Screw you, I like Michael Bay. Yeah, the guy made Pearl Harbor and likely he’ll never get over that one but the guy knows what he is (as evidenced by the awesome Verizon commercial.) Whether it’s the pure hilariously badness of Armageddon or the greatness that is Bad Boys II, Bay has mostly delivered on each film he’s done and makes you feel like you’re in the biggest shit storm of your life. Well he’s going to be leaving those storms behind, at least the ones involving the giant robots. IGN Movies via WENN.com reports Bay is going to be leaving the franchise after the release of this movie.

“After the three-and-a-half years I’ve spent making these movies, I feel like I’ve had enough of the Transformers world,” Bay proclaimed. “I need to do something totally divergent, something without any explosions.”

Y’know what? Good for him. He isn’t the anti-Christ and I’ve believed for a while he could do something good if he was given the right script. At least now he’s hopefully going to break out of the norm and do something different. Imagine how ironic it would feel to walk into an art house film and see “A Michael Bay Film”, something of a slap in the face to all those ‘art house critics’ who’ve bashed him and his career.

Speaking of said cricits, Bay had words for them too: “It’s easy to go shoot an art movie in a winery in the South of France. But people have no idea how hard it is to create something like Transformers. They [the critics] review me before they’ve even seen the movie.”

I applaud him for saying that, but most are going to be too up their own ass to admit he’s right. Transformers had a bland and stupid script but technically it was a masterpiece and Bay puts in a ton of hours into these flicks to make sure the action works. Besides, how many art house movies are way too pretentious for their own good?

DreamWorks/Paramount does want Transformers 3 out by 2011 and truly, it will be tough to imagine someone else other than Bay doing it. However, I’ve wanted to see Bay take this route for a while and let’s hope it pays off.

In the meantime, check out this great video about the man.