Transformers: Age of Extinction – Film Review

Posted on 5th July 201410th July 2014 by

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer and Optimus Prime

Release Date: Jul 5

After the war on humanity that exploded at the end of the third film, Optimus Prime and his posse of Autobots return to fight for humanities survival in…<yawn>…the most explosive and action packed installment of the Transformers franchise so far.
This time they must battle yet another Transformer from space, so y’know, the stakes are high… I guess. Oh, and there are Dino-bots because otherwise these films would be in danger of becoming stale.

The poster for the latest Transformers movie features Optimus Prime riding atop a Transformer in the form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, with a broadsword held aloft. It should come as no surprise to audiences that Michael Bay thought this poster up first, and then built the film around it (This may not be factual information, but it certainly feels that way).
There is one plot development that, on the surface, you could almost mistake for satire. This time around, humans are using alien technology to build their own Transformers, which could be read as a commentary on the ridiculous popularity of the toys back in the 80s. But if it is satire, what is the film trying to say? Typically, this one creative spark is smothered almost immediately before it can have any sort of intellectual impact.

Strangely, this isn’t even the biggest installment in the franchise, as the explosions don’t quite reach the absurd levels of the last film. And for a while, this is actually a good thing. There are moments in Age of Extinction that actually work as action sequences, rather than CGI white noise.

But as we’ve come to expect, the film eventually collapses in on itself. Once again, Bay resorts to the same final act that featured in every single one of the films’ predecessors. Select an iconic city, in this case Beijing, and blow it up over the course of an hour and twenty minutes. By the time the Dino-bots actually arrive to wreak some havoc, you just stop caring. You will have been watching the same explosion for the past half hour, and there’s just no direction the film can take that might re-engage with it’s audience. The only relief at this point of the film is the charismatic Stanley Tucci, who provides some good shtick to lighten the mood in the films’ final scenes.

But let’s take a step back, because as mentioned, there have been some small improvements. It was a smart choice to finally replace Shia LaBeouf as the face of the franchise. He may have passed as a likable enough teen in the first film, but the whining brat persona was never all that appealing to audiences to begin with. Instead, Bay takes the little personality LaBeouf’s character had and then divides it up into two characters.

The first of these is Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager, an inventor and over-protective father of Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz). It’s a nice shake-up in theory, changing the dynamic from loving couple to father and daughter. And with the charisma that Wahlberg brings to the role, you really, really want to say that it’s a marked improvement, but the sad truth is that this is as shallow a cast as there has ever been.
Despite a change in appearance and age, Wahlberg is essentially Sam Witwicky all over again. He works towards being clumsily honorable while trying to look out for the girl he loves (in this case, his daughter). There isn’t so much an arc in his character but a single character trait that he milks for all it’s worth.

Meanwhile, Irish actor Jack Reynor finds himself slotting into the actual Sam Witwicky boyfriend role, only minus the clumsiness or vulnerability. It should come as no surprise that he is barely developed as a character at all, presumably because he never explodes. Shane is the boyfriend that can do no wrong, but receives contempt from Cade because he drives a fast car and wears a leather jacket. He might have great confidence as an actor and, to his credit, he gets the most that he can out of the character, but Reynor just doesn’t have enough material to work with here.

Tessa, on the flip side of the gender coin, is the standard Michael Bay girl: a sun-kissed beauty who grates on the nerves whenever the script requires her to actually act. She is a hair’s breadth away from calling the nasty robots ‘a big bunch of meanies’ and has no other function than getting herself into trouble so that someone can save her.
It is standard fare at this stage for the women in these films to be mindless, but this ‘Daddy’s Girl’ takes it to an entirely new level. She is not only a woeful actress, her character irritates so much that you really have to wonder what Shane sees in her.

If there is anything positive to say about this installment, it is that there is a certain levity towards to beginning that allows the action to flow a little smoother than it usually does. There is one chase scene which occurs just before the typical Robo-Armaggedon, and, despite the shaky camera and CGI nonsense, it is actually a very exhilarating and creative action sequence.

Unfortunately though, for the small amount of good that Bay does with this sequel, he eventually just says ‘F*ck It’, and destroys everything. Aside from how mind-numbingly boring the final apocalyptic mash-up actually is, there are also far too many villains to keep track of, so it is way too easy to forget who is attacking who at any given moment.
We have the brand/bland new bad-bot, Lockdown, who comes across simply as a Megatron clone. And then there is Galvatron, who ironically is a Megatron clone. And finally, there is the criminally wasted Kelsey Grammer, who plays a stereotyped government agent, who simply growls a lot and wears a flowy overcoat.

Overall, Trans-four-mers is more or less the same as the past three films; it is chewing gum for the eyes, but it is also the same stick of gum for 165 minutes, which makes it pretty flavourless and just starts to hurt your jaw after a while.
There are some minor improvements, (it’s not quite as messy, we’re officially desensitized to Bay’s portrayal of women at this stage, Stanley Tucci) but they all count for naught when you have to sit through such a painfully long and dull final act, where it feels as though nothing is at stake.
This is an overlong, mind-numbing, CGI-fest that, despite being technically impressive, still manages to look pretty ugly and cheap.

And incredibly, Dino-bots add nothing at all to the package.