Transformers: Age of Extinction Review

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Peter Cullen, John Goodman, Kelsey Grammar, Jack Reynor, Ken Watanabe, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Frank Welker

By now, everyone's heard of Transformers: Age of Extinction. This is the fourth installment in Michael Bay's series based on the Hasbro toys. And each one gets bigger and bigger. This is the biggest movie of 2014 worldwide, with revenues at $1.08 billion. However, in the US, it's only fourth, and grossed significantly less than the other movies. Franchise fatigue? The original Transformers was incredibly well-received, with good reviews and audience approval. The second? Well, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is considered one of the worst movies ever made, and most people (including myself) hated it. The third one, Transformers: Dark of the Moon redeemed the franchise for many, even crossing the billion dollar mark. But with an 18% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes (a horrible 5% with top critics) and 53% with audiences, this fourth installment is being hailed as the worst movie of the year. Michael Bay even made this half Chinese, and filmed most of it in China, which is where most of the money has been made (Yes, this is the biggest movie of all time in China) so I guess he's given up on American audiences. So am I going to be like everyone else and give this an awful review? No! I actually liked this movie a lot. Does it mean it's good? Heck no, this is a bad movie. So let's get into the details of what worked, and what didn't work.

I can only fully review this movie if I go character-by-character, and *WARNING* spoilers ahead. First, the human characters. Mark Wahlberg plays Cade Yeager, the single father of Tessa (Peltz) and a struggling inventor. He's self-employed, doesn't make any money, and they lose their house, and cannot pay for her college. Until he finds one Optimus Prime. This movie is attempting at a completely fresh start, with all new actors, and mostly new transformers. Gone is Shia LaBeouf, and I don't think anyone has a problem with that. Wahlberg does a pretty good job playing Cade, but he overacts a little too much in scenes. His daughter is probably the best female lead in the series yet, but with the past leads being Megan Fox and Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the latter of which had zero acting talent. They really set up her relationship with her father pretty well, and you buy that they're father and daughter. Stanley Tucci is the comic relief in this movie, and he plays a business executive trying to harness the transforming capabilities of the robots to create his own robots. He overacts extensively, but its to hilarious results. A lot of the scenes are ridiculous, and a lot of the dialogue is pretty flat, but it makes for loads of laughs. The really good acting performance, is Kelsey Grammar as the villain. He's a very convincing antagonist, and is probably the least over-the-top of all the actors. No Oscars are going to be won by this movie.

 Now on to the transformers. There really aren't any Decepticons in the movie which is a little disappointing. The lone one is Galvatron, or Megatron reincarnated. If you can't recall from every past film, Megatron dies, and in the next movie, he's back to life. Usually by very stupid ways, so I'm glad this reincarnation actually makes sense. But I'm a little disappointing they have to rely on this single villain, and a character can't just stay dead. Optimus Prime is a little less leader-like than he is in previous films. The Autobots are less memorable than the previous films. Bumblebee, an audience favorite and easily recognizable by just about any fan, is barely in it. Instead we get Hound, voiced by John Goodman. He's funny, but he's no Bumblebee. The transformer with no allegiance is Lockdown, who is very good as the robot villain. He's nowhere near Megatron or even the Sentinel from the last film, but his face turns into a laser cannon which is pretty sweet to see. Now onto the Dinobots. We have Grimlock, the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the spotlight of every media ad. I wish I could say the Dinobots were as awesome as they should've been. But sadly, they appear for the last 10-15 minutes of the movie and do very little. Grimlock is menacing, except he's punched by Optimus and then turns into basically Optimus' dog, and he lets him ride on his back and does pretty much nothing except carry him around and do what he says. The Dinobots could've, no would've, saved this movie for me.

Now that I've analyzed the characters, let's talk about the aspects that worked and didn't work for this movie. First off, Michael Bay. Michael Bay is known for being sexist and racist in his movies, with the very stereotypical black Autobot twins in Revenge of the Fallen (who unsurprisingly didn't return) and now we add to this list Ken Watanabe's very stereotypical Japanese samurai transformer. The other robots tell him things like "keep your eyes open" and the fact that it was just so blatantly racist was funny for a second, but it's pretty shocking that a director can just put racism in a movie in this era, just not with human characters, and for some reason it's okay. As for sexism, Michael Bay has improved from the days of Megan Fox leaning over a car while "Sexual Healing" is heard in the background. Also, as anyone should know by now, Michael Bay's characters are not very bright. And this girl is pretty dumb. Also, explosions, explosions, explosions. Man, does Michael Bay love explosions. Everything explodes with just a simple tap. There's even a napalm explosion that makes the whole street burst into flames. But with Bay's famous slow-mo (used almost every 15 minutes) everyone but one guy survives it! These characters just cannot die. They're thrown from cars, fall from buildings, and half of the predicaments they're in are because of their own stupidity!! But they somehow stay alive!

The final aspect of this movie I'd like to go over is the setting. We start out in Texas (Texas, USA onscreen in case anyone is challenged geographically), and suddenly after Optimus and Cade have their alliance, they must go on the run, first to Chicago (again Chicago, USA) for no real reason, and then the most ludicrous of a setting change...Hong Kong, China. Stanley Tucci wants to detonate this thing called "The Seed" which was detonated in the Age of the Dinosaurs and coated them in metal (Hence the Dinobots, and the name "Age of Extinction") and he needs to detonate in the most populated city in the world...which is...not Hong Kong, last time I checked. This is so obviously trying to appeal to Chinese audiences. This is legitimately a Chinese-American film. Michael Bay literally had Chinese studios help pay for the movie. It has a Chinese name and Chinese version. And guess what? It may have been a disappointment in America, but it's made over half a billion in China, becoming the biggest film of all time in China. No surprise, but I find the whole thing pretty sad.

So how did I enjoy this awful movie? I stopped seeing it as the serious action movie it was intended to be. I swear, unless you enjoy bad movies, that is the only thing you can do to get through this. And sometime along the way, you too will laugh at the awful script (I'm pretty sure the script wrote itself, because no human adult could've written something so terrible) stereotypical characters, the product placement well over 200 products are placed at random times in the movie, and they're very obvious. I'm starting to wonder if no one in Hollywood would pay for this movie, and Michael Bay had to get help from companies and other countries...anyway come join the club who's seen the (unfortunately) biggest movie of the year, and if you have, I'm sorry that you wasted 3 hours of your life at this movie, when you could've done so many other things. One thing I heard in a review for Revenge of the Fallen was that it "technically qualifies as a movie because it was filmed on a camera." And boy, does this apply for the fourth installment as well.

Rating: 0.5/5 stars