Architecture as Tinder: Michael Bay's Transformers4 blows up Chicago's massive, abandoned Santa Fe Grain Elevators

You have to give Michael Bay credit.  He's built a multi-billion dollar franchise, largely on just blowing things up.  And his location scout does a super job.

Bay is back in Chicago to film scenes for the fourth iteration of his Transformers series, Age of Extinction, starring Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and former Chicago Mayor Kelsey Grammer.
After blowing stuff up in downtown Detroit, and locally at McCormick Place, Bay - or his second unit crew - were out at the long-abandoned Santa Fe grain silos this past weekend, at Damen and the south branch of the river.

This is what it looked like before . . .

This is what is looked like after being transformed by Bay's production design team into a facility for the Yang Ming company.

The facility was scrubbed clean of its locally created graffiti, replaced with super-sized Chinese characters (could any of our readers translate?),  with stacked shipping contains to serve as signage . . .

. . . and various props and production vehicles . . .

 

 

Knowing the slow pace of movie production, we didn't have the patience to stick around until they finally blew things up, but some observers captured the blast in a YouTube video.  (Warning: extreme profanity alert.)
We haven't been able to check out the condition of the elevator after Bay and Company had their way with it.  If you've got any pics, send 'em along.

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction is scheduled for release next year.

Read the full story - and see a lot more photos -  of this amazing structure:

The Power of Uselessness: The History - and Potential - of Chicago's Massive Santa Fe Grain Elevator

Hey, Deceps: Who's gonna clean all this up? Loveable Transformers trash Chicago

OK, so now that our state's Decepticon-in-Chief has been judged wanting and sent away, it's time for the some memories of the Transformers:Dark of the Moon shoot last summer when unseen bots-to-be-CGI'ed-later were wreaking havoc on Chicago architecture.

 dateline: July, 2010: Chicago

Filming of Transformers 3 continues to picturesquely rubble up the streets along the Chicago River, this time in front of Milton Schwartz's Executive House, now Hotel 71. The actual transformers, including a 40-foot-tall Decepticon modeled after Rod Blogojevich, will added later via CGI.



Combatants struggle to secure Chicago's Wacker drive from adversaries to be added later, and every shot seems to require starting off with a big explosion.  I think it's the law.  Bay's law, actually.

Father Time takes it all in unmoved.