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

[GoktimusPrime]

Now that's a rant! I dunno, he flies off at the end of the damn movie, after the story is finished, so it's hardly what i'd call a plot hole. They did it for a cool final scene that's different to the other movies. Can't you just assume he found some shit in Lockdown's ship? It's not like they'd drag out the movie (any longer!) to explain something so small.

I don't see how having this happen at the end of the movie make it any more acceptable. The very final act of a story is the conclusion, which is supposed to logically tie in with the rest of the story (introduction>complication>climax>resolution); having any of these elements being disjointed is a sign of poor story telling. Imagine if, at the very last act in Return of the Jedi when we see Luke on Endor while the Rebels are celebrating their victory... after seeing the Force Ghosts of Yoda, Obiwan and Anakin, he then takes out his light sabre, holds it aloft... and uses the Force to FLY like Superman! Alright, it would look massively cool, but then it throws a massive monkey wrench into the entire story! Conclusions shouldn't do that! Conclusions can be very important, just look at The Sixth Sense.

And actually, aside from the ridiculous flying thing, I liked the basic premise of the conclusion in Age of Extinction -- i.e. that Optimus Prime has realised that there's a bounty on his head placed by the Creators, thus his continued presence on Earth was placing humans and his fellow Autobots in danger from mercenaries like Lockdown. The best way to protect his friends was to leave them, and then find the Creators in order to address the threat directly. I think that this is a really cool idea. I just wish that they'd found a gooderer way of executing this idea, like say cutting to another scene where we see that the Autobots have either repaired Lockdown's ship, or salvaged parts from it to build a new ship, and Optimus pilots it in search for the Creators. It achieves the same story outcome, but in a far more plausible way that doesn't screw up the previous story of the film (and indeed, its prequels!).

Plus G1 transformers can randomly fly too so why not :P

Only in the pilot episodes of the G1 cartoon, after that only the Decepticons could fly in robot mode. They couldn't fly in other G1 media though, e.g. in the G1 comics, characters like Soundwave and Megatron had to transform to their mass-shrunken alt modes and "ride" inside the cockpit of a Seeker in jet mode in order to get about long distances. Also, they couldn't robo-fly into space! They needed to use a Space Bridge or space-faring vessels or space-faring moded TFs (e.g. Omega Supreme, Astrotrain etc.). Megatron didn't fly on his own from Cybertron to Autobot City on Earth in TFTM.

Also, unlike the G1 cartoon, the live action films are written for an older audience, have far more creative freedom (since the toys are based on the film and not vice versa, so the agenda isn't "to sell toys"), and the G1 episodes didn't have a US$165,000,000 budget! Also, the G1 cartoon was broadcast free-to-air, whereas viewing Age of Extinction requires the price of cinema admission. Okay, I personally did manage to see this movie twice for free, but still -- most people had to buy tickets!

I guess the scenario is that they were the first creations (beginning of film) and never changed their form before getting caught at some point?

AFAIK nothing in the film even remotely suggests this.
The beginning of the film didn't show the Creators creating the Dinobots or even the Transformers. It showed them Cyberforming Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs. We saw dinosaurs becoming cyber-petrified, like the cyber-petrified dinosaur that they found in the Arctic. They weren't Dinobots though.

And we don't know if Earth was specifically the planet where these Transformers were created from. The movie said that the Creators cyberformed thousands of worlds as they did with prehistoric Earth, in order to build their creations. So saying that they Cyberformed Earth to "make you," may not necessarily have been intended as a literal meaning, but rather saying that they transformed planets such as Earth to create beings such as the Transformers. But if it is literal, then that's just yet another AMAZING freakin' coincidence regarding Earth and the Transformers in this universe! First the Fallen just happens to wage a war against the Primes on Earth, then the AllSpark Cube just happens to crash there after drifting aimlessly through space, then the Ark just happens to crash on Earth's moon after also drifting aimlessly (probably would've crashed on Earth too if the moon hadn't gotten in the way), and now we learn that the Transformers' creators just happened to have chosen Earth for Cyberforming and perhaps Earth was the original birthplace for the Transformers all along??? What an amazing series of intergalactic flukes!

I remember that. Wasn't he dying and desperately needed to find the Autobots?

Yup!

Plan A: Scan a new alt mode to initiate instant complete repair, then transform to robot mode and fly off to find surviving Autobots.
Plan B: Let this human try and fix some of you and continue hiding while your fellow Autobots continue to be hunted.

Shoulda gone with Plan A! (Kung Pow'd! )

For Optimus, perhaps he couldn't regenerate until a certain amount of time passed since coming back online, since he'd been idle/in stasis for a while. He was certainly capable of regenerating by the time he was captured by Lockdown.

Really? Because at the very end of the movie, before flying off, we can still see damage on his body, including a half-snapped off waist plate.

As for Ratchet, he was trying to evade pursuers at first, and was then pinned down by fire from multiple directions. Not an ideal time to scan something.

He could've scanned one of the helicopters and tried to fly away. Okay sure, Lockdown probably would've shot him down and still killed him, but at least he could make an effort!

Just because Giant robot dinosaurs are awesome - isn't that the whole point of the Dinobots, anyway?

The original Dinobots had better characterisation than what we got in Age of Extinction. Grimlock was arrogant but brave, eventually learning to become a better leader. Slag is incredibly anti-social and will indiscriminately attack friends and foes when he goes into his Berserker rage (which thankfully rarely happens). Sludge is a simpleton, but is kind of a softie. Snarl is a miserable sod, and Swoop is more thoughtful, but haunted by his past. Heck, even the Animated Dinobots had better characterisation, and they were terrible characters! Most of the Transformers in the Bay films are cheesy, one-dimensional, clichéd caricatures, but the Dinobots don't even seem to be that... they're just set pieces! Massively big accessories for the Autobots.

And yes, I know that the Movieverse is not G1, and I'm not saying that I necessarily want the Movieverse Dinobots to be the same as the G1 Dinobots, but I just want SOME sort of characterisation or even caricaturisation!

Fair point; perhaps it could've been better written, but it seems kind of weird to me that people seem to be expecting Oscar-winning screenplays (ok, being hyperbolic here) for a movie about giant robots based on a toy franchise.

It's a Hollywood summer movie, and it's enjoyable/entertaining to watch (the most important point, in my opinion). I intend to go watch it in cinemas again.

Unlike most other TF stories, the movies are NOT based on existing toys, thus they don't have the impetus of "to sell toys." This allows them MUCH greater creative freedom because they're not dictated by Hasbro in terms of what to do with which character, e.g. which characters they have to remove or introduce at certain times etc.

And you can have a movie that offers exciting and thrilling action, and attempts to tell a good story. No, it doesn't have to be a literary award winning script, but it just needs to make a reasonable effort. Look at the Avengers -- that film is quite limited in its story telling capacity because it's dealing with an ensemble cast of characters, but it still manages to tell what is a reasonably decent story considering. Each character has their own individual journey to go on, and these journeys help to drive the story. Each of them are also changed by their experience in the story, which is what makes them proper characters and not shallow caricatures, or worse, set pieces.