Transformers: Age of Extinction

As a kid growing up, some of my favorite cartoons were GI Joe, He-Man, and the greatest of all: Tranformers.  Transformers featured cars that would turn into giant robots and it was glorious.  The original series lasted three seasons and had a movie that changed things up for the third season.  That movie was released in 1987.  It featured a kick-ass soundtrack, an awesome visual style, and a decent story to boot.  But I’ve always wanted to see a live-action version of Transformers.  Steven Spielberg granted my wish in 2007 with the release of the first live-action Transformers film.  Directed by Michael Bay, it was a major box-office smash.  As a result, the movie spawned three sequels.

Transformers: Age of Extinction is the fourth live-action entry into this explosive franchise.  It jettisoned Shia LeBouf’s irritating character in favor of Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager, a wannabe inventor, who discovers an old truck in an abandoned movie theater.  Taking it home, he discovers that it’s actually Optimus Prime, who is in hiding from the CIA, headed by Kelsey Grammer’s Harold Attinger.  Attinger believes that all the Autobots and Decepticons are a major threat to the security of the United States so he’s hunting them all down.  Let’s be honest here: If you’re going into a movie like this expecting a grand story on the level of King Lear, you’ve come to the wrong movie.  The story here is completely disjointed and incoherent.  It really doesn’t make a lick of sense.  It doesn’t really matter anyway considering what’s happening on the screen.

A lot of critics had complained that the previous films didn’t have enough Transformers action and focused too much on the human characters.  It’s certainly a valid criticism.  But here, Michael Bay really let loose with the Transformers.  There’s definitely a lot of action in this film.  The special effects have never been better.  Bay seems to have eased up a little on the hyper-editing that he’s known for.  We can actually see what’s going on this time around.  There’s also plenty of big explosions, which I happen to like.  But there’s a bit of a problem here.  The movie is just too damn long, and it’s filled to the brim with action.  There are few moments where you are allowed to breath before something else gets blown up.  It’s overkill.  I’m generally not one to complain about a movie being loaded to the hilt with action, but Age of Extinction takes it to the extreme.  For a film that runs nearly 3 hours, Age of Extinction is….tedious.  That’s really the only word that can describe it.  I described the importance of film length in my previous post, so I won’t go into it again here.

The writing is just flat-out awful.  It’s pretty mean-spirited.  Humans have turned against the Autobots and are hunting them down and killing them.  Really?  They already did that with Dark of the Moon.  In fact, the events of the previous film factor heavily into this one.  I was kind of hoping that they would start with a fresh story and not turn this one into a direct sequel, which Michael Bay did anyway.  The human characters aren’t nearly as irritating this time around with Mark Wahlberg taking the lead.  He’s certainly a better actor than LeDoofus, and it shows.  He’s not bad here.  The dialogue’s crap, though.  Kelsey Grammer actually makes a pretty decent villain.  Stanley Tucci also does a good job as Josh Joyce, the head of a major tech firm that’s creating Transformers of their own.  See?  That’s another plot point thrown into the mix that really doesn’t make sense.  The visual effects are second to none here, and I have to give them credit for that.  The robot designs are spectacular, especially when they transform.  It’s extremely detailed.  The robots themselves are a hoot, for the most part.  Optimus Prime is awesome as always.  Bumble-Bee is hilarious and bad-ass at the same time as he’s always been.  Ken Watanabe voices Drift and the fact that they have him look like a samurai is pretty fitting.  Instead of Megatron, we have Galvatron voiced by Transformers veteran Frank Welker.  It would’ve been awesome if they got Leonard Nimoy to voice Galvatron again, but he did voice a robot in Dark of the Moon.

 All the preview trailers for Age of Extinction had one thing in common: the Dinobots.  I LOVE THE DINOBOTS!  Grimlock, Slag, and Swoop are all featured here.  They are amazingly designed.  They’re huge and they break stuff very well.  Sadly, they’re totally under-utilized as they don’t even show up until towards the end of the movie.  Although, I’m not entirely sure having them show up earlier in the film would’ve made it any better.  I’m actually hoping that they give the Dinobots a movie of their own, or at least feature them more prominently in the next movie.  When it comes to blowing stuff up, Michael Bay is second-to-none.  He knows his way around an action movie, I’ll give him that.  With this movie, it feels like he’s struggling.  I would agree that he’s struggling when it comes to the writing, that’s for sure.  He’s not hiring good writers.  I honestly think the guy needs supervision.  The first movie that he directed worked, because Steven Spielberg was there to reign him in.  But when Revenge of the Fallen came out, Michael Bay just went bonkers.  At least the fourth film didn’t feature jive-talking Autobots and Decepticons with testicles.  There’s that.  Also, the irritating Shia LeDouchebag was left out.  Overall, Transformers 4 is a lot of fun, but it suffers from a serious amount of excess.  It’s a visually stunning film that really overstays it welcome by at least 25 minutes.  This sucker gets a 7/10.

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