Michael Bay didn’t invent sequels, one-dimensional characters, laughable dialogue, product placement or deafening, incomprehensible action sequences. He’s just made them synonymous with summer movies. The guy’s an evil genius. Everybody knows these films suck, yet practically everybody sees them anyway.
Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth in Bay’s series inspired by Hasbro toys, sucks a lot. It may be the crappiest movie ever made. It’s so stupid and terrible it makes even its good characters look bad.
This time those characters include, in addition to the giant contraptions, Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg as the least convincing inventor in cinematic history. He plays a widower named Cade Yeager who divides his time between building defective robots in his Texas barn and telling his 17-year-old daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz), that her cut-offs are too short.
Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf once played the token humans in these films, but Fox has gone on to establish herself as a credible screen performer (Passion Play, This Is 40), while LaBeouf has just gone nuts. Injecting an actor of Wahlberg’s pedigree into the franchise is a credibility-boosting ploy that does succeed. For most of the first five minutes.
We meet Cade and sidekick Lucas (T.J. Miller) as they root around a shuttered movie house in search of retoolable detritus. What the pair finds is the theater’s crotchety owner. The scene is tailor-made for a commentary on the state of cinema, and, sure enough, the old guy goes meta: “Movies nowadays,” he snarls (a spittoon would’ve been a nice touch here). “Sequels and remakes — a bunch of crap!” See what Bay did there? It’s self-referential. Like 22 Jump Street, only without the fun.
The pair also stumbles across a dusty semi that’s inexplicably parked inside and turns out to be Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). The plot: Though the Transformers have thrice saved the world, the CIA has decided they’re “alien combatants” to be hunted down and destroyed. Kelsey Grammer is kill-squad head Harold Attinger, a role that — to put it kindly — he was not born to play. Imagine Zero Dark Thirty with Frasier in charge, and you get the picture. The film’s bold statement about terrorism? It’s bad.
The Transformers are simultaneously targeted by an alien robo-hitman called Lockdown (Mark Ryan). The movie is only 165 minutes long, so it’d probably be too much to expect Ehren Kruger’s script to explain why any of these sinister cartoons wants the part-time cars dead. It has bigger fish to fry.
Or, rather, bigger crashes, explosions and city-flattening battles with which to pummel our senses. Cade and Tessa join forces with the Transformers, and the chaos moves for no reason from the Arctic to Texas to Chicago and, ultimately, to Hong Kong. Well, no reason except filling Chinese theater seats. Bay’s movies may be stupid, but he’s not.
Good luck making sense of the mayhem — or, half the time, even making out which hunk of metal is doing what to whom, much less why. Apart from the product placements for everything from Bud Light to Chevrolet to Samsung to Beats by Dre, the only thing the director makes crystal clear is that the climax sets the stage for further sequels even now in the works. Thank God, a reason to get up in the morning.
I’ll suggest a product that would’ve been well placed in this film: Excedrin. Because coming soon to a frontal lobe near you is the mother of all migraines. Transfourmers, as I like to call it, is everything you could want in a big-budget tentpole, so long as what you want is sound and fury signifying nothing beyond a guarantee that more of the same is already on the way.
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue 2014.
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Do not listen to the detractors for nothing on Earth will ever satisfy your inner Transformers geek more than witnessing the utter, complete and total redemption of Michael Bay. With one glorious fell swoop this evidently slow-to-warm-up-but-eventually-wizard-like filmmaker has expunged all his previous crimes against the Transformers fan base and finally delivered them to their deservedly blissful state of Cybertronian nirvana.
Like a twenty first century Jesus armed with $200 million dollars, Bay has redeemed even the gravest of the sins of our childhood. Not only has he risen phoenix-like, still burning yet majestic, from the putrid black ashes that remained from the burning of our childhood dreams and his own reputation. Incredibly, he has somehow also redeemed the once unforgivable abomination that was the ascension of Rodimus Prime. In one two and half hour expedition to the pinnacle of awesomeness he has made whole the millions of innocent hearts so cynically and selfishly broken all those years ago.
Suddenly the pain and confusion that was so cruelly and needlessly inflicted upon us in 1986 can be forgotten. Even the fresher scars, the proverbial salt in the wound that is the memory of the first three piles of turd rubbed onto celluloid that Bay tried to pass off as Transformers films, have been forever healed. Like faithful, stubborn and persistent visitors to a highly priced and extremely talented plastic surgeon, we have had our scars forever erased.
All those that have ever nestled into the sometimes prickly and often disappointing bosom of the Transformers geekdom, go forth like pilgrims to thine local cinema. Flock now so that you all can finally revel in your long overdue and much deserved cinematic birthright: a truly epic journey into the elusive and sublime joys of well thought-out and skilfully delivered Transformers ‘fan service’.
This movie isn’t for the hordes. It isn’t for the unfortunate souls that weren’t brought up living and breathing robots from Cybertron. It’s not for the critics. It’s an expensive, much belated and exclusive gift made especially just for you. An epic, royally triumphant and completely kick-ass Transformers movie that respects the fan base while also creating a new folklore that not only doesn’t make you want to stab yourself in the face with a rusty nail while having your eyeballs lacerated by a million paper cuts, it is actually pretty awesome in its own right.
A true fan will find it almost impossible not to love this film. It is simply that good.
Michael Bay I never thought I would ever say this but, thank you. Even the $600 million odd dollars and approximately seven and a half hours of my life you wasted setting up the story line of this movie with those first three abominations now seems like time and money well spent.
For after nearly thirty long years of shattered hopes and unfulfilled expectations, finally our inner 6 year olds can live the dream. Finally we can stand on the apex of the Mount Everest of 1980’s nostalgia – and wholeheartedly and enthusiastically enjoy a Transformers movie for the first time – all the while being snugly wrapped in a delightful bubble of restored faith, emancipation from loss and total satisfaction.
Do not take heed of reviews written by people that have never transformed a toy from a robot to a car in their lives. Do not be distracted by accounts of gratuitous product placement. Worry not about a repeat of previously indecipherable shot composition and editing. Cleanse yourself of the horrible memory that is Shia LeBeouf.
This film delivers much more in the way of fan service than any of the previous films. Some of it is subtle, some quite overt (Galvatron transforming into a cannon and Optimus spending some time looking much like his G1 alter ego in truck form are notable examples). The movie is peppered with a lot of little touches that would probably be lost on people new to Transformers, but that had me clapping the screen at stages. Some people actually applauded the movie when it ended.
It’s like they finally aimed it at the fan base, rather than take it for granted that the fan base would go anyway and trying to make it work for everyone else. And I for one appreciated those touches as they have been sorely missing from the franchise. But regardless of whether that stuff resonates with you or not it still has a much better plot than any of the other films and importantly it’s a grand spectacle – almost without a doubt bigger and more outrageous than any other movie in history, period. It is simply EPIC.
Anyone that is a true Transformers fan obviously wants to and tries to like these movies. Three times previous to this I have failed in this task more or less and pretty much became a card carrying member of the &@#% You Michael Bay You Killed My Childhood club. Yet this time when they take it in yet another direction that is completely incongruous with the beloved and sacred G1 mythology – I totally went with them instead of fighting it. And actually, it is pretty damn cool. I didn’t have to try to like this movie. As a Transformers mega-geek Age of Extinction was inherently enjoyable to me in nearly every way. Plus as I said it has a lot of delicious little morsels for the old school fans that just become the cherry on top of a very sweet sundae.
I am honestly and truly sorry for anyone that thinks they are a Transformers fan but that doesn’t absolutely love this movie. I think it is just a horrible defect in their personality. They will never be happy unless watching the movie is a mere carbon copy of their experiences watching the G1 cartoon. Yes Michael didn’t go in the direction we wanted him to at first. But where he has ended up should allow us to forgive if not forget and appreciate the unique and incredible nature of this motion picture.
When we thought all hope was lost, Michael Bay has given us what we have been wanting all these years. But for some their own cynicism will not allow them to celebrate the occasion. To them I say let the 6 year old inside you finally let go of all the pain and rip up your Bay Haters membership card.
All the Transformers aficionados that are brow beaten, dejected and void of all hope should rest assured that finally Michael Bay has miraculously managed to not completely &@#% up a Transformers film.
The jaded, dejected and resentful among the once wide-eyed and awestruck Transformers mega-geeks: rejoice! For you are the chosen ones. You are the chosen few for whom Transformers: Age of Extinction won’t be a loud and obnoxious destruction of two and a half perfectly good hours of your life. It will be an exhilarating, deeply satisfying and ultimately spiritual experience.
Nice try, Michael.