I’m not a Michael Bay hater. I think several of his movies have been decent, and can pick out three — “The Rock,” “The Island” and the first “Transformers” — that I thought were good. Here’s me liking a Michael Bay film. It’s like my kid’s kindergarten teacher says (paraphrasing now): There aren’t any bad directors. There are just bad choices.

And Michael Bay’s No. 1 bad choice is that his movies are ridiculously long. Say he cut 30 percent out of each film, which would drop the soul-crushing 165 minute running time of “Transformers: Age of Extinction” to a more manageable 115.5 minutes. His good films would be better. And it wouldn’t be so painful to sit through the bad ones.

Bay must feel little pressure to shorten his films. After pulling in $100 million domestic in its debut last weekend, “Transformers 4” could end up the highest-grossing film of the summer. Since economics aren’t relevant, and emotional arguments are too easy to refute, I needed a way to quantify the maddening longness of Bay’s films.

I compared the running times of Bay’s films to five other directors known for their cinematic marathons: Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese. As you’ll see, even by elite directorial standards, Bay’s films are too freaking long.

I didn’t include documentaries in this data, or early films that were experimental/not intended for wide release. (Which would have skewed the numbers for the non-Bay directors even lower.) Results below:

AVERAGE LENGTH OF FILM: Michael Bay: 146.64 minutes Francis Ford Coppola: 125.15 minutes Stanley Kubrick: 137.82 minutes David Lean: 130.69 minutes Terrence Malick: 124 minutes Martin Scorsese: 135.36 minutes

The above comparison could be criticized as not entirely fair to Bay, who has been making long-ass films for his entire career. Other directors had extended periods when studio contracts, Hollywood trends or economic need forced them to make shorter films. Examples: Lean as a product of the times made much shorter films during the first half of his career, and Coppola likely directed shorter films in the middle of his career out of financial necessity.

To present a second set of data, I pulled out the three longest films of each director’s career …

THREE LONGEST FILMS: Bay: “Pearl Harbor” (183 minutes); “Transformers: Age of Extinction” (165); “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” (154) Coppola: “The Godfather, Part II” (200); “The Godfather” (175); “Apocalypse Now” (153) Kubrick: “Spactacus” “Spartacus” (197); “Barry Lyndon” (184); “2001: A Space Odyssey” (160) Lean: “Lawrence of Arabia” (216); “Ryan’s Daughter” (206); “Dr. Zhivago” (197) Malick: “The Thin Red Line” (170); “The Tree of Life” (139); “The New World” (135) Scorsese: “The Wolf of Wall Street” (180); “The Aviator” (170); “Gangs of New York” (167)

Even using this Bay-friendly criteria, the “Transformers” director’s numbers continue to rival all except David Lean’s. And consider that the rest of Lean’s films were considerably shorter. (Fact: Only three of Lean’s 19 films were longer than “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” That includes “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” four minutes shorter than the new “Transformers” film.)

More facts: All but one of Terrence Malick’s films were shorter than the shortest “Transformers” film. And at 183 minutes, “Pearl Harbor” is nearly 40 minutes longer than “Goodfellas.”

Now let’s look at the shortest feature film of each director’s career …

SHORTEST FILM: Bay: “Bad Boys” (118) Coppola: “The Outsiders” (91) Kubrick: “The Killing” (85) Lean: “The Passionate Friends” (95) Malick: “Badlands”/”Days of Heaven” tie (94) Scorsese: “Boxcar Bertha” (88)

In every example except for Bay, the director has made a movie in the hour and a half range. Bay seems physically incapable of making anything but a two hour-plus movie. His next shortest movie is “Pain & Gain” at 129 minutes, followed by “The Rock” and “The Island” at 136.

Should Bay make shorter movies? The obvious answer is that his name doesn’t belong in the same sentence with Kubrick, Lean and Scorsese, and of course he shouldn’t demand the leeway those directors receive to tell their more complicated stories. But look beyond the perceived quality of his films. Bay deals in a genre where the narrative momentum is more effective in shorter bursts.

I can’t, for example, imagine a 95-minute cut of “The Godfather, Part II” or “Lawrence of Arabia.” But I think even Bay’s staunchest defenders would agree that chopping an hour out of “Pearl Harbor” could do nothing but improve that movie. For “Pain & Gain,” a Bay film which I sort of liked, I suggested that audience members take multiple 5 and 10 minute theater lobby breaks. (If Bay refuses to edit his films, maybe we should do it for him.)

Finally, look at what the fans want. This part can’t be quantified in numbers, short of an exit poll that no studio would ever consider. Ask Bay’s biggest fans if they’d rather watch a 110-minute “Transformers” movie, or the 165-minute version. I don’t think anyone short of a moviegoer on a prison furlough would pick the former.

It’s not that we don’t like your brand of uncomplicated entertainment, Michael Bay. We’ve just got other @#$% to do.

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He takes requests. Contact him at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.