screencaps are below.  It isn’t the first time a director has used stock footage or reused their own footage, of course (Bay used the same shot of an aircraft carrier in Pearl Harbor and Transformers, for example).  Although using an action scene as stock footage is usually reserved for grindhouse fare.

So why did he do it?  Some YouTube commenters — world-renowned for being reliable fonts of knowledge — are saying the footage was recycled from The Island to replace footage in which Gabriella Cedillo, an extra on the Transformers set, suffered a severe open head trauma when a cable snapped and struck her.  For obvious reasons, Paramount and Bay wouldn’t want to use footage of an extra getting paralyzed.  But let’s not lose sight of the true lesson here:  somebody, somewhere, actually remembered and recognized a scene from The Island.  Astounding.

[via /film, BleedingCool, and the eloquent, not-at-all-racist commenters on YouTube]