Transformers: Age of Extinction
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci
Length: 165 mins
Country: USA, China
Michael Bay is often placed in relation to the heavy amount of product placement within his feature films, so it only makes sense that he be handed one of the biggest marketing properties since the 80’s, the Transformers. His 2007 reinterpretation places the machines within a real-world environment, with the aesthetic that Bay has been often attributed with (big explosions, intense action and saccharin drama) lending pretty well to a story of opposing fighting machines. It was a loud and unsubtle, but fun blockbuster that changed the landscape of Hollywood blockbusters for years to come. Then came the sequel, the same film but dumber, louder and with a somewhat empty heart. Then a third time, alike in every way besides establishing the slightest scraping of a plot to begin with.
Set 4 years after Dark of the Moon, Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) is a failing inventor who discovers an old and rusted Optimus Prime who has gone into hiding after the Battle of Chicago at the end of the last film. The CIA have begun hunting down and killing all Transformers in defence of their country, and soon the Yeager family and co. find themselves on the run, collaborating with a new group of Autobots that have lost faith in humanity and their capacity for good and justice and all that jazz that Optimus constantly speaks of. Along the way they encounter Decepticons, CIA, a Transformer bounty hunter and a multinational corporation who plan on building their own Transformers for military use. Okay, it’ll come as no massive shock that Age of Extinction is more of the same. But that can’t merely be said about this one, because there’s something more rotten under the hood. Not only are the gears beginning to rust but the entire engine looks like it needs to be replaced entirely.
Incredibly, the biggest issue that you’ll find with AoE beyond the regular issues is the fact that, unlike its predecessors, there is simply too much plot. There is too much going on for the film to focus enough time on any one storyline. We are centred with the family from Texas, but their story and arcs don’t really go anywhere and they just serve as the arbitrary human element for the audience to latch on to, once again having the Transformers of the title playing second fiddle to the human drama. A dad must learn to better himself for the benefit of his bratty daughter, but he constantly manages to place her in harm’s way as he runs alongside his new robot friends. They’re just along for the ride. In fact, all the characters are just plain lazy or insulting. All the Asians either know martial arts or wield Katana’s , all other races are shameful, Tucci and Grammer are hammy but somehow not enough, and Optimus Prime now comes across as a loathsome, hate filled warmonger, throwing all previous moral code out of the window in favour of straight up human murder.
The people that are going to be paying to see this film are coming for the same thing as before, robots fighting and blowing things up. But you know what, as has been the same situation for the past two films, it’s not even that interesting to watch.
The plot is a convoluted mess involving conspiracy, and corporation’s alliances with the CIA, and their alliances with a Transformer bounty hunter, and his allegiances to an unseen greater power behind the scenes and… it doesn’t really matter. It goes on forever and almost none of it interesting. You feel as if Bay and screenwriter Kruger are trying to make some sort of statement about… something. One minute they’re attacking the U.S. government and its incompetency, then its Republican ideologies, then Apple, and then it’s the current state of the Hollywood. Yes, Bay attempts to comment of the laziness of Hollywood. It’s all just window dressing though.
The people that are going to be paying to see this film are coming for the same thing as before, robots fighting and blowing things up. But you know what, as has been the same situation for the past two films, it’s not even that interesting to watch. None of it has any actual effect beyond visuals because there are no stakes at risk with any of the paper-thin characters, and Bay still can’t shoot an action scene properly either. The CGI is so messy that you can barely make out what is happening during the fights. The Transformers themselves still have a horrible design, and they’re still wafer-thin, walking stereotypes with horrible dialogue (why does John Goodman’s Autobot smoke a cigar?). The Dinobots aren’t even worth mentioning because they barely feature and leave no lasting impact.
I think that even the remaining devotees of the series are going to be hard-pressed when defending this one, because there’s just no excuse anymore. There’s no spectacle left. It’s a dumb, obnoxious, hatefully long and boring exercise in trying the patience of cinemagoers. This isn’t the last that we’ll see of them, but you’ll certainly wish that it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Peyhk7ZS8
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