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

[Mythirax]

People! You really need to not think too much about the so called plot holes in the movie. And use your imagination instead. If you can't make up your own theories/stories, then you shouldn't be collecting Transformers toys. Back in the 80's when I was a kid. I remember playing with my TF's making up my own stories with my Autobots and Decepticon toys. Making missile/gun sounds was great.
I took my 12 year old step-son to AOE yesterday and he came out thinking it was great.......'Awesome'....was his response when I asked what he thought of it. We got home and about 10 minutes later I could hear gun/missile noises (and other various sound effects) coming from his mouth. Yes, that's right!.........he was using his imagination, whilst playing with his Evasion Optimus and Galvatron. Just as I was when I was his age.
He could not give a toss if the plot was silly or nothing related to G1. My kid enjoyed it and made him happy and that is really all this movie needed to be.......and it delivered it in spades!

Oh, and he thought Optimus flying into space was great!

^ That is awesome

[GoktimusPrime]

The story of the movie is the Humans making Transformers and Lockdown hunting Prime. The conclusion is when Lockdown is killed and Galvatron retreats.

I agree. And look, Age of Extinction has the second-most coherent story out of the live action films. TF1 still has the most coherent plot, albeit also the most basic. So in terms of story complexity and coherency, I think that Age of Extinction is arguably the best. It's certainly a lot more coherent than Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon... although that's not hard. Having said that, ROTF and DOTM had much more brilliant visual effects. The Constructicons combining into Devastator was an astounding special effects feat. But to be fair, AoE's budget is US$35,000,000 smaller than RotF's.

The flight has basically nothing to do with it.. it's more like the start of TF5.

And that is what I think is the problem with it. It's kinda like the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur and his Knights are arrested by the police. But of course, that film was deliberately (and yet brilliantly) silly. They should be setting up elements for TF5 with things that don't conflict with events of AoE or the previous films, and to their credit, AoE does do this, such as introducing Galvatron (who doesn't do much in this movie, but is still at large as a threat for future sequels), and of course, the Creators. These are all good "sequel seeding" elements that I enjoyed in the film, as they don't go and conflict with anything else in the story.

Even if the Creator element introduces another incredible fluke, it's not contradictory. In fact, one could argue, that the entire reason why all the other stuff happened on Earth was possibly because the world had previously been Cyberformed by the Creators -- thus something about the Earth's "genome" attracted the Cube, the Fallen and ... the Ark? Okay, that last one makes no sense (sounded better in my head until I typed it ). Yay, Earth!

Regardless, i think my suggestion that he swiped the parts from Lockdown is plausible, or that the sword/upgrade gave him the capability.

I was looking out for any evidence of this when I was watching the film for a second time. Optimus Prime's body does physically morph when he takes the sword, mostly in the hands and forearms -- it's possible that his legs might've changed too, but I haven't noticed it on my first two viewings. So either it wasn't shown in the visual narrative, or it was too discreet. This sort of thing needs to be exaggerated or highlighted more for the sake of the audience (much like how Archibald Witwicky's glasses were enlarged to the size of a freakin' bicycle when Optimus Prime scanned the lenses to obtain the Cube's location -- it's silly, but was a necessary cinematic cheat to allow the audience to see the glasses clearly while Prime was holding them). Something simple like a quick shot of his lower legs "armouring up" and then having the jet vents pump out would've sufficed.

But... if this is true, then why didn't Optimus Prime use these jets to fly back to urban Hong Kong instead of riding Grimlock? Why didn't he use these jets to resist Lockdown's gravity device, or at very least, control his ascent to get a clear shot into the device and destroy it (instead of struggling to hold onto that building)?

I agree your Star Wars scenario is borderline ludicrious... but we're talking Transformers not humans.

But the best Transformers stories treat Transformers with the same level of respect as those with humans; e.g. G1 comics, Beast Wars, IDW. Even the G1 cartoon to a certain degree, as well as the better episodes of Animated and TF Prime.

I also think showing Prime going off in space by himself creates a bit more intrigue about the next movie than if he took a space ship. It makes me wonder if they'll start to have some of the space fight scenes like the cartoon did.

I don't doubt that it looks crazy cool. I was half expecting Optimus Prime to smile at the camera before pulling away from the Earth. I know it's a very visually thrilling moment, but story wise it grates against me. Even my brother-in-law was laughing at this, and he knows nothing about Transformers.

I only mentioned G1 to suggest that you take the moment a little less seriously. When other elements are nicked from G1 it's usually seen as a good throwback. Who's to say some fans haven't been up in arms about the lack of flight to-date in the live action films? Maybe now those people are really happy! I don't want to get into specifics of G1 but since you did, surely you know in Japanese G1 heaps of them can fly!

The Japanese cartoon had a lot of silly moments (Ultra Magnus' final fight w/ Sixshot remains what I consider to be one of the most ludicrous moments in TF history ). But again, it was a cartoon aimed at kids without a US$165000000 budget and had "To Sell Toys" (thus restricting creative freedom). Kaneda Masumi would've been in a rush to off Magnus and make Sixshot look cool in order to showcase the new toy. David Wise's original treatment for The Rebirth was actually pretty cool, but Hasbro instructed him to make changes because it was the final story for the US G1 cartoon and he had to introduce virtually the entire 1987 toyline within those eps (which also had a budget cut and episode length was reduced from 5 to 3 eps). Michael Bay has FAR more creative freedom than any TF writer during G1, and he has acknowledged this in interviews for the previous TF films. And remember that audiences have to pay the price of cinema admission to see this film, whereas G1 was either free-to-air on TV or just $1-2 for a comic book issue.

So considering that this movie is:
* targeting an older audience
* has a massive budget
* has far greater creative freedom
...I am inclined to hold it to a higher standard than G1.

I'm not really disagreeing on what you're saying here but can you honestly see how they could possibly expand on every character within space of a single movie? I'd read your fan-flick if you can! There's just too many of them, and i think it's an inherent problem for Transformers; why it's better suited to cartoon or comic format. And that's not even including the multitude of humans they characterize as well!

That's why I compared it with Avengers, because that movie was also dealing with an ensemble cast. And look, to be fair, Age of Extinction does highlight on each of the Autobots, and Optimus Prime does go on a journey as he deals with his loss of faith in humanity and being consumed by doubt (the latter being reminiscent of his G1 Marvel comic persona). It would've been nice if each of the other Autobots were allowed to go on some kind of "mini-journey" in the film -- again, much like each of the Avengers did. Aside from Optimus Prime, the other Autobots felt like walking clichés -- they were caricatures rather than characters. But IMO being a caricature is better than being a set piece! I would've been more satisfied with the Dinobots if they had even been given that level of superficial caricaturisation (e.g. "Me Grimlock bash brains!"), but we didn't even get that. As clichéd as the Autobots are, at least we do know something about their personas -- Bumblebee is an immature hothead, Bulkhead is brave and loyal, Crosshairs is rebellious, and Drift is a wannabe hippie. What do we know about the Dinobots? What makes Grimlock, Slug, Strafe and Scorn so unique or distinct from each other besides their looks and alt modes? The G1 cartoon Dinobots were clichéd caricatures too, but they still had distinct traits. We don't even know why Optimus Prime had to fight Grimlock to win his allegiance. Even something as simple as, "Only the strong may command the Knights!" would've sufficed. Let's face it, the Dinobots had about as much "personality" as the Kaijuu in Pacific Rim (only that they're good guys).

People! You really need to not think too much about the so called plot holes in the movie. And use your imagination instead. If you can't make up your own theories/stories, then you shouldn't be collecting Transformers toys. Back in the 80's when I was a kid. I remember playing with my TF's making up my own stories with my Autobots and Decepticon toys. Making missile/gun sounds was great.
I took my 12 year old step-son to AOE yesterday and he came out thinking it was great.......'Awesome'....was his response when I asked what he thought of it. We got home and about 10 minutes later I could hear gun/missile noises (and other various sound effects) coming from his mouth. Yes, that's right!.........he was using his imagination, whilst playing with his Evasion Optimus and Galvatron. Just as I was when I was his age.
He could not give a toss if the plot was silly or nothing related to G1. My kid enjoyed it and made him happy and that is really all this movie needed to be.......and it delivered it in spades!

Oh, and he thought Optimus flying into space was great!

It sounds like he was enjoying the action rather than the story. And there's no denying that the action in this film was great. And I don't think that the story is without merit either, there are some good elements in it, which I've mentioned before.

Also... why are you referring to your own playing of Transformers in the past tense? I personally still actively play with my toys. I was playing with my Leader Class AoE Optimus Prime in the cinema while watching the film for the second time, and my daughter was playing with Slumblebee alongside me (so we were playing alongside w/ the film).

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Benson Yee has posted a review on BWTF, where he has offered what I consider to be a reasonably balanced and well justified opinion of Age of Extinction. His review does point out several of the film's strengths and weaknesses.
http://bwtf.com/articles/aoe