“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” opened last night earning roughly $16 million in midnight showings despite having been criticized for its racial stereotypes. Transformer director Michael Bay now finally weighs in on the controversy.
Defending the Auotbots, Bay recently told Associated Press that the two characters Mudflap and Skids were meant to provide comic relief. Furthermore, insisting that the characters “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors [Tom Kenny and Reno Wilson who is African American] is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”
“I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it,” Bay says, and concludes by saying, “I purely did it for kids. … Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
Did Bay just throw his voice actors under the bus? Should Bay or the voice actors be more accountable? What did you think about this Autobots racial controversy?