Movie Review - Transformers 4 : Age Of Extinction (spoilers)

[Raptormesh]

It did amuse me how he got called a dozen different names, by various characters throughout the movie.

They needed to give him a personality.

[jaydisc]

I don't think Bay can do non-caucasians as anything but stereotypes.

THIS!

Lockdown was a star. Did anyone think that his extraction of Ratchet's spark was going to come back later in the film?

YES!

My own thoughts:

Worst GM, Zeiss, Budweiser, Beats, Audi, Victoria's Secret commercial ever!

What a steaming pile of horse manure.

The first two transformations were offscreen! Then that stupid particle effect!! It's "Transformers" FFS!!!

The only redeeming feature of the movie was Lockdown.

I missed all of the dialog when he was putting Prime in the cage though. Creators want you back or something or other. Worth repeating? Or just more vapid, banal rubbish?

[Defcon]

So a few friends of mine saw it who love transformers, came out of it absolutely hating it. Nothing but ragging on it all night. They did the same with the previous three. And after each one always say how they won't go back to see another.

What I don't get though is, if you don't like something. If it be Bay, plot holes, problems with the actors, the transformations. What ever it be. Why even go see it? I never understand why movie after movie some people just find it rubbish, yet somehow go back every time.

This post isn't directed at anyone, or me attempting to be rude to people. So I'm sorry if it comes across that way

Im like loving and hating the movies at the same time. I go to see the movie for one Thing,Transformers, nothing else. Maybe thats why people keep going back to see the next one. The carrot for this one was the dinobots, but they come in to late. If it wasn't for Lockdown, the movie would of been shallow. His character is what really made this movie for me. So if they change the director and they should in my opinion, somethings should be different, but the essence of Transformers is what keeps people coming back.

[b1b2]

Thought the story line was ok....... Dinobots didn't appear till very late in the movie.

Movie was nearly 3 hours though.

[Caffinetron]

I liked it, although there are alot of gaps in the movement of the characters in the film and plot lines.
Correct in talking about the rally car not having a driver. Also during the rescan sequences there was no one in the cars/trucks. When BB rescanned and a profile shot of his new mode was shown there was nothing in the car. Next shot was BF and GF sitting in the drivers seat.
Lockdown was superb and WTF with the sudden jet boots on Optimus?
So glad they killed of the clown in the first part of the movie. I don't think i could have put up with his silliness.

I'm really looking forward to a heritage story of the TF in the next film to explain the makers wanting Prime back etc.

[GoktimusPrime]

So glad they killed of the clown in the first part of the movie. I don't think i could have put up with his silliness.

^tru dat. He felt like a Ryan Reynolds wannabe, but really not quite succeeding.

I'm really looking forward to a heritage story of the TF in the next film to explain the makers wanting Prime back etc.

I hope it ties back to this...
Before time began, there was the Cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them with life. That is how our race was born.
...and the fanboy in me also hopes that it won't conflict with the concept of multiversal singularities (i.e. utterly ruling out Primus etc.). Though when I take off my fanboy goggles, I couldn't give a pig's bum about multiversal singularities.

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P.S.: Check out this article...
20 Reasons Why We Did Not Like Transformers 4: Michael Bay Does It Again
I agree with most of the points here, the only 2 I would dispute would be:

* Optimus Prime saved Tess because her father had saved him and he felt obliged to save his new human friend's daughter. It would be out of character for Optimus Prime to allow an innocent civilian to be killed, no matter how annoying she may be.

* The alien gun is not necessarily Cybertronian. Lockdown's ship had alien captives from other alien species as part of his collection. He would have also collected their weaponry too, so it stands to reason that the alien sword-gun that Cade used was from a human-sized alien. Or possibly from a human-sized Transformer, as not ALL Transformers are gigantic. Frenzy, Reedman and Alice were human sized, while Wheelie, Brains, Ejector and various other appliance-bots were smaller than human sized. So it could possibly be the weapon of a smaller Transformer. Either way, I don't think it's implausible enough to warrant as a flaw in the movie.

[griffin]

Well that was 3 hours I'm never going to get back...

The pacing was terrible. The first half was so slow I was checking my watch to see how long I had been sitting there... while the last half had patches that were too fast or rushed in linking action sequences.
Like having Optimus "taming" Grimlock - it was hardly necessary since they were both captives and fellow Knights, and Optimus was able to defeat Grimlock really easily.

Watching Ratchet die was difficult, as he's a doctor, not a soldier... so the same plot element of an early Autobot death could have been achieved with the death of a Wrecker, and just have Ratchet noted as being terminated before the movie.

The acting was as poor as ever, with token female running scared... then acting brave when necessary.

But worst of all (to me) is the morphing of cubes is wrong on so many levels... and ruins the classic definition of transforming. (although technically, it is still a definition of "transforming", in that a change of form doesn't follow just one method... I'm just a traditionalist when it comes to Transformers )

Probably the only highlight is the inclusion of Megatron, even if it only felt like it was just setting up his role in the next movie.

[SharkyMcShark]

Mixed feelings. Part of me thinks it was good, most of me realises it was pretty terrible. That said I went when quite ill (I'd organised the tickets so had to be there to pick them up) so it might have coloured my opinion of it.

To summarise before getting into the pros and cons it felt like about two or three movies in one. It should either have done Lockdown bounty hunting Autobots, or Megatron resurrected and the hunt for the McGuffin (Seed).

Pros

+ Lockdown: Head, shoulders and torso above everything else as my favourite thing from this entire series of movies. Odd, because I don't particularly like Boba Fett, but I love what I'm dubbing Robo-Fett. Transforming alien bounty hunter with gunface/integrated Boba Fett helmet whose alt mode is a gunmetal grey Lamborghini? I am ALL over that. I also like that they didn't do what they inevitably do with neutral characters and make him Decepticon aligned or sympathetic. Really really really hope we get a good larger figure of this (are they still doing Human Alliance stuff? That was just about the only size point worth anything in DotM). It was a shame he had to go

+ More Transformers character time: I also liked how Bay is cottoning on to the fact that the Transformers should all be characters to. While in certain cases (e.g. Drift - more on that below) the execution was lacking, it was good that you got a solid feel for each of the robot characters.

+ The 'Vehicons' (is that what we're going with?): I didn't actually mind them - the fact that they were all red or white compared to the blue/green/yellow of the protagonists really brought a sense of visual order to the fight scenes. I sort of enjoyed the alternate transformation - granted it was a bit over the top at times with the molecules snaking through the air for ages, but conceptually I wasn't against it.

+ (Relative) lack of crass humour: There's nothing wrong with crass humour, but Bay doesn't do it all well so I was glad that it was mostly absent.


Cons

- Length: About an hour too long. So much filler. Most of the first half of the film, most of what happened on Lockdown's ship, them pointlessly infiltrating the KSI base in America, a bundle of stuff during the Stanley Tucci running with the bomb part of the film.

- Characters: Marky Mark was a caricature of the 'creepily overprotective dad' trope. Tessa was the misogynist cluster**** that most Michael Bay female characters turn out to be. The boyfriend was one dimensional and annoying. I thought Kelsey Grammar was suitably menacing if a bit one note. Stanley Tucci was about the only likeable one but even then he was quite inconsistent - I liked his turn as the remorseful inventor (I actually enjoyed Wahlberg's "you're just like me, an inventor" speech) but during the chase with the seed/bomb he went from that right into zany action-comedy sidekick and comic relief territory. No consistency.

- Drift: Anyone else feel this was verging on/crossing into/firmly racist? Again, on a conceptual level I loved that the Transformers got heaps more screen time but I was getting to the point of cringing with Drift. Did love the "I was expecting a large car" line.


- The plot: All over the place. The film tried to shoehorn too many stories in which led to the different subplots tripping over each other. Allow me to go into some things that I hated about the plot in no particular order.

> Dinobots: Loved their design but the way that they were introduced was (probably) literally the laziest writing I've seen in any film. The escape pod section of the ship just happened to contain the prison, which just happened to contain some Transformer knights, who just happen to be able to save the day, but this isn't mentioned in any way until they're needed to save the day? Ugh.
> Final battle was tonally confusing: Do either a) battle over the McGuffin like the other films or b) the Lockdown/Prime bounty thing. As it was both felt underdone. The Seed half of it just fizzled out with the Dinobots transforming into giant robot knights and posing for a fight on the bridge, with the rest of it being resolved off screen because it was time to wrap up the Lockdown subplot. Terrible.
> Galvatron: Horribly underdone. Again, either do Lockdown's bounty hunting crusade or the resurrected leader of the Decepticons playing the humans to build him a new body. That Lockdown was such a refreshing character for this series basically carried his subplot, but the whole Galvatron thing didn't have nearly enough gravitas associated with it for what it was i.e. the return of the most badass alien warlord in the galaxy. Everyone was just sort of like 'yeah, alright'. There was no "OH SHI-" moment. Also he might as well as have ended the film saying "see you in the sequel".
> Stop teasing an origin story without explaining in any way how it is related: Theoretically the inevitable Transformers 5 should give colour and context to this, but it began to drag in this one.
> Why can Optimus Prime now fly? At what point did he get this ability?
> Why didn't they give the bomb that they were trying to get out of the centre of a busy city to any of the apparently three Autobots who could fly? (Strafe, Drift, Optimus Prime) (I did get perverse enjoyment out of Drift, whose alt modes are the fastest production car ever made and a freaking helicopter, telling Tucci and friends to take the Seed to the edge of the city in an old slow jeep)


Random observations/questions
1. Is everyone else dead now? (I refer to Dino, Sideswipe, Roadbuster, the Twins etc)
2. How long has Optimus Prime had jet boots? What is the point of protoform modes if he can just Iron Man it through space?
3. I enjoy (perversely) the increasingly ridiculous lengths that the writers go to try and negative the ultimately fairly valid point that none of this bad stuff would be happening if the Autobots hadn't come here/would bugger off now. I'm going to for my own amusement assume that one hill over from where the Seed bombs were being dropped was where the Fallen was busy setting up his Sun Harvester, and that was just down the road from where Megatron crashed while chasing the All-Spark.



Overall I'm honestly not sure if it was that much of a better effort than anything else in the series. It was definitely different, that's for sure.

[Mythirax]

I got to admit, I know the new Transformer Movies aren't every ones up of tea. But boy does it shock me the amount of people that really seem to not like them

[1AZRAEL1]

I got to admit, I know the new Transformer Movies aren't every ones up of tea. But boy does it shock me the amount of people that really seem to not like them

Most of the people who don't like them are Transformers fans. The average movie-goer I speak to did like them.

I for one enjoyed it, and so did my missus.