Has the ever been a filmmaker in our life time that consistently does the bare minimum with the most than Michael Bay? I mean got damn this man has EVERYTHING at his disposal and THIS was the best Transformers movie he could think of? Like…chile…I can’t even begin to tell you all how bad of a movie Transformers: Age of Extinction is (although I will attempt to do so in this review).
Transformers: Age of a Never Ending Movie That Sucked Extinction is a movie set in post Chicago being destroyed world. The government has taken to teaming up with a transformer bounty hunter to take out the remaining ones and a special company has taken to creating their own. When a father and his daughter come upon Optimus Prime, the government seeks to act swiftly, not knowing that the threat might be right under their nose. Also Dinobots show up.
To say some positives: Mark Wahlberg fit right into the world of Transformers and should he pop up in another one, I wouldn’t mind. I thoroughly enjoyed the scenery chewing by Stanley Tucci, and the final 45 minutes of the movie are what I expected a Transformers movie to be: action packed, Dinobots, mixed with small character beats and mixed with good sound. I may or may not have yelled “Finish Him!” during some of the final battles.
HOWEVER, those first two mother fucking hours? Let me tell you something, they were among the worst I have ever witnessed. I must have said “this can’t be real life” about 10 times in the first hour and I guffawed at every serious moment. The issues with the film start with the script. Michael Bay’s evil influence knows no bounds and his claws are sunk into the script. There is nothing in the way here of an engaging film. In fact, at about the 1:30 mark (when I started tweeting my experience) I wondered aloud “What’s the plot of this film?” This is an amazing question when you consider that there are two plots in this film: a bounty hunter is teaming with the humans to kill Autobots and Galvetron, a robot built with Megatron’s “dna” has self actualized and created a robot army. How do you have a movie with two plots and barely solve one? I am just baffled at how they didn’t even really resolve each particular threat nor give us any kind of explanation that went deeper than surface level.
Speaking of surface level, the dialogue and characterizations. Sirs and Ma’ams I legit screamed in the theater at certain dialogue beats. Maybe none more so than when the fuck ass boyfriend of Mark Wahlberg’s character’s daughter says to him “I’m not here to help you get your daughter back. You’re here to help save my girlfriend” *slow blinks* EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME, BITCH WHAT?! How does shit like that even make it into a movie? How could Bay and company craft a character so fucking asinine and a couple so annoying you’d hope for their death? This Transformers movie didn’t make me care about a single human and had Optimus and his dinobots stomped on every last one of these characters I’d have been like WELP! The boyfriend character might be the worst committed to screen this year, which is shocking when you consider the daughter barely did more than argue with her father, cuddle with and defend her boyfriend against her father, and pout during closeups.
Also, don’t let folks fool you into thinking that just because you can see the robot fights better, that Bay’s direction is good. This man doesn’t understand pacing, he continually chooses to go for big when he should be going for organic and he generally doesn’t have an eye for anything but explosions. Oh and the Dinobots don’t show up till the end.
I could go on but the sooner I can purge the film from my mind, the better.
Grade: 1/2/**** (F)