Transformers: Age of Extinction review

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION: 

AN EXHAUSTING FOURTH ENTRY THAT'S MORE OF THE SAME! 

By Nico Beland 

Movie Review: ** out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND HASBRO

Optimus Prime in Transformers: Age of Extinction

 

Director Michael Bay (Bad Boys 1 and 2, The Rock, Pain & Gain) and executive producer Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones franchise, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park) return in the fourth installment of the popular Transformers film franchise, based on the Hasbro toy line. Truth be told, I didn’t really grow up with the Transformers as a kid though I was certainly aware of the franchise through cartoons on TV and various toy commercials. 

            It actually wasn’t until I saw the first Michael Bay Transformers movie from 2007 where I started to get into it because of how much I enjoyed the film. Even to this day I still stand by the first Transformers as a fun, silly albeit flawed action movie that was sadly immediately tarnished with its 2009 sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that despite having impressive effects and decently staged action sequences was a loud and preposterous mess that lacked much of its predecessor’s charm and imagination. 

            2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon I wouldn’t call a significant improvement over the second, but I found it entertaining and I respect the filmmakers for trying to make a better movie this time and removed (or at the very least toned down) a lot of the stuff that didn’t work in the last film; plus, the action scenes are pretty spectacular especially the climax in Chicago. 

Now we have the fourth installment, Transformers: Age of Extinction that also serves as a somewhat soft reboot where in place of the screaming Shia LaBeouf we have Mark Wahlberg (The Departed, The Fighter, Lone Survivor) who had previously worked with Bay on 2013’s Pain & Gain as the new human surrogate between the Autobots and Decepticons which I was onboard with given how obnoxious many of the human characters in the previous films are. So, I was at least hopeful that some new leads would bring some new energy to this repetitive and bloated franchise…Nope! 

Despite a better human cast and a few interesting ideas being explored, Transformers: Age of Extinction is more of the same and if you complained about the previous movies having long, tedious runtimes then brace yourself. This one is a near 3-hour onslaught of robots smashing into one-another with no real emotional weight to anything. 

The film follows Cade Yeager (Wahlberg), an inventor working on cars with his best friend, Lucas (T.J. Miller-Cloverfield, How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2, Big Hero 6) and 17-year-old daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz-The Last Airbender) who discovers a rusty, old truck and decide to repair it in his barn. Turns out that truck is actually the leader of the Autobots himself, Optimus Prime (voiced once again by Peter Cullen) who went into hiding after a human strike force under command by rogue government official, Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammar-The Simpsons, Toy Story 2, X-Men franchise) started targeting the Transformers in wake of the Chicago battle. 

On top of that, there is also an organization headed by Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci-The Terminal, Julie & Julia, Captain America: The First Avenger) that is making clones of Transformers with a sample of the metal that allows them to transform and salvaged body parts from the climax of the last movie which leads to the creation of the villainous, Galvatron (voiced by Frank Welker-Scooby-Doo, G.I. Joe: The Movie, Aladdin; who also voiced Megatron in the original Transformers cartoon series), a reincarnated version of Megatron made from his body salvaged from Chicago. 

Cade, Tessa, Lucas, and Tessa’s boyfriend, Shane (Jack Reynor-What Richard Did, Delivery Man) join forces with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and the remaining Autobots, Hound (voiced by John Goodman-The Big Lebowski, Monsters, Inc., Flight), Crosshairs (voiced by John DiMaggio-Futurama, Kim Possible, Adventure Time), and Drift (voiced by Ken Watanabe-Inception, Godzilla (2014)) to put an end to Harold and Joshua’s operations, stop Galvatron and an intergalactic robot mercenary named Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan-Charlie’s Angels, The Prestige, Black Sails), and save the planet from total extinction. 

Overall, Transformers: Age of Extinction is yet another bloated, thinly-plotted Michael Bay extravaganza that is entertaining at times, but for nearly 3 hours of repetitive action and recycled storytelling, it gets exhausting really quick. It’s constant robot punching, shooting, blasting, and clanking that we’ve already seen three times prior with hardly anything new added to them. 

I will give this movie a little bit of credit that (most of) the new human leads are perfectly fine with Mark Wahlberg being a far more endearing leading man than Shia LaBeouf in the previous films. Even though I thought Shia was fine in the first Transformers, his character didn’t really have much depth or emotional weight outside of “I just want to get a car so I can bone Megan Fox” and screaming “No, No, No, No, OPTIMUS!”. Wahlberg’s Cade is a single father whose wife passed away, he’s being evicted, and is trying to provide for his daughter; it’s nothing spectacular but Wahlberg does bring some stability and heart to this overblown blockbuster. 

There are a few story elements I found interesting and wished were expanded upon a lot more like humans turning their backs on the Autobots and them being targeted by a strike force; how much cooler would this movie have been if it was about Optimus Prime and his Autobots fighting for survival against the humans they once protected? I wish that was the movie I was watching. The other idea I was intrigued by were the human-made Transformers which I think alone could have made for an engaging and exciting movie where the Autobots have to fight Transformers created by humans and have to decide whether or not protecting Earth is worth it. Instead, these just feel like excuses for more Michael Bay fireworks explosion-filled action scenes with so much wasted potential. 

Despite a decent human cast, Transformers: Age of Extinction might be the worst Transformers movie at this point. As bad as Revenge of the Fallen is, I can at least watch that for some unintentional laughs and be fascinated by what a colossal train-wreck it is, this is just a dull, overlong slog that when the Dinobots finally arrive, you’re pretty much checked out. 

Maybe someday, the filmmakers will learn it takes more than just overblown action scenes, dumb humor, and rehashed stories to make a compelling Transformers movie and finally take the series in a new direction. But as long as these films are successful and there’s an audience for loud, CGI-filled action with no real substance, we’re gonna have to keep waiting.