Well ladies and gentlemen, Michael Bay is back with his explosions, metal orgies, sexy ladies and, of course, Transformers in his latest, and some what anticipated, entry to the franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Set after the battle of Chicago, the CIA has set up a program to hunt down and capture/kill all Decepticons, or so we think. In fact, a menacing group with a greedy and sadistic partnership is hunting and killing the Autobots as well, with Optimus Prime being the main target.
When a broke inventor and overprotective father named Cade (Mark Wahlberg) comes across an old truck, he decides to buy it to try and sell its parts to help get cash to send his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) through college. Soon Cade realizes he’s found a robot and after a heated exchange with the dirty minions of the CIA, he, Tessa and Tessa’s boyfriend team up with Optimus and the remaining Autobots to stop the world from making a terrible mistake that’s bound to launch the apocalypse.
Firstly, I went into Transformers: Age of Extinction expecting a muddled film with awesome action. It’s all I want from a movie about giant robots fighting but what I got was something worse, something that barely got the kid in me excited. Rather than feeling like we were getting more of the same, the attempt to be different makes the movie actually lesser than its predecessors. I’m not even going to get into the question as to why or how the Autobots have acquired racial specific features, like a samurai with a Japanese accent or a heavyset American gunman from the south, but they exist and really don’t make sense in the world of Transformers.
The thing that got everyone’s attention with this film was the inclusion of the Dinobots. I mean, when I found out I went crazy, just look at my initial reactions when I posted the news about it. The main issue with the Dinobots is there are too little of them and they come into play way too late in the film. The movie comes in at 2 hours and 37 minutes, which is incredibly long for an action film, regardless if it’s a reboot or not, and the Dinobots don’t factor into the film until roughly the final 20-30 minutes. Disappointed doesn’t even come close to how I felt. Michael Bay, if you’re going to make a movie with Dinobots then give them a more screen time, let them speak or say something classic, oh, and make it epic, not generic like the rest of the film. All that being said, I did think they looked awesome, especially when Optimus first starts riding Grimlock, it’s pretty damn cool and sometimes felt like an amusement park simulator ride, something that rarely happens in the cinema that I personally appreciate.
One of the main issues I had with the film was the level of intensity. The change in the sound of the Transformers and the close-ups during fights actually take you out of the scene and feels less intense in comparison to the first three films. I’m ok with watching a fight from a distance because it’s easier to see it with less shaky cam, but the new Decepticons and the way they transform makes them feel like much less of a threat, especially when they are transforming during a battle. There was also a lot more slow motion, which was cool at times, but killed the energy and flow during others.
My biggest gripe with the film is the lack of a “fuck yeah” fight. Unlike a lot of people, I didn’t completely mind the first three Transformers films (yeah, I know, I know), but the reason for this was because there was always one Optimus Prime fight that brought me to the edge of my seat and ended with so
me version of m yelling “hell yeah” or “fuck yeah,” think of the forest fight in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen between Optimus and Megatron, it was completely badass. This film did not have it. Even if the final fight showed a glimmer of hope, that hope evaporated quickly.
As far as the acting, Stanley Tucci was terrific even with the trash he had to work with. The bad guy, Kelsey Grammer did what he could as well and Mark Wahlberg, well, he was Mark Wahlberg. Everyone else was pretty bad but that’s because the dialogue in this film was beyond campy and the set-ups and emotional scenes were too cheesy for even cheese to handle, they were laughable. It’s because of that I can’t decide who I dislike more in the Transformers films, Megan Fox or newcomer Nicola Peltz.
For a guy who enjoys the Transformers films for what they are, Transformers: Age of Extinction is not only highly disappointing and excruciatingly long, it ends up being a shitty cash grab that that’ll piss more people off for the sucker film that it is SPOILER even if it does open up the possibility of a human-free fifth Transformers film END SPOILER. The only people who will really enjoy this film are boys between the ages of 8 and 15, but the word amazing, great of phenomenal will not be used when discussing it with their friends.
Rating: A highly disappointing blockbuster with good characters wasted on a terrible and long script (3.4/10)
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