Transformers: Age of Extinction
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, T.J. Miller, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Peter Cullen, John Goodman, and Ken Watanabe
To say that Michael Bay makes bad movies is an understatement. He sure knows how to make movies that the general population will eat up and make billions of dollars at the box office but nothing really sets them apart from one another. They are essentially a theme park rides that you enjoy while you are on them but afterwards you either run right back into line or make your way to another ride, completely forgetting the ride from before. I am not a fan of the films that Michael Bay makes but I do respect him for sticking with these movies instead of moving on. He embraces the ridiculous nature of the Transformers film and to date this is by far his most extreme foray into ridiculousness.
After the events of Transformers Dark of the Moon the last remaining transformers, Autobots and Decepticons, are being hunted down and stripped to pieces in order for the United States government to harness the power that lies in the transformers. Enter Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a struggling inventor who stumbles upon Optimus Prime, and his family who end up teaming up with the Autobots to stop Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), Galvatron, and Lockdown from releasing “The Seed”. Outnumbered, the Autobots team up with the Dinobots to stop the imposing threat.
I use to love the Transformers movies when I was in high school, lets say that my tastes have changed vastly since then. Nowadays these movies are nearly unwatchable for me. The pointless characters, the terrible dialogue, the bad direction, and overlong running time can’t save this movie from being anything but a disappointment. I mean I wasn’t expecting much but this reached new levels of bad for me. It was almost 3 hours worth of a repetitive assault on the senses. The major problem with this series is that it fails to learn anything from its predecessors. Essentially it is the same movie as the other three. We’ve seen this before plenty of times and, to me, its finally overstayed its welcome. We start with these human characters that we try to connect to, but fail to, and then the plot moves along when the government tries to intervene and now they are on the run. Then the Autobots have to stop the villain from getting it’s hand on an ancient artifact that threats the end of Earth. It’s a template that they use every time for these movies and no matter what they do they dig themselves deeper into this pit that they never will be able to get themselves out of.
Bay has a way of making movies that no one will ever be able to copy. There is always at least 20 scenes that feature the American flag waving in the back ground as our characters interact with one another. The color palette is so strange that it is hard to tell what world he thinks he lives in. Female objectification is always there, I’m surprised that Cade’s daughter wasn’t a supermodel turned actress. The woman in this are types that usually don’t exist in the real world. There is even a scene that was blocked so suggestively, a shot between her legs as Cade is telling her to put on some real pants, that it is so blatantly objectified the main female character Tessa. These are all tropes that Michael Bay uses in his films. He can even turn one of his most interesting film The Island and turn it into a typical Bay picture.
That said it is a blockbuster epic in every sense of the words. The action is large and spans longer than any movie before it. The special effects are as incredible as ever and the action just keep going and going until you can’t handle it anymore and then it just keeps giving. It surprises me what Michael Bay comes up with when it comes to action and left me in awe when I witnessed it. I do have to say that both Stanley Tucci and Mark Wahlberg both did great jobs with what they were given and I give both of them credit for carrying a film that I think would have failed without those two actors.
It’s totally my displeasure with movies of this nature that made me dislike this movie, though I can appreciate it for it is. I think if you are looking for something where you can turn you mind off at the door and just enjoy what you see than this movie is for you. Don’t go in expecting the next great movie just go in and let the movie take hold of you.
4.5 out of 10
The Visionary Film Fanatic 