Okay some slightly more coherent not posted at 4am thoughts (as per Griff's request not going to post a wall of text, just a few paras)

I didn't particularly like it. I really liked the 2007 film, quite liked Revenge of the Fallen (guilty pleasure, it was objectively poor) but I'm not won over by this. Maybe it was the style - for action movies I like Bay as a director but this was almost cinematic decadence, a cinematic last days of Rome. I felt like he was doing extravagant over the top stuff just because he could, as opposed to because they were good ideas.

I also felt that like with RotF what the bad guys were doing at any given time was a bit unclear - the deformed Megatron was hiding in quite a pathetic fasion in the middle of the African desert with Starscream and Soundwave seemingly living off scraps - this didn't really line up with Shockwave authoritatively tooling it around in a massive drilling snake thing destroying stuff.

Like RotF it felt too long - especially the final action set piece. By the time it ended (very abruptly) I didn't really care anymore why it had started. I'm generally all for action sequences but the very in your face style of Bay means that any lengthy sequences just grate on the senses.

Those are my major objective gripes. I tend not to let fanboy-ey stuff ruin my Bay-formers experience but will say that I was a bit let down with Shockwave - I see and appreciate how he was written (silent death machine, almost an animal/monster) but was expecting a slightly more aloof villain. Almost G1esque.

And now I hate myself for comparing the movie to G1 so I'll stop because I hate people that do that.