I’m out of town, and there’s a movie theater a block from my hotel. As a father, I don’t get to the moviehouse often unless it’s a kid’s movie. So over the weekend, I figured I’d treat myself to a movie. What’s the worst that can happen? The answer to that question: the theater is only showing Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Like an idiot, I pay for it like I’ve never seen a Michael Bay movie and don’t know what to expect besides sexism, racial stereotypes, fluttering American flags, and random lights strung up in trees. There’s not a lesson to be learned here other than that life wears you down and is unfair.
There’s a samurai robot (voiced by Ken Watanabe, no less!) who turns into a helicopter and a random Asian dude in an elevator who kicks ass. Even those primal, stereotypical reaches into my juvenile boyhood don’t allow me to rationalize the three-hour vortex of a movie that sucked out all hope and goodwill towards humanity. I thought Dinobots would balance that out somehow. I was very, very wrong.
Spoiler alert: Once the Dinobots transform into their robot modes, you can’t tell them apart. [Ed. note: Robot modes that can’t be differentiated in a Michael Bay Transformers movie? Shocking!] The artistic design is one thing (of many, many things) that bugs me about the whole movie franchise. All the robots look like they’re made out of forks and butter knives with some kid’s plastic molding. Oh, and flames painted on them.
There’s a ton of critical things you could observe about this movie: scenes are jammed together in ways that don’t make sense and break what little continuity there is, ham handed sentimentality, a simple plot that somehow manages to be confusing BLAAAAARGH. Even trying to critique it feels self-defeating.
And Mark Wahlberg, you’ve got to be an overall shitty human being to make me miss Shia LeBeouf.
Fuck this movie.
I felt molested.
It’s true. It’s kind of hard to talk about. I feel like a kinky priest’s victim, or battered housewife, and someone fondled my genitals, and took money out of my wallet. What could be responsible for this, you ask? Two words : Michael Bay. It’s true. Once again, this monster has taken properties I once revered in younger life, polluted them, and billed me for the privilege. I don’t really even blame him. I blame MYSELF for allowing this clumsy, shite of a business model, to continue to flourish. It’s not just Michael’s fault either. Lot’s of shitheads are doing this to us.
See, no one expected great things out of this turdburglar. No one. We saw the previews. Experienced the hype. Got revved up for ULTRA MOVIE FUCKING MAYHEM WITH BAY-SPLOSIONS GALORE!!!!!…………….and then we watched this thing…………Ohhhh………..
Now, I’m pretty sure every single person in the world is tired of listening to people bitch about dumb shite on the internet. I sure as fuck am. But this movie, ‘Transformers : Age Of Extinction’, is like a Hellraiser puzzle cube. It’s a Gordian knot of cliché, atrocious writing, shitty effects, dodgy physics, odd choices, and a plot so clunky, you find yourself facepalming every 20 seconds, because logic, ITSELF, is such a foreign FUCKING CONCEPT!!!
Understand, not everything in this carnival was total crap. Mark Wahlberg is not the problem. He’s a better actor than anyone ever believed he could be, with, or without, The Funky Bunch. You gotta give the man some quality material to work with. He was trying…..hard….but even he can’t spit shine fecal matter like this and turn it into gold. People whine about his daughter & prick-with-the-heart-of-gold boyfriend. I didn’t even mind them. The actors/actresses playing these roles were quite competent. What they were saying, how they were saying it, and when they were saying it, was so UNBELIEVABLE, no actual person on this planet could EVER buy any of it. People getting shot at by the government, and alien terror machines of excessive mass & armament, DO NOT HAVE FAMILY ENCOUNTER GROUP THERAPY SESSIONS DURING THEIR ESCAPE! Know why? Because an 80 ton monster is shooting at you with 160 rounds of depleted uranium, per second. That’s FUCKING WHY!
The effects. There is some real lazy shite going on in this film, and it hurts. It’s so lazy, that it takes me out of the movie. Say what you will about the horrid nature of the first three Transformers movies, but this one really dropped the ball in the effects department. Let me explain. These are effects driven films. That’s kinda…..all they got going for them. Fine. But when we are made to endure baby’s first particle system of cubes, that magically morph into a complex, high polygon 3D model, for no real reason at all, the face palming begins. Lazy backgrounds. Questionable structural failure simulations. Seriously boys, how did this get out of editing unscathed? Don’t give me any bullshit about Transformium, either. To me, that is this franchise’s midichlorians, and a giant middle finger, from a director, who couldn’t give a fuck about stories he is willingly ruining. Tell me I’m fucking wrong. I triple goddamn dog dare you.
The music was an abomination. Typical anxious Hollywood cellos, Taiko drums, sirens, bullshit recruitment themes, bass farts, and crap culled from telenovela soundtracks, and occasionally, they’d really unzip their fly, and do some well-choreographed slow down effect. Really? REALLY! Get the fuck over your own egos. You didn’t make this shite up. For fuck’s sake, you can’t even imitate particularly well. Pathetic.
The length. Ask yourself this…does a movie, this shitty, NEED a 2 hour and 45 minute run time? DOES IT? You gotta be fucking kidding me. Cartoons, which incidentally this crud was based off of, managed to accomplish more in 22 and a half minutes…..WEEKLY! Again…get the fuck over your own egos. No one cares.
Here’s some more what the fuck moments:
1. Suddenly Optimus can fly?
2. 1 ship? Many ships? How many ships?
3. We got 4 dinobots (instead of 5). Cool. Grimlock is a T-Rex. Exactly what the fuck are the other three supposed to be? Psst. not dinosaurs.
4. Why exactly is the government pro-actively hunting down our PLANETARY SAVIOURS from the first 3 movies?
5. Why does Tessa’s skin get more Dorito coloured the longer the film goes on?
6. Why do giant metal killing machines even perceive human existence?
7. How do creepy US forces waltz into ANY international jurisdiction they please, without push back?
8. Who wrote this shite, and why am I STILL FUCKING WATCHING IT?
The whole thing is an incoherent trainwreck. Save your money. Netflix a foreign film, or something American made before 1990. Spare what little remains of your sanity.
m
sounds like a few people did not get enough titty from mama when they were a baby and also did not pay attention to the end of the second movie as prime was retro fitted with a way to fly and used that in the third movie as well. What a waste of ten minutes this was reading this crap
While I dislike trigger conversations, I’d like to bring up a few points:
1. For someone calling people babies, your, “I wasted 10 minutes of life,” argument is as childish as they come. See Sweetie, there’s this little X button on the top right of your browser (left if you’re on a MAC). Push it, and feel better about your time management.
2. You’re defending Michael Bay…easily the sleaziest, most heinous enemy of cinema who has ever walked the Earth? Good luck with that.
3. Optimus flew in T2 because of Jetfire. He flew in T3 because of some upgrades in his trailer. In this, he just flies. Oops.
4. I got plenty of milk out my Mommy’s titties, and probably yours too. Be sure to check her hamper for my silk drawers.
I haven’t seen it but was told that it was a waste of 3hrs.
Oh really? I was looking so forward to checking it out.
The only reason for these movies to be produced is so we can all enjoy hilarious internet writing about them.
Variety has an article claiming this film was made to suck up to the mainland Chinese audience.
http://variety.com/2014/film/columns/transformers-age-of-extinction-patriotic-for-china-1201257030/