Rated
PG-13 (Intense Sequences of Sci-Fi Violence and Action, Language and Brief Innuendo)
Running
Time: 2 Hours & 45 Minutes
Cast-
Mark
Wahlberg-Cade Yeager
Nicola
Peltz-Tessa Yeager
Jack
Reynor-Shane Dyson
Stanley
Tucci-Joshua Joyce
Kelsey
Grammer-Harold Attinger
Titus
Welliver-James Savoy
Li
Bingbing-Su Yueming
Sophia
Myles-Darcy Tirrel
T.J.
Miller-Lucas Flannery
James
Bachman-Gill Wembley
Thomas
Lennon-Chief of Staff
Peter
Cullen (voice)-Optimus Prime
John
Goodman (voice)-Hound
Ken
Watanabe (voice)-Drift
John
DiMaggio (voice)-Crosshairs
Robert
Foxworth (voice)-Ratchet
Reno
Wilson (voice)-Brains
Mark
Ryan (voice)-Lockdown
Frank
Welker (voice)-Galvatron
Directed
by Michael Bay
Note: Screened on Wednesday, June 25, 2014 at AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13.
 |
| Director Michael Bay returns with his latest cinematic abomination, "Transformers: Age of Extinction." |
One
of the most talked-about moments in the fourth season of HBO's critically-acclaimed
television series "Game of Thrones"—based on George R. R. Martin's
on-going series of epic fantasy novels A
Song of Ice and Fire—is Tyrion Lannister's trial-by-combat, where his champion
Oberyn Martell of Dorne battles the hulking Ser Gregor 'The Mountain' Clegane
to the death. Despite wearing light armor with only a spear as his weapon, Oberyn
manages to fatally wound his more heavily-armored opponent but his repeated attempts
to get the Mountain to confess to the rape and murder of his older sister Elia proved
to be his undoing. The Mountain catches Oberyn unawares, tripping and pulling
him to the ground, grasping him around the neck and slamming his fist squarely into
the Dornish prince's face, instantly knocking out many of his teeth. While sadistically
admitting to Elia's rape and murder, the Mountain gouges out Oberyn's eyeballs
with his thumbs and brutally crushes his skull with his bare hands, leaving behind
a bloody mess of skull bits and brain matter. Now why am I recounting all of
this? Because watching "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is like having
your skull crushed by the Mountain himself.
Although
his work was never considered to be high watermarks in capital-C Cinema, there
was a time when you could actually say that Michael Bay made good films without
bursting out into laughter or having a sudden seizure. Well, maybe 'good' isn't
the right word; 'fun' and 'enjoyable' feels more appropriate. In fact, one of Bay's
most underrated films is the 2005 sci-fi action/thriller "The Island,"
which fell victim to a poor marketing campaign and flopped at the domestic box
office. Whatever flaws his directing style had (and there were many), you could
always count on Bay to at least entertain you for two-and-a-half-hours. And
then "Transformers" happened. Now, I liked the 2007 film for the most
part, in spite of its fair share of dumb moments. It was loud and bombastic in all
the right ways, and it had a relatable coming-of-age story with a *gasp* good performance
from Shia LaBeouf! However, its 2009 and 2011 sequels—"Revenge of the Fallen"
and "Dark of the Moon"—are cinematic abominations of the highest order
but audiences around the world lapped it up like brain-dead dogs, to the tune
of $836.3 million and $1.1 billion, respectively. What little creativity that Bay
had was replaced with these soulless, live-action adaptations of Hasbro's famous
toy line, where any semblance of coherent story or characters was thrown out
the window in favor of an ugly mess of incomprehensible CGI. Still, I held out
hope for "Transformers: Age of Extinction" as it was a fresh start
with a new cast and a new story. Bay rejuvenated his creative juices with the surprisingly
good "Pain & Gain" last year and it looked like he was seriously
taking the criticisms of the "Transformers" franchise to heart, promising
a darker, grittier tone with the fourth installment. Boy, was I f*ckin' wrong.
I've seen quite a lot of bad films yet "Age of Extinction" marks one
of those rare times where I left the theater absolutely infuriated. Bloated, overlong, poorly-written, noisy, and headache-inducing,
"Transformers: Age of Extinction" is by far the worst film of 2014, a god-awful, piece of sh*t addition to an equally
sh*tty franchise supported by moviegoers who have no taste at all. The fact that
this 'film' will earn close to a billion dollars at the box office makes me
wish extinction upon the people who eat up this cinematic trash.
 |
| Mark Wahlberg gives it his all but there's only so much he can do when the film around him is complete garbage. |
It
has been five years since the Battle of Chicago, in which Optimus Prime (Peter
Cullen) and his Autobots defeated Megatron and his Decepticons, along with their
collaborator, the rogue Autobot Sentinel Prime. Due to the devastation they wrought
upon the city and the thousands of lives lost in the initial Decepticon attack,
the U.S. Government has severed all ties with the Autobots. High-ranking CIA
official Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) launches 'Operation Cemetery Wind' and
tasks ruthless field agent James Savoy (Titus Welliver) and his elite black ops
unit with hunting down the remaining Transformers on Earth. As a result, Optimus
Prime and his Autobots have gone into hiding. In Texas, a widowed robotics engineer
named Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) stumbles upon a beat-up truck while gathering
abandoned parts at an old movie palace set for demolition. Cade brings the truck
to his work shed, where he discovers—much to his friend/assistant Lucas (T.J.
Miller) and seventeen-year-old daughter Tessa's (Nicola Peltz) apprehension—that
the vehicle is none other than an injured Optimus Prime in disguise. Before
they can decide what to do with him, federal agents led by Savoy suddenly come knocking
on the Yeagers' door. Cade, Tessa, and Lucas narrowly escape with the help of Optimus
and Tessa's race car driver boyfriend Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor). Gathering his
remaining Autobots Bumblebee, Hound (John Goodman), Drift (Ken Watanabe), and
Crosshairs (John DiMaggio), Optimus and his new human allies set out to stop Attinger
and Savoy, who are hunting down Transformers and turning them over to Kinetic
Solutions Incorporated CEO Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci). The eccentric billionaire
has managed to reverse engineer Transformers and is in the process of making
his own, dubbed 'Galvatron' (Frank Welker), who bears an uncanny resemblance to
defeated Decepticon leader Megatron. Attinger has also struck a deal with
mysterious Transformer bounty hunter Lockdown (Mark Ryan), who desires Optimus
Prime for his own reasons. In exchange for the Autobot leader's capture, he
will give Attinger a device known as 'The Seed.'
Where
to even begin with "Transformers: Age of Extinction"? First off, this
film has a bloated running time of two hours
and forty-five minutes. That's almost three f*ckin' hours of your life that
you're not getting back at all. Ehren Kruger's script—if you can even call it
that—is an absolute mess. I wonder if he scribbled it on a piece of toilet paper
that he subsequently wiped his a**hole with. There are so many plotlines competing
for our attention but none of it ever coalesces into a coherent whole. Frankly,
it's insulting and what's worse is that the audience doesn't even know that
they're being insulted at. They just
continuously eat it up, blissfully unaware of the sh*t that they're being fed
while Michael Bay once again laughs all the way to the bank. The director argues
that his films are meant for the 'little kid' in all of us. The only way that
this could be true is if said 'kid' is racist, homophobic, sexist, antisocial, afflicted
with an attention span approaching zero, and lacking in anything remotely resembling
a creative impulse. Sadly, too many moviegoers around the world fit this category.
 |
| Despite its photorealism, a lot of the visual effects just blend together in an ugly mish-mash of indecipherable grey environments and strobe lighting. |
"Age
of Extinction" actually does start off on a promising note, with an ominous
prologue set sixty-five million years in the past. The film's central premise,
where all Transformers are being brutally hunted down due to the massive collateral
damage they cause, seems to suggest a more serious tone as the story questions whether
the Autobots' presence benefit the people of Earth. Yea, that's giving way more
credit than Bay deserves as any attempt at nuance is buried under giant layers
of asinine humor, inane dialogue, and mind-numbing explosions because 'nuance'
is a four-letter word in Bay's limited vocabulary. What's worse is that he doesn't
even bother trying to convince us that the Autobots are a force for good, with
the director having them frequently plow through buildings without any regard
to human life whatsoever. They become every bit the menace that the government
has portrayed them to be. "Age of Extinction" is also packed with egregious
product placement. This film is so cynically-made that it doesn't even pretend
it's anything more than mindless spectacle for the brain-dead crowd. You feel dumber
for having sat through this! And don't even get me started on one of the characters
discovering a rare new element dubbed 'transformium.'
Speaking
of the characters, it took until the end credits for me to learn their names. Mark
Wahlberg gives it his all as single father/struggling inventor Cade Yeager. The
actor is instantly likable and is the closest the film has to an actual human being.
While his overprotective feelings towards his teenage daughter aren't exactly
novel, it at least gives viewers something they can latch onto. It's also nice
to finally have a main character that's useful in a firefight. Another surprising
standout is Stanley Tucci as eccentric, Steve Jobs-like billionaire CEO Joshua
Joyce. Tucci understands what kind of film he's in and acts accordingly, chewing
the scenery every chance he gets. His character is the only one to have
something resembling an arc and he offers the film's few genuine laughs, along
with a gone-too-soon T.J. Miller. The rest of the cast are utterly disposable and
barely register at all. Nicola Peltz's Tessa is your typical Michael Bay female:
blonde, blue-eyed, tanned, and wearing nothing but tank tops and short shorts.
She's also irritating beyond all hell as all she does is incessantly scream
'DAD!' over and over again. I wanted to see her grinded into bloody bits when
Lockdown ordered his minions to throw her with the rest of the trash on his ship.
Faring even worse is Jack Reynor as Tessa's race car driver boyfriend Shane
Dyson. The Irish actor is a complete non-entity here, with his character
seemingly popping up out of nowhere and serving absolutely no purpose. His only
defining trait is his creepy familiarity with Texas' 'Romeo and Juliet' laws. Kelsey
Grammer and Titus Welliver take their roles to absurdly serious levels, as if
they're in a different film altogether. Finally, there's Li Bingbing as Su Yueming,
the head of KSI's factories in China. The actress' presence is for the sole purpose
of pandering to Chinese audiences and to allow Bay to display his continued ignorance
about other cultures. According to him, every random person in China seemingly knows
some form of martial arts.
 |
| The only good scene out of this 165 minute film. |
Of
course, you may be wondering why I'm even bothering to talk about the story and
characters. The audience doesn't care about those things, nor do they care about
the cast's performances. They paid to see the explosions. There's definitely plenty
of that in the film but all that destruction quickly blurs together into a
noisy, incomprehensible mess. In fact, the overlong third act—set in Hong Kong
in another blatant attempt to pander to Chinese audiences—goes on forever without
any end in sight, as if Bay is determined to leave you with a pounding headache.
With the exception of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, I can't even tell one Transformer
from the other. They may look as photorealistic as money can buy but it doesn't
change the fact that they're nothing more than a visual mish-mash of gears and
other random interlocking parts. One sequence set on Lockdown's ship will likely
result in epileptic seizures with its putrid mess of grey corridors and constant
strobe lighting. The biggest selling point for "Age of Extinction" is
the Dinobots. I will admit, their appearance is by far the film's best and most
epic moment…and then they're gone in a matter of minutes. As much as the posters
tout that the 'rules have changed,' this is still the same sh*tty "Transformers"
movie that we've been watching for the past seven years. It's just gotten more bloated,
more tedious, more tiresome, and more aggravating. Hey, at least the 3D isn't bad!
That's got to count for something, right?!
Released
on July 27, 2014, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" has received
overwhelmingly negative reviews with an abysmal 18% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you ask me, this number should've been much lower. Critics noted that 'with the fourth installment
in Michael Bay's blockbuster…franchise, nothing is in disguise: fans of loud,
effects-driven action will find satisfaction, and all others need not apply.'
The film is already on-track for a massive box office debut, both domestically and
internationally. With the exception of a handful of people, most of the audience
at the advance screening ate the film up. Not only were they whooping and
cheering but they even applauded at
the end. I know I'll catch a lot of flak for this review. Honestly, I don't give a damn. In his review for 2009's "Revenge of the Fallen," Joshua Starnes
wrote that 'the people the film was made for won't notice; they'll like it for
what it is. Which, on consideration, is probably the saddest thing of all. As
long as you're willing to accept crap, you're not likely to get anything better.'
This statement continues to stand for "Transformers: Age of
Extinction."
Final
Rating: 1 out of 5
"A
new era has begun. The Age of the Transformers is over."
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