Transformers: Age of Extinction:
Age of regrets
I hope you all appreciate what I’ve done today. If you read my review of the first in this terrible franchise, you know I hate it with a burning passion. It’s sloppy, it’s incomprehensible, it’s boring, it looks like garbage, sounds like garbage, and leaves a taste in my mouth very reminiscent of garbage. The fourth entry in this series changes up the plot to a shocking degree. However, it somehow leaves me less interested and with a worse taste in my mouth than the other three. The worst part? For the sake of a good review, I couldn’t shut it off and walk away after the teenage daughter used the word “square.”
Before we dig in too deep, I want to give a little insight as to why I hate these abominations with such a burning passion. The first three Transformers movies, for those who may be unfamiliar, are about an intergalactic war between two rival groups of robots that disguise themselves as cars. The first of these movies came out right as I got into video production, finally getting a grip on what makes a good movie and what makes a bad one. So when I saw the movie the following year, my taste suddenly refined out of necessity for the class, I watched it with a critical eye. Where the series is just stupid, fun nostalgia for some, it came right as I was able to turn my attention to the man behind the curtain. Furthermore, growing up with the cartoon made me realize the characterization was incredibly inconsistent in this first movie. When the second came out, a close friend convinced me to come for the sake of giving Michael Bay a second chance and seeing if he learned from the first misstep. He did not. I had hope, fleeting hope, that I might find redemption in the third one just a few years later. After ten minutes of awful writing and effects, I turned it off with the look of someone who has just been told they have ten minutes to live. I never expected such atrocities could exist. And yet here I am, writing about the fourth installment in a franchise I hate for the amusement of whoever may care to read this. Just know that once I finish typing this review, I’ll be treating myself to the strongest drink in my home. I’d tell you which, but I feel Michael Bay provided more than enough product placement for me over the last 2.75 hours.
The more I try to make sense of this movie, the worse it feels. Ultimately, however, I’ve come to a single realization as to what I watched: This is a transitional movie. You see, the characters and lore introduced in this plot don’t really go anywhere. There are two villains who really have no point in being here aside from a few fight scenes. There is a technology that never really gets explained beyond a blurb about terraforming. So why are they here? To set up the sequel. When one of the villains literally says the words “Next time,” you know they’re setting up for the sequel. When the entire movie is basically shouting “Next time, Autobots” while shaking its non-existent fist into the air, there’s no point to it. The entire plot merely is a transition into Transformers V while still making a profit. It’s insulting, really, how we as a film going audience are expected to sit through such formulaic bombardment of the senses that is merely there to sell tickets to a sequel and shell out cash. For Marvel films, it’s a different animal. It’s a shared universe with isolated tales rather than a series of films, therefore making it appropriate to not explain every single element. To explain nothing, however… That is one of this movie’s biggest sins.
Now, I said one of Age of Extinction’s biggest sins was its lack of an arc. However, there are so many more. The soundtrack was terrible. When it wasn’t metal scraping against metal in a faux-industrial rock sound, I’m not even sure it existed. The amount of Deus-Ex-Machina was amazingly sloppy, with nothing really being earned so much as shoved into the script. The acting was sub-par, they sexualized a 17 year old in a way that made me feel beyond unclean, the comedy was terrible, and the robots designs seemed rehashed. But the most beautiful moment of all, the worst moment that made me pause the movie and ask if that had really happened, was something incredibly simple: The teenage daughter said “you’re so square!” Now, I remember being a teenager. I remember all the slang of growing up. Somehow, I doubt “square” has come back in the years since then and the notion of a real teenager using that word is laughable. So despite the shaky camera, the impossible to follow fight scenes, the unnecessary exposition, the abundant product placement, and the CGI that looked as real as my social life, congratulations Michael Bay: Your biggest failing is not knowing how to write for a teenager.
Ladies and gentlemen, this movie is somehow worse than the other works in the Transformers franchise. This movie is about as useful as a table with no top. This movie is genuinely less enjoyable than my last cavity. It’s incompetent for a man who has made four of these blockbuster movies. It confuses setting up for future sequels with a plot and I genuinely cannot find any reason to watch it. I will say this next sentence once in my entire life, and I hope you enjoy being part of it: I would rather watch the first Transformers. “Happy” viewing.