My Love/Hate Relationship With 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'

Micheal Bay’s ‘Transformers’ movie franchise has evolved into something that people would rather you didn’t bring up in conversations. Particularly ones that involve happy times in life. It’s not that the franchise is a terrible one, but it’s grown in a very…interesting way. When ‘Transformers' debuted in 2007, adults and kids alike wanted nothing more than to see Optimus Prime is all of his robotic glory fight Megatron and the Decepticons with his merry band of Autobots. They got that. By the time 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' was released in 2011, things became a bit more complicated than they needed to be. From the surprising announcement of every-young-man's-heartthrob Megan Fox leaving the series to Shia Lebouf's recent arrest, the film franchise has had it’s fair share of attention. That’s where ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction' attempts to come to the rescue and make all things fresh and new.


That’s where things get mucky.

The Good:

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‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ takes place three years after the downfall of Sentinal Prime and Megatron’s army in Chicago. This event, aptly named “Battle of Chicago”, shook things up in an unexpected way. The government saw all transformer aliens as a threat and has started an effort to hunt down and destroy every remaining one left on Earth. As a result, Optimus Prime and the Autobots go into hiding for safety. In the midst of all this a mechanic and struggling inventor Cade Yaeger, played by the-guy-hired-to-save-this-series Mark Wahlberg, and his probably-there-for-obligatory-sex-appeal daughter Tessa, played by Nicola Peltz, conveniently mistakingly stumble upon Optimus Prime and are caught between a war for earth as the new enemy, Lockdown, seeks to take control of Earth.
There’s a lot going on here, and that’s a good thing. With screaming Shia Lebouf and his useless partners out of the picture, this gives room for things to have a fresh start. ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction' thankfully took this opportunity and ran with it. Mark Wahlberg hasn't disappointed before(2 Guns, The Departed, Lone Survivor) and he sure doesn't now. The father-daughter dynamic between Mark Wahlberg and Nicola Peltz was a nice touch and I loved it. It felt genuine and it actually fit into the overall plot pretty well, giving excellent cues for character development and giving the characters drive to do what they did. This is pushed even further when Tessa's hidden-from-dad boyfriend Shane, played by Jack Reynor, comes in and adds a nice touch to an already great pairing of characters. It was about dang time this happened.
Things didn’t stop there. Everything got a complete overhaul. Thank goodness. Aside from Bumblebee, there is a whole new band of robots and you’ll fall in love with them. Drift, Hound, and Crosshairs feel more than just more Autobots. They feel like robots with a personality. They offer comic relief, of course, but their personalities also work very well together which makes them feel like they’re so much more than hunks of gears and metal.

Source: Image found on Scopecube 

Okay let’s get to what really matters. The action. ’Transformers: Age of Extinction' went a bit different this time around and redesigned the robots from the ground up. Before, the robots (particularly Bumblebee) were extremely, extremely detailed but sometimes looked like a confused mess of gears and bolts. Now, they are a bit more polished and more put together. This means less gears and more car paint…which sometimes seemed to be a bad thing. During a lot of the fights the robots sometimes seemed a bit flat and disconnected from the background and things going on, particularly the new wave of enemies. I can't knock the effects staff because it was still brilliant work but sometimes it felt like a bit more effort could’ve gone into really making the robots look a bit more like a part of the scene than obvious CGI overlays. Quality makes a difference ('How To Train Your Dragon 2' proved that). Not really much style-wise, the robots ripped each other apart in various ways and what not. The usual. Overall though, there was awesome action. There was an overabundance of the stuff so trust me, you won’t be disappointed with that. Oh and there’s transforming dinosaurs. ‘Nuff said.
And speaking of looks, let me just say that Micheal Bay had a few toys to play with when he made this movie. Some serious risks were taken in terms of angles and slow motion and dang they look nice. The slow motion was really clean and well done and added a lot to the feel of the entire film. Shoutout to the post production team for some fantastic work.

The Bad

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My biggest problem with ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction' is that it's long. Too long. Unnecessarily long. This film caps off at 165 minutes. That’s 2 hours and 45 minutes. It may not sound like a long time at first but I can guarantee there will come a point where you look at your watch or phone in the theatre and feel true despair as you realize that you have a whole 60 minutes left until the end. It would’ve been different if the story needed that length of time to fully unfold. But it didn’t. One can only see robots being torn apart so many times before becoming uninterested. Remember the transforming dinosaurs I mentioned earlier? By the time they came on screen I honestly didn’t care, which is bad. It’s not that they weren’t awesome, it’s that so many things are drawn out that you feel almost mentally exhausted by the time you see these things. Optimus Prime riding a huge transforming T-Rex with a sword of awesomness sounds cool right? Well my friend you are going to have to endure 140 minutes of this film before you get to it.

Source: Image found on Scopecube 

The product placement. Oh. My. Goodness. The shameless product placement in this movie is probably the worst I’ve ever seen. It never stops. With a movie like this I expect to see some car manufacturing product placement and what not, which I got, but I swear it was like a free branding convention in this movie. Everything from Victoria’s Secret to Red Bull (yes, Red Bull) has a spot in this movie. Some are just part of the scenery but at times it went so far that it may as well be spliced out of the movie and be a standalone product commercial. One good example is when Cade and the gang is rescued by Bumblebee from falling and they land into a Bud Light truck. Not only do they fall into this Bud Light truck but Cade literally gets up, stares at a guy who asks him about car insurance, picks up a beer, downs it, and puts it on the ground as he’s refueled and ready to help again. I found it downright embarrassing. I paid to see a movie, not a string of product commercials. I understand sponsorship and that the brands have to get their name out there but ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction' took it a bit too far sometimes. Took away from the movie experience for me.


We all know the age old saying “With great power comes great responsibility!” right? So of course with the good there has to come the bad. There were a lot of points where the movie just felt off. A lot of scenes were shown and switched from right in what felt like the middle of it. It was an odd arrangement of scenes, particularly at the beginning, and I found myself sort of lost. I even forgot some of the characters existed because they had either been on screen so briefly that they’re not memorable or been a part of a scene that had no context with the flow of the story. It was often jarring, awkward and really just odd. I found myself completely not knowing how some things happened because the flow was just out of whack (When the heck did Optimus gain the ability to freakin’ fly??) This contributed greatly to the long run time.


This movie is also pretty...interesting when it comes to the portrayal of the government, particularly the CIA. If anything they started out being the most responsible people in this whole movie. It felt like they took a few cues from the ‘Bourne' series and made these guys needlessly menacing. I mean they even go as far as to give a guy a skull ring to match his midnight black trenchcoat and too-expensive-for-you-to-buy black shades. I think that was the first time in a while I've seen a film try way too hard to make someone look bada-double-snakes (keeping it safe for the kidies!). There was even a Bourne-esque fight scene between the head CIA guy and Cade. Wonder what Matt Damon will think when he sees that. -Cue Bourne Music Here-

In conclusion, ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction' was okay-ish experience. I could write on more of the things that annoyed me ( -cough- transformium) like the sheer amount of unrealism with the humans...but then I would end up with a book. I know Mark Wahlberg is amazing but I think he'd gain a few scratches from falling a few thousand feet with shattered glass and steel flying around him. The reboot was much needed, and is much appreciated, and can be a good first step to fixing the previous trilogy. This fixed a lot of the things that needed fixing but introduced some major new problems as well that takes away a lot from what could've been one of the summer's best movies. I'm looking forward to see how the series continues but for now, I won't be paying to see this one again.