I Need a Time Machine

My hatred for the Transformers movie franchise and its creator are undying. Some might even call it fanatical, but each of those movies deserve purification by fire. I thought the terror was over; surely after three disastrous films, Michael Bay would spare us from another. Call me Nostradamus because Transformers: Age of Extinction dominated opening week box office with an alleged one hundred million dollars. My expectations were abysmally low and I came out horrified. Life lesson: it can always get worse. This post has spoilers and profanity.

IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Genres: Science Fiction, Action, Giant Robots, Explosions for exposition, Stupidity

Concept:

It’s sequel that shouldn’t exist. After watching this film, I tried to piece together what Bay was trying accomplish with another trilogy. Money is the most obvious motivation, but I wondered, “does he really think this is quality film making?” Are successful blockbusters reduced nothing more than incoherent nonsense with cool special effects? Age of Extinction makes a compelling case. The world which Transformers and humans reside in expands as terms/phrases like “creators” and “The Legend exists” are uttered. What Legend am I referring to? Just watch the mo—I’m messing with you, no explanation was provided. Similar to the forth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Age of Extinction is a cold reboot with Optimus, Megatron (renamed Galvatron) and Bumblebee as the only characters that survived the transition. Unfortunately, this movie distinguishes itself from the previous trilogy by pushing the edge of awful. Otherwise it’s the same routine: Autobots fight the baddies, Optimus almost dies in the last fight, the humans are saved and the film ends with a monologue from the most incompetent military leader ever witnessed by human eyes.

Characters (broadest definition possible):

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlburg) is a starving inventor whose stubbornness keeps his daughter in abject poverty (yet she has funds to find fashionable heels and clothes). Cade fits straight into the “over-protective father” archetype, eliminating any potential for a real character. Bay seems to have a fixation with dysfunctional families, yet how can something be dysfunctional if there was no function to begin with? Despite Walhburg’s impressive action hero resume, the writing failed to deliver. Cade can’t be taken seriously. His dialogue makes trees look emotional and his problem solving rarely extents beyond shooting.

Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz) is Cade’s ridiculously gorgeous daughter and eye candy for the prepubescent teens who are watching. Her character redefines pointless. Wait that’s not entirely true, she does move the plot forward once. She too fits into the “I’m a seventeen year girl” archetype so well that I wished her death for most of the film. Maybe a giant rock could crush her or Galvatron shoots her in the face, but my desires were not satisfied.

Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor) is Tessa’ secret rally car driving boyfriend from Ireland, who happens to be in Texas. Are there people with awesome significant others? Yes, however, Shane’s background is too convenient ( the rally car driver bit) and joins Tessa in the “useless character” category. His conflict with Cade over Tessa’ affections and virginity seems forced. Due to Cade’s contrived overprotection, Shane’s antagonism would be justified; but soap opera drama is the jet fuel on this plane crash of a movie.

Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) is the human antagonist of the film. A corrupt CIA agent who uses a transformer named Lockdown to remove all aliens from earth. Attinger’s motivation to protect humans from transforms, almost places him in the “compelling villain” category. However, his motivations turn out to be paper-thin and one dimensional.

Transformers (Optimus, Galvatron, Knockout, Drift, Hound, Stinger, Crosshairs and Lockdown) are the same as ever. Each installment of this franchise has a syndrome. Every new movie there are more transformers that didn’t appear before. This is annoying because only people with an in-depth knowledge of Transformers would know about these characters. Hound (John Goodman bot) says a bunch of silly one liners which is the only positive characters elements for any of the Transformers. The movies don’t give an exposition on who they are or their origins.

Non-coherent Story:

I was stunned while watching this film and that doesn’t happen often. Not since Olympus has Fallen, has a movie invoked copious amounts of fury from me. Michael Bay is cock-slapping the audience; saying, “This movie can be a total shit-storm and you’ll still give me your money.” Yet, at least thirty minutes of the plot is devoted to developing awful characters. Almost three hours of screen time show something resembling a story. The number of computer generated battle scenes are astronomical and blend together into a sea of explosions, robots, humans running away and giant space ships flying through the sky. Clearly, Bay wanted this reboot to shock and awe people.

Shock it did, though probably not in the way he envisioned. My rage doesn’t come from folks celebrating this movie or defending it. Proportionally, negative reception/criticism overwhelms any positive defense. That’s not enough for me. If movie burning happened, Age of Extinction is in the top ten list of “first to be burned.” Why? Because Bay wants viewer to regard him seriously. Not a single redeemable element exists during this three hour of wasted time.

One of the Plagues

The Transformers franchise lowered the bar for how awful action movies could be, but redemption existed: giant robots fighting each other transcends awesome. I love giant robots. One of my favorite anime genres is Mecha (giant robots in space blowing each other up). By that logic I should have loved all transformers movies, yet only Dark of the Moon actually fulfilled my “giant robots fighting” quota. Traveling further down this logic road, two thirds of Age of Extinction consists of robot fights. There lies its fundamental problem. I didn’t think excess robot combat was possible, but Bay continues to innovate methods of destroying everything I love. Successful action sequences follow up with a scene that breaks tension and let’s the audience process what happened. These “break” scenes allow for dialogue, exposition, continuity and comprehensive plot progression. In roughly two hours of robot fighting/humans running/cities being destroyed, maybe half a dozen “break” scenes occur. That’s massive action overload. I was bored halfway through the movie. Michael Bay accomplished the impossible: boring robot fights. May plagues of all variations afflict him.
  

Transformers non-cinema franchise source material exists with little continuity, changes significantly between different universes and multiple origin stories have been rewritten at least three times in four decades. In Bay’s typical story telling methods, almost all exposition is replaced with explosions. That’s another problem because this film introduces the Dinobots and a potential origin story for all Transformers. Due to source material confusion, clear and concise exposition is necessary to import anything into the movies. Otherwise those elements seem contrived and poorly constructed. Lockdown, the Dinobots, Transformer creating Aliens who killed the dinosaurs by glassing the surface into “transformium”, a strange order of knights which Optimus is apart of and his ability to fly after being stabbing through chest doesn’t make any sense because Bay gives us shit for an explanation. He’s too busy flooding us with pointless CG fight sequences.

Age of Extinction’s popularity was boosted by introducing these extra characters and elements, but in a manner that will encourage real Transformers fans to flee or riot in anger. From Wikipedia exploration, the Transformers universe has depth and surprising diversity. I’m not a fan, but it’s a cool universe. Bay annihilates potential awesomeness by forgoing proper introductions.

Early in the film, I had hope for an engaging setting. Four years after Chicago’s decimation folks are not happy about Transformers. A black-ops division of the CIA (Cemetery Wind) is formed to hunt down remaining Decepticons. An earth that is hostile to Transformers would enrage Optimus because he fought for earth’s survival. Autobot lives were lost to defend the planet. To the film’s credit, our strangely competent Prime decides to ditch earth because they are not longer welcome. I was excited for a real conflict in this installment, but disappointment kicked my head in and laughed. Cade “convinces” Optimus to help humanity again and Cemetery Wind is the only group who are really anti-Transformers.

Score: 2/10

Computer generation gets no credit in my world. A movie can look great, but without the three cores that determine real quality; that film is worthless. There was enough humor in Age of Extinction to keep the score above zero. Exceptions aside, this is one the worst movies my eyes have had the tragedy to gaze upon. It’s travesty that Michael Bay has reaped a fortune (650ish Million world wide) from this film and there’s more coming. When did entertaining lose intelligence? Please don’t see this one or the next two, don’t give him the pleasure. 

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