Transformers: Age of Extinction

We're four movies into the Transformers series, and I have no idea who these films are supposed to be intended for.  They're certainly not for children, as they're too violent and crude for most.  They're not for adults, either, as they're simply too crass and stupid.  That would leave the fans, who grew up on the toys and the earlier cartoon series.  Again, I find myself hitting a wall here.  I, for one, count myself as a fan who still holds the original toys, cartoon and even the 1986 animated movie (which I saw at the theater opening day) close to my heart.  Speaking as a fan, Transformers: Age of Extinction is the worst experience I've had at a theater this year since A Haunted House 2.

This is an aggressive movie in so many ways.  It's aggressively bad, and seems to have been written in such a way that the characters do intentionally stupid things in order for there to even be a plot.  It's aggressively long, with a torturous running time of almost three hours.  It's aggressively loud, with endless and mindless action sequences emphasizing noise over comprehension.  Finally, it's aggressively ugly.  The Transformers themselves still look like towering piles of junk, and are about the most unappealing CG creations in memory.  Michael Bay returns to the director's chair, and hasn't seemed to have learned much from the past films.  Why should he, with each movie breaking box office records?  He says that these movies are for the kid in all of us.  As long as that child has the attention span of a gnat, and holds absolutely no desire other than to see things blow up and CG junk run across the screen, then yes, I agree.  I just remember wanting more from movies, even back when I was a kid.

Now, I can enjoy silly entertainment as much as the next person, even the ones based on a toy line.  Remember, I'm one of the few who actually liked G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  That at least worked as a guilty pleasure, and left me with a goofy grin on my face.  Age of Extinction is an entirely soulless experience that seems designed to bring misery upon an audience.  The human characters are dumber than a pile of rocks, and the giant CG robots are even dumber.  How dumb are the Transformers in this movie?  When the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime (voice by Peter Cullen), rides into battle on the back of a giant, fire-breathing robot T-Rex, what does he do?  He almost immediately dismounts it, and fights on his own.  Any child could take the image of a giant robot riding on the back of an even bigger dinosaur robot that breathes fire, and create something awesome.  But due to the bankrupt imagination of the filmmakers, we're forced to see the robots fight separately.  Even more lack of imagination - No one responds to the sight of the giant dinosaur that suddenly shows up.  I was expecting someone to at least utter a "holy crap", but nope.

For those of you who actually care about continuity in this franchise, the film is set five years after the events of 2011's Dark of the Moon, and employs a new cast of human characters.  Gone is the young hero of the first three films, Sam Witwicky, and in his place is Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a failed inventor and a single dad with a sexy teenage daughter named Tessa (Nicola Peltz) and a goofy comic relief sidekick named Lucas (T.J. Miller).  He is soon also joined up by Tessa's boyfriend, Shane (Jack Reynor).  Cade manages to come across the broken down Optimus Prime (in semi truck mode), fixes him up, and soon finds himself on the run from some government agents who are hunting down the Transformers after the attack on Chicago at the end of the last movie.  The government agents are led by the slimy Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), who is aiding an alien bounty hunter named Lockdown (voice by Mark Ryan), who in turn is working for the aliens who created the Transformers in the first place.

Because we don't have enough characters or plots that don't go anywhere, we also have a billionaire robotics designer named Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), who has figured out how to build his own Transformers, and is helping out the government also.  He's figured out the material that makes up the giant robots, which he has oh-so originally named "Transformium". (I kid you not.) The government wants him to build Transformers that they can control and use to fight in wars.  His prototype goes by the name of Galvatron (voice by Frank Welker), and seems to hold a striking resemblance to the age old enemy of the Autobots, Megatron.  Cade, Optimus, and his human friends must track down the few remaining Autobots who have not been captured or killed by the government, which includes Bumblebee, Hound (voice by John Goodman), Drift (voice by Ken Watanabe) and Crosshairs (voice by John DiMaggio), and tell Joshua Joyce to stop his Galvatron experiment before it is unleashed upon the world.

Don't let the above fool you into thinking that Age of Extinction has a plot that can be followed, or is worth following.  This is an insufferable and endless experience of poorly realized special effects, explosions, gunfire, and dialogue that consists mainly of screaming and urban slang.   Just as in the previous entries, the giant robots are visitors from beyond the stars, who possess the mental and verbal capacity of a 14-year-old boy. (The obvious target audience.) And despite the new human cast, they exist to fill the same purpose as the old human characters did - To stand around, shoot at stuff, and provide lame comic relief when the CG robots can't be bothered to.  Now, Mark Wahlberg is a fine actor, but he is not the kind of actor who can rise above bad material. (See The Happening, if you need proof of that.) All the role of Cade Yeager requires him to do is stand and react to what's going on around him.  He's up to the task, but he doesn't give any more that is required.  The one actor who does occasionally rise above the material is Stanley Tucci, who at least gets one or two funny lines.  But even his great talent can't work with a character who is barely there.

Bay's directing style seems to be based on bludgeoning the audience with explosions, special effects and noise.  There are many moments where the movie seems to be packed with so much visual and aural stimulation that you simply cannot keep track of it all, so you just stop trying.  This much stimulation stretched to almost three hours seems like an endurance test.  What is Bay trying to do?  I can appreciate a thrill-a-minute action film, but when it just keeps on going seemingly without end, it stops being thrilling, and gets monotonous.  There are also a lot of slow motion shots of the heroes (both human and robot) outrunning explosions, or hurtling themselves through buildings and trucks.  The series' tradition of entire cities being laid to waste continues.  Chicago once again gets stomped on, and Hong Kong gets thrown in also.  Of course, given all the chaos and too tight camera angles, it all looks the same.

The Transformers films have proven time and time again to be moronic and mindless cash grabs, yet they keep on making money, even though the outcry from critics and even some audiences seems to get stronger with each passing film.  Despite this, the movie will make a fortune this summer, and there will be another sequel in a couple years.  Anyone who complains only has themselves to blame. 

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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