Transformers: Age of Extinction Movie Review

For seven years now the Transformers series has built a reputation on enraging critics and serious film-goers the world over whilst still being able make millions in the process. Age of Extinction claims to be a new beginning for the series but really it’s just the same old rubbish that was already done to death after three films.

Several years after the Transformer’s battle in Chicago, the autobots have gone into hiding with the US government attempting to corner and exterminate the transformers one by one. From this setting inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Walhberg) discovers an injured Optimus Prime and him and his family are eventually caught up in the conspiracy which escalates into even more combat between humans, autobots and decepticons, cue more of the same wanton destruction and carnage seen in countless other Michael Bay movies. The film’s pacing is a complete mess; new characters and plot threads are introduced without any warning or development whatsoever and once again like 2009’s Revenge of the Fallen, the movie is riddled with rushed moments, stupid comedy that isn’t at all funny, “emotional” scenes that don’t provide any development and throwaway scenes which pad out the film’s length to an exhaustingly bloated level. And as with the other films of the series, the script is filled with a lack of sense that really drags the film down; at first the autobots are hiding from humans as the government is hunting them but then suddenly they’re tearing up the cities of Chicago and Hong Kong in full blown combat as if nothing happened. In addition, quite a few of the action sequences are ones which were used already in previous films only shot from different angles, such as the freeway chase and the fight in Chicago (which may well have reused some resources from the previous film) to name a few. Unfortunately this laziness also extends to the Dinobots who are poorly developed and only serve as a gimmick to lure audiences in for this latest entry in the series. Like Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon before it, Age of Extinction’s plot really serves no purpose at all; it just trundles along to get the action going and the sad fact is, that’s pretty much all the target audience cares about these days.

As with many Michael Bay films, the acting and dialogue are often horrendous, chock full of cringe-worthy one-liners and under-developed characters. The relationship between inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) had potential but it doesn’t amount to anything at all; Walhberg is merely a replacement for Shia LaBeouf and Peltz is just plain annoying in her delivery, once again fitting the bill of an actress casted only for looks rather than talent that Bay has become far too reliant on. The other characters don’t fare much better; they’re either relegated to the worthless comedy present throughout the film or serving miniscule roles at worst, such as a Chinese business woman who for no apparent reason starts breaking out karate in the middle of an action scene. Even the main villains are so one dimensional they can never make a bit of an impact on the proceedings; heck we don’t know their names throughout most of the movie!

With everything wrong with this film, at least the CGI is still half-decent; the transforming effects by Industrial Light and Magic still look quite good, particularly with all the moving parts on the autobots. Unfortunately now four films in, even the CG is starting to show its faults. The newer Decepticons who transform using molecules rather than moving parts clearly look like a video game, rather than an actual part of the film. And unfortunately the action is simply too frantically edited to be effective most of the time; while the camera often shows many wide shots of the transformers to give off a sense of scale, the more intimate action jumps nauseatingly between close-up and mid-shots which doesn’t provide a clear view of the action across most of the film. The music continues to be irregularly placed, trying to build some emotion when really there is no emotion to build in a film like this. Ultimately what started out a great looking technical presentation has taken a step backwards with Age of Extinction.

Transformers: Age of Extinction should be viewed as one of the worst films of the year. Truly the words “Call of Duty of the film industry” are an accurate way of describing the series nowadays; it’s the same rehashed, mindless and awful garbage regurgitated over the years to satisfy the shortest of attention spans and yet because of a few gimmicks hyped up to no end, it’s still going to sell no matter how much of a beating it takes from critics. If you’re looking for the same crappy film this summer, you’ll get it, but for those who are genuinely serious about seeing well-made pieces of work at the cinema, stay as far away as possible.

Rating: 1/5 Stars