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

[Sinnertwin]

How much screen time did le dinobots have? I haven't seen it yet but i'm not fussed with spoilers either

[Sky Shadow]

Were the Dinobots even named in the film? According to TFwiki, "Strafe is named so not because of trademark reasons, but because the film's two-headed design was considered too great a departure from previous Swoop characters." Really? They didn't think Ironhide or Jetfire or Wheelie or Leadfoot or Soundwave or Sentinel Prime or Topspin or Blackout or Demolishor or any other Bay-movie designs were too much of a departure, but a second head stopped Hasbro calling these toys Swoop? So instead they named them Strafe, who until now has never even been a pteranodon.

How much screen time did le dinobots have? I haven't seen it yet but i'm not fussed with spoilers either

I'm pretty sure you could miss the first two hours and not miss any Dinobots. They're really just dei ex machina.

[Starscream77]

How much screen time did le dinobots have? I haven't seen it yet but i'm not fussed with spoilers either

I would say around 20 minutes at a guess, they didn't get much at all

[yoshi594]

I watched it the other night and enjoyed it for what it is.

What really amazes me is how many TF fans continue to watch Michael Bays TF movies and tear them apart and say what rubbish they are ?!?!. Are you expecting something to change after all his other movies? Clearly if you disliked his past efforts then you almost certainly wouldn't like this so why go and see it? To be able to complain? Makes no sense to me as an adult.

Anyway yes there were cringe moments but I thought Lockdown was brilliant and the new human cast was an improvement. Would have loved to have seen more of the Dino's but I am sure I will in the next one with Galvatrons rise.

As a Bay TF movie I would say 7.5/10
As an academy award nomination it would be 1/10

TF1 was surprisingly good. TF2 was marred by the writers strike. I hoped TF3 would improve because there were no excuses that time around. I decided this time round i would wait to skim read reviews and i'm glad I did! but tbh I think i've wasted more time reading the reviews and comments than the length of the movie lol.

This one's going to be direct to dvd for me :P.

[Sinnertwin]

Cheers, boys

Sounds like a classic case of overhyped marketing for 20 minutes of screentime. I thought that they would've had more of a presence considering that dinos are plastered everywhere

[Alpha Supreme]

I quite liked it. I thought the transformers had more screen time and character to distinguish them. The film was a bit long and I thought the human characters weren't as superfluous this time around (glad La Bouf is gone). I feel like things have been set up for more films and the story, while having plenty of holes, was more cohesive. I enjoyed Lockdown as a villain and thought the referencing to the 'creators' was intriguing. I think with the length of the movie things could have been explained better... but I did go into the cinema with low expectations and my low expectations were exceeded. Lastly I was able to avoid the spoilers surrounding ..."XYZ"... which was a little surprise for me. Thought the 3D was good and would like to see it again.

[jazzcomp]

Not a fan of the morphing and tf creation without a spark like many others. I remember the change of a toy to a gun. Just defies logic. I remember the liquid metal from the terminator and it couldn't change to "anything".

It was good to watch though.

[Magnus]

Transformium. Now, I understand that the humans that named it probably didn't know of the term of the actual metal of the Transformers but don't you think if they had Brains in their labs that he would've said something? Now thats its been dubbed as "Transformium" I want an Autobot to approach someone and say "Hang on, it's actually called ___" (since there's some many metals used in Transformers bodies)

I agree, but I suppose that they didn't want to confuse audience members with two different terms for the same thing. To AoE's credit, we never hear any of the Transformers refer to Cybertronium as "Transformium." Optimus Prime refers to it as something like, "our basic metals."

And it's arguably typical for humans to just name things for what they think it should be called rather than what it should be actually called. e.g. the didgeridoo. The Manggalili word for it as "yidaki." The word 'didgeridoo' is derived from 'dijeridu' which is merely the onomatopoeia for the sound that the instrument makes. So the idea of the English language referring to the Yidaki as a "Didgeridoo" is akin to referring to say a piano as a "Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do."

I think the name transformium was deliberately tongue-in-cheek - there's a line wherein it's stated that the name came from focus group discussions. Then again, perhaps it really was 'just' a reference to Avatar's 'unobtainium'.

Were the Dinobots even named in the film? According to TFwiki, "Strafe is named so not because of trademark reasons, but because the film's two-headed design was considered too great a departure from previous Swoop characters." Really? They didn't think Ironhide or Jetfire or Wheelie or Leadfoot or Soundwave or Sentinel Prime or Topspin or Blackout or Demolishor or any other Bay-movie designs were too much of a departure, but a second head stopped Hasbro calling these toys Swoop? So instead they named them Strafe, who until now has never even been a pteranodon.

It's not as if names have never been reused before in the franchise. Inferno is an early example.

Not a fan of the morphing and tf creation without a spark like many others. I remember the change of a toy to a gun. Just defies logic. I remember the liquid metal from the terminator and it couldn't change to "anything".

The 'morphing' effect is definitely unusual, but it makes sense from an in-universe perspective: molecules in transformium are capable of separating and reassembling themselves into multiple shapes and distinct objects, so Galvatron and Stinger reconfigure themselves on a microscopic level - think Reedman from RotF, but the individual pieces are even smaller. The 'traditional' Transformers only use this ability when scanning alternate modes for themselves, since they use larger moving parts when transforming.

The T-1000 is different: it uses nanotechnology in a 'matrix' of liquid metal.

[SMHFConvoy]

While I don't regret seeing it I'd have to say this was a really boring movie, none of the characters were interesting enough to care about.

I do hope Bay is finished with this franchise.

[Sky Shadow]

It's not as if names have never been reused before in the franchise. Inferno is an early example.

Yes, and yet Hasbro said they wanted to name him Swoop, but didn't "because the film's two-headed design was considered too great a departure from previous Swoop characters." But they didn't think it was considered too great a departure from previous Strafe characters. Their point does not makes sense.