by Matt Sernaker, Managing Editor
The Transformers are back in Age of Extinction, the latest installment in the mega-franchise from Director Michael Bay. Over the last three films, we have seen Optimus Prime and his Autobots faithfully defend the human race against impending doom, brought on by the evil Megatron and his Decepticons. Following the events of Dark of the Moon, the Decepticons threat is mostly gone, and the Autobots are now on the run from…humanity? Mankind is pissed as hell about the Battle for Chicago, and they have decided to get rid of the alien menace once and for all. With help from new human allies, Optimus must reunite the gang, and stop a new threat from destroying the planet. Oh, and the Dinobots are in this movie too.
Sorry guys, there are going to be spoilers in this review, because there is so much to talk about. You have been warned.
Three movies later, I feel like I should know what to expect when it comes to a Michael Bay Transformers movie. The format has been consistent – bad writing, explosions, lots of racial stereotypes, explosions, big robot battles, explosions, humans that we don’t care about, and EXPLOSIONS. Even with this formula in place, the overall quality in cinematography and the stories themselves have gotten better with each new installment (Dark of the Moon was definitely the best thus far).
Now getting to Age of Extinction, it feels like we lost all the progress that had been made in terms of logical storytelling, and even somewhat decent dialogue. I will flat out say it, the dialogue in this movie is atrocious at its worst, and juvenile at its best. Every five minutes you will hear a robot say the word bitch…Just because they can. There is even an F-Bomb dropped in the movie, and while I personally don’t care since it is PG-13, I will tell you that all the kids in the row next to me turned and looked at their parents the moment that it happened, thinking to themselves “well they said it in a kids movie, so it must be ok”. Again, just out of place and shotty writing.
There are so many plotholes and completely missed opportunities, that it is really hard to find a place to start.
The Dinobots are the key marketing piece of the movie. We have waited for YEARS to see these characters appear in live action, and you know what happens? They are only in the last 30 minutes of the movie, with ABSOLUTELY no logic or explanation, and better yet, no personality at all. They don’t even speak, and aren’t event called the Dinobots at any point during the movie. Grimlock is a bad-ass character in the original cartoon, original animated movieeven in the comics and video games. He could have just said a sentence, and it would have been great. This was just a complete and utter waste of the characters, and an total disappointment to fans. After they serve their extremely short purpose, Optimus tells these “Legendary Warriors” that they are free, and unleashes them on a devastated Hong-Kong…Seriously. I am not making this up.
Some other great examples of plotholes in this film:
Throughout the entire movie, Optimus Prime states that he is done with humanity, and is even ready to kill the human responsible for the death of his comrades. This is a very jaded Optimus, who is acting entirely out of character from the last three films. At the end of the movie, he suddenly abandons his comrades, and tells them “oh, you have to stay behind and protect humanity. I am gonna go up into space and find our creators and shit. PEACE OUT BITCHES!”. Well…he says something along those lines.
There is also point where the Autobots capture a ship, and make a big point to say, “We have a ship! We can finally leave this planet!”, and less than an hour later, Optimus Prime has rockets in his feet that allow him to fly out into space on his own. He also could have used said rockets to get out of countless problems that he had throughout the film, but this new talent just appears out of nowhere.
Besides the plotholes, Mr. Bay and the talent behind these movies have missed one glaring fact as to why people loved the Transformers cartoons: the show was ABOUT the robots!!! Not about the humans. The humans were always secondary characters. Every single human character that Bay-Formers has ever created, have been weak characters that really don’t need to exist. Transformers Prime, a show that was created by the same writers who did the first trilogy of Bay-Formers films, that was incredibly well written, that cared about its characters, had humans in it. And the best part? They were fantastic! They added to the story, but didn’t detract from the fact that the robots in disguise were the main characters. Mark Wahlberg (Ted) takes over the lead human from Shia LaBeouf (and good riddance!), and plays a robotics inventor who is down on his luck. His 17 year old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz – The Last Airbender), is in a relationship with a 20 year named Shane (Jack Reynor – Delivery Man), who also happens to be a stunt driver. Weird plot point: they justify that this relationship and sexulization of an underage teen is ok by specifically citing Romeo and Juliet laws of Texas. This whole concept just felt very wrong. Kelsey Grammer (X-Men: The Last Stand) plays Harold Attinger, the head of the CIA Black Ops group that is in charge of taking down all remaining Transfomers, and he also happens to have a side deal going with a tech company called KSI. Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci – Captain America: The First Avenger) heads up the KSI, and wants to revolutionize the world with new man-made Transformers built from “Transformium”. Yes. Transformium. It pains me to write it…because it is so incredibly stupid. The human baddies are also assisted by Agent Savoy(Titus Welliver – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Lots of humans in this movie, and the only one who really was any good was Welliver.
While I had a lot of major issues with the movie, they did a few things really well. Frank Welker (the original voice of Megatron from the Transformers cartoons) finally got the chance to step up and take on Peter Cullen’s live action Optimus Prime as Galvatron! Fans will be ecstatic to hear this veteran voice actor in a role that should have been his since the first installment (oh, and Megatron becomes Galvatron kids!). The additions of Autobots Hound (John Goodman – Monsters Inc) and Crosshairs (John DiMaggio – Futurama) were perfect casting choices, as they added some welcomed personalities to the heroic bots. I really enjoyed how Hound was handled, pretty much being a mash-up of Hound and Kup from the original cartoon. Lockdown (Mark Ryan – Transformers) was probably the best of the new bots, and a credible threat for the Autobots to face. Visually, the movie is stunning. Bay does know how to do some crazy action sequences, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that there were some damn cool moments scattered throughout the film.
The most frustrating part about this movie isn’t just that it is a bad movie, it is because this awful movie will make so much money at the box office that it isn’t even funny. It will be a huge success, regardless of how much of a piece of shit it really it. You are probably going to go see it anyways, even if I tell you that it is disrespectful to the audience, who really deserves better. It is 2 hours and 45 minutes of my life that I really would prefer to have back. If you have kids, you know you are going to see it, because they won’t care about any of this. You will just have to turn your brain off and try to ignore everything wrong with this tent-pole release from Paramount. And good news everyone! There are going to be more Transformers movies, because this was meant to be the beginning of a new trilogy. I hope this review has been educational, and that maybe (just maybe) you will not support Bay and his horrible movies.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Transformers: Age of Extinction 1.5 out of 5 Transformium given only because of the quality of voice acting in the film.
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