DVD Transformers: Age of Extinction
Run time: 165 min
Rating: 6.3
Genres: Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Ehren Kruger
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor
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Storyline After the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons that leveled Chicago, humanity thinks that all alien robots are a threat. So Harold Attinger, a CIA agent, establishes a unit whose sole purpose is to hunt down all of them. But it turns out that they are aided by another alien robot who is searching for Optimus Prime. Cade Yeager, a “robotics expert”, buys an old truck and upon examining it, he thinks it’s a Transformer. When he powers it up, he discovers it’s Optimus. Later, men from the unit show up looking for Optimus. He helps Yeager and his daughter escape but are pursued by the hunter. They escape and Yeager learns from technology he took from the men that a technology magnate and defense contractor named Joshua Joyce is part of what’s going on, so they go to find out what’s going on. Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com |
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Plot Keywords: alien, robot, cia, battle, bounty hunter | |
Details: Country: USA, China Release Date: 5 July 2014 (UK) |
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Box Office Budget: $210,000,000 (estimated) Opening Weekend: $100,038,390 (USA) (27 June 2014) Gross: $213,444,938 (USA) (15 July 2014) |
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4 comments
Let me preface this by saying I'm a big Transformers fan. I love the series. I love the concept. I loved the animated series that used to air on TV. I even loved the previous Transformers movies. (Well, maybe not the third one, but I thought it was okay.) It is one of my favorite franchises and I just watched it being butchered for over two and a half hours.
Transformers: Age of Extinction is a disaster. I was thrilled to get the chance to see it before most of the world but ended up being thoroughly disappointed. The movie is 165 minutes of incoherent nonsense and if you thought that's what the previous movies were, well, you might start appreciating them after seeing this.
First of all, it has that god awful Michael Bay humor that we saw in the previous movies. It's not funny at all and there is so much of it so often it makes you cringe. It's like watching a senile old man running naked on the street. It's sad and it makes you feel uncomfortable.
But that stuff was there before as well. What I loved about the Transformers movies, or what anyone loves about them, was watching the robots transform and fight. The previous movies had memorable moments. I still remember the scene from the first movie where Ironhide jumps up and shoots missiles mid-air in slow motion as the woman is screaming below, and Starscream jumping and transforming mid-air and flying off, Sideways getting sliced in half by Sideswipe, Scorponok rising from the ground, and the brief scenes with Demolisher and Devastator in the second movie and finally the Shockwave sequences and that time Bumblebee transforms with Shia LaBeouf still in the car from the third movie.
But nothing of that sort happens in this movie. Other than Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, there are three other Autobots in the movie, all of whom are new. They try to come across as interesting but you don't really give a damn about them. Bumblebee is so seldomly seen on screen you forget he's even there in the movie. And Optimus Prime goes through his usual routine of getting his ass thoroughly kicked in the first half of the movie, only to rise again later, something which has been a common theme of previous movies. This is why I don't feel particularly strongly about the movie version of Prime because he fails so often and so hard in combat it's difficult to take him seriously as a leader.
There are plenty of action sequences in the movie but the first half has about 10% of them. And considering the first half is about 90 minutes long it means you are treated to a lot of talking and other stuff that is either plain stupid or just boring. When sh*t does start hitting the fan later, it's just a bloody mess, with so much happening at once that you don't care about anything and none of it is particularly cool or memorable. There is also the nausea-inducing shaky camera technique being thoroughly abused here, which actually makes it hard to see what's going on because everything is shaking so god damned much all the time. Except when there is a product placement going on, then the camera is absolutely still so you can see the brand name clearly.
The only redeeming aspects of this movie are the exceptional CGI with some stunning 3D and the incredible sound. The movie looks and sounds fantastic and if you do make the mistake of watching it, do it in IMAX like I did because otherwise there will be nothing there to enjoy. (This film does have the highest amount of IMAX footage I've seen in any movie, with practically half the movie being in IMAX. However, I did not like the way it constantly keeps jumping between IMAX and non-IMAX footage between every other scene. This probably won't bother you as much as it bothered me and if you watch it in a regular theater then you won't see it at all.)
Overall, Transformers: Age of Extinction is a horrible mess of a movie and a complete waste of time and money. The previous Transformers movies were a guilty pleasure and scratched a very specific itch for a very specific audience but this one doesn't even do that while inheriting all the flaws of its predecessors. It takes a special kind of idiot to mess up something so simple but Michael Bay does it with aplomb.
Worst of the transformers movies. Was okay until about a 3rd of the way through. Mark Wahlberg was better than Shia, but the movie was bloated with too many similar scenes.
Enough chase scenes and slow motion explosions for the whole of 2014. It would be nice to see some sort of characters developed for the transformers. Because they are created as one dimensional punchlines there is no possibility to have any interesting story that involves the transformers interacting with each other.
Wait for the DVD if you must see it, but you wont be missing much if you avoid it all together.
Set five years after Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction sets out to continue the franchise, taking a new path in more than one way. Lots of explosions, action scenes and robots wrecking cities up and we've got ourselves the fourth one.
To begin with, there were a lot of weak points, the biggest challenge being the fact that the entire human cast was replaced. I felt that Wahlberg and Tucci did a good job, but the rest of them were terrible. A lot of it has to do with writing: the characters were shallow and didn't have any depth at all. At a running time of 2h45min you think it would be enough to flesh them out but no. Wahlberg's daughter just yells "Dad!" and screams her entire screen time. Her boyfriend is shoehorned in just to complete the clumsy romance but in the end is just a tool to move the plot. Sophia Myles, amongst others, is completely wasted. The fact that Bay chose to concentrate on the humans again, and failed with it again, speaks volumes.
It was, however, good to see how Cade (Wahlberg) first comes across Optimus Prime and being a mechanic/inventor, revitalizes the beaten leader. The focus also shifted from Bumblebee to Prime as the main link to the protagonist, but oddly it was never explained why Bee left Sam in the first place, being his most loyal protector.
Now, speaking of techs in the film, there was a lot of slow-mo. A lot. And it really took away from the action. It is okay to employ slow-mo sometimes, for example when the robots are transforming, but not at every single shot. Moreover, the transformings themselves were weaker than in the previous installments. I mean, in the first one when Starscream transformed into a plane in the middle of the flight or they were fighting/transforming in the narrow street, or in DotM during the fights, this depth was lacking in AoE. Also the fights weren't as good compared with the gigantic robot battles or human black ops tactics in previous films. Lastly, as cheesy as it may sound Optimus Prime riding Grimlock was pretty awesome. Even if Grimlock was in the movie for about ten whole minutes. And Lockdown the bounty hunter as the main villain was also done nicely.
The film is way too long, the beginning stretches a lot, the middle even more, the finale as well. We are treated to a lot of badly written human characters who just slow the movie down and stretch. Even the endless explosions got tiring (boom, boom, boom and slow-mo all the time, why oh why?). But honestly, going in I thought this would be loads worse. In the end though, not as good as the first or the third, but still better than the second (not that this should count for anything as that was plain awful). Altogether, too long, too stretchy, way too much slow-mo, too shallow characters, some decent fights and action, Prime riding Grimlock and Wahlberg being his usual self. Could have been worse but not by much.
This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I only went to the release because some parts were filmed in Detroit. The first hour was plot driven and tolerable to watch. Wahlberg is always fun to watch and the main chick is cute but the last 1.5 hours is straight action and no plot and I wanted to walk out before I had a seizure.
Special effects were visually pleasing, but would have been better if I cared what was going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I tried so hard to be interested in this flick but I found myself looking at my watch obsessively for the last hour.
On the lighter side, the idea behind the plot was interesting and though provoking but poorly executed on screen.
I have never written a review before, but this movie was so utterly disappointing that I felt obligated to warn humanity. We are truly living in the age of extinction when we allow a piece of garbage like this to pass as a major motion picture release in the 21st century.