Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola
Peltz, Jack Reynor
So I was willing to give this movie the benefit of the doubt
because dammit, I don’t like to hate on a director just because. I really don’t
like it when people hate a director by default, just because everybody else
says his films stink. This review comes from a guy who actually kind of enjoyed Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) So I went into Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
with the best of intentions, completely willing to give the film a chance;
cause who knows, maybe Michael Bay has learned a thing or two about what worked
and didn’t work with his previous films. But alas, it seems success has blinded
Michael Bay’s judgment, he knows not what makes a good movie. Let’s face it,
the only reason these movies are making money is because people love the
concept of The Transformers, not because they actually like these films,
because who in their right mind enjoys this crap?
This time around, the Transformers are hiding from the
government because apparently, even though they saved the world from an alien
invasion in the last film; they are now seen as a threat to humanity. Sure they
destroyed most of Chicago, but didn’t they also save like…the entire planet
from an alien invasion? But whatever; so anyhow, now The Transformers have gone
into hiding. But wait! Mark Wahlberg finds Optimus Prime and brings him back to
life…because he’s an inventor and he likes to tinker around with mechanical
doo-dads. So anyhow, one thing leads to another and it’s The Transformers vs.
The Evil U.S. Government who wants to duplicate the Transformers DNA in order
to create an army of Transformers so they can use them for military purposes. Can
Optimus Prime lead the Transformers once again? Can he stop the humans from
creating an army of Transformer clones?
For the first few minutes of this movie, I was actually
thinking to myself “why is everybody hating on this movie?” because we were
getting to meet these human characters, and suddenly little by little
transformers are figuring into the story and I was like “this aint so bad”, but
then, somewhere around the midsection, when the action begins, things begin to
fall apart. It’s the damn CGI characters, I can’t connect with them. And then, around
the last forty minute mark I was praying for this film to be over! Then I
understand what everyone was bitching and moaning about. Then film turns into torture!
Pure and simple torture because you can’t root for anyone, because the
transformers are not fleshed out characters and you can’t really root for
anyone all you see are things exploding with no sentimental or intellectual
value attached to the proceedings. Not even Optimus Prime, the main character
in the film, is a well developed character. He’s just this stock character,
always speaking like some sort of wise man. Why the hell does Optimus Prime
always have to give people advice? The Transformers are all cardboard cut outs,
generic characters with no depth to them, I don’t think it’s the fact that they
are animated characters that doesn’t allow me to connect with them, it’s the
fact that they are not developed at all. They don’t have a personality. You won’t
know who the villains are; you won’t know who the good guys are, because they
are all one huge indistinguishable pile of CGI crap.
Then there’s the action, which is very difficult to follow
because it’s all just a mess, a huge, excessively loud CGI mess. And sad part
is that it’s more of the same, Transformers fighting in a city, destroying
everything. I’m guessing that the reason why they decided to shoot part of the
film in China was to offer us different visuals; sadly, Michael Bay makes China
look exactly the same as Chicago? Transformers fighting in between buildings is
the same crap we’ve seen before, dammit Michael Bay you have all these millions
at your disposal and you still can’t figure out a way to offer us something
visually interesting or new? Come on dude. You could have tried something
different. Instead, we get the same crap we’ve seen before, explosions, cars flipping,
buildings toppling…you even swiped ideas from Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013)!
That whole thing about a space ship that sucks up everything in its path like a
giant magnet and then drops it all back down? Totally stolen from Snyder’s Man
of Steel! Bay simply played around with the concept in his own way, but it’s
quite obvious Bay wished he had come up with that idea, those scenes scratch on
plagiarism if you ask me.
Sure, eliminating Shia LaBeouf from the franchise was a step
in the right direction and replacing him with Mark Wahlberg was a genius idea,
but then you get so many other things wrong, that it’s like taking ten steps
back. Okay, the film does have its moments, the bit with the cars being sucked
up in the air, even though extremely similar to what we already saw in Man of
Steel, was entertaining. There are obviously some cool special effects in the
film, the problem is that it’s all so mind numbingly redundant, that I
literally saw people walking out of the movie theater mid way through the
movie. People just didn’t care. I didn’t care, and that’s something very
difficult for me to do because I am very forgiving of films, especially low
budget films that attempt to be creative. But when it’s multi-million
productions that have every possible tool at their disposal to make a good
movie and still don’t, well then I rip those movies a new asshole, which is
what I’m doing with Transformers: Age of Extinction. Michael Bay, shame on you
dude. You have to know when to cut back,
you have to know when you have too much, and not enough of it is good. I mean,
didn’t somebody in the studio watch this movie and think it was freaking
horrendous? Or unnecessarily long? If a movie is going to be this long, then
the least it could do is move us somehow, or attempt to at least connect with
your audience, but damn it, three hours of impersonal CGI robots is torture for
the senses. The Film Connoisseur says, skip this piece of crap! It’s the stuff
nightmares are made of! What a dissapointment this 2014 Summer Blockbuster Season has turned out to be!
Rating: 1 out of 5
