Bayhem returns to the summer movie slate in the form of the the fourth entry in the Transformers franchise. How does the latest entry fare compared to its predecessors? Read on to find out.
I’m just going to get this out of the way at the very beginning: this was a bad movie.
I’ve defended Michael Bay extensively, most notably his work on the Transformers franchise, but I can defend him no more. Age of Extinction was bad, worse than Revenge of the Fallen, and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Bay and writer Ehren Kruger.
But before I utterly savage this movie, how about a brief plot synopsis.
In the devastating aftermath of the fight for humanity, an enigmatic group strives to alter the course of history as an ancient force of evil plots the destruction of mankind. In order to defeat it, Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen) and the rest of the Autobots must join forces with a new, resilient band of humans who will fight an epic battle that will determine the fate of the entire human race.
The last summer saw Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim show us how to incorporate giant robot fighting with a semi-coherent storyline, and this summer brought us Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla and a crash course on how to incorporate human beings into events that are largely out of their ability to influence. Age of Extinction manages to not only ignore everything good that both of those films did, but manages to take a massive step backward from Dark of the Moon, which itself wasn’t exactly loaded with story or characterization.
My first, and probably biggest disappointment, is the increasingly bloodthirsty Optimus Prime. Optimus has always been a reluctant warrior, a leader that embodied the traits of bravery, sacrifice, intelligence, strategy, and most importantly restraint. Bay has turned Optimus into a cold-blooded killer, a jaded and bitter bot who has lost faith in humanity. Now, I can understand why Movie Optimus might be giving mankind a little sideeye; hardly a day goes by when he’s not being back-stabbed by someone. The thing about Optimus Prime is that no matter how bad things get, he believes in the potential of mankind, and fights to protect it. In Age of Extinction, he basically goes “Screw you guys, I’m going home.” It’s a depressing and unnecessary character turn for a really iconic hero.
While we’re talking about bots, the only really good thing about this movie is that the bots are slightly more distinguishable from one another. Hound, Crosshairs, Bumblebee, Optimus, and Drift all look different enough to be easily distinguishable. Also, John Goodman does a pretty good job doing the voice of Hound. Of course, Bay kills off Ratchet (joining Jazz, Ironhide, Arcee, Chromia, Elita One, Skids, Mudflap, Sideswipe, and Mirage in the AllSpark) in the first half hour, leaving Bumblebee (whose talking-through-the-radio schtick is now just annoying) and Optimus as the sole surviving Autobots from the first three movies.
And now for the bad bots. The Dinobots, Transformers that turn into dinosaurs, are completely wasted here. They don’t speak, transform once, and are never even identified. Fans have been clamoring for their inclusion since the movie franchise was introduced, so this one is on us; if Bay couldn’t get Devastator right, there was no way he was going to get the Dinobots right either.
Now, as for the story itself, it’s a jumbled mess. Revenge of the Fallen at least had the excuse of a writer’s strike; this is just terrible writing. There’s no way Ehren Kruger read through this when he was finished and thought that it was a good story. It’s incoherent, screws around with existing canon (again), and leaves the franchise in a worse place than it was at the end of Dark of the Moon. It’s just bad.
Normally I’d comment on the music, but I honestly have no idea if it had any. Steve Jablonsky has done a great job with the scoring in the series’ previous entries, but I seriously couldn’t hear it over the sound of explosions, inexplicably terrible dialogue, and complete lack of anything resembling a coherent story.
The Transformers franchise has always existed for a single purpose: to sell toys. The original cartoon was a 30 minute toy commercial, but it was a watchable 30 minute toy commercial. The 1986 movie “The Transformers” was at least coherent, and featured the death of Optimus Prime and Megatron, allowing the franchise to expand in new directions. Age of Extinction is a blatant cash-in, loaded with product placement (including an entire act set in China for no apparent reason other than “The Chinese won’t screen this movie unless we do something with China” (Sidenote: in a movie full of bad actors, including Jack Reynor struggling with an Irish accent the whole movie EVEN THOUGH HE’S FROM FUCKING IRELAND, Fan Bingbing turns in a laughably bad performance. Seriously, it’s fucking awful.)
As much as I hate to say it, it’s time for Michael Bay and Ehren Kruger to go. The franchise needs a new direction, because if it’s bad enough to turn off hardcore fans like me, then you know how bad it must be.
The sad thing is this movie will make a gazillion of the saddest dollars any movie has ever made, and not a soul at Hasbro or Paramount will go “My god, what have we done?”.
Image: Flickr
