Transformers, Age of Extinction:
In Texas, an "inventor" by the name of Cade Yeager is raising his whiny teenage daughter and trying to make it as a robotics engineer while making no money. He comes across an old semi-truck and figures out it is a transformer. Since the Chicago War (the battle from the end of the third movie), all transformers, good and evil, have been blamed for the massive casualties and property damage, and are being hunted down by the military. His surfer/moron buddy calls the government-run service for "disposing" of an old transformer, because the ad promises no problems and a pretty large cash reward. However, instead they get a small group of CIA agents and special ops soldiers, who threaten Cade, his daughter, and their friends. The small group of heroes is rescued when the injured transformer turns out to be none other than Optimus Prime. He leads them to his increasingly small group of transformers, and they begin a quest to take down the corrupt government officials who are targeting them as well as recover The Seed, an alien bomb used to reform planets to make them habitable by transformers.
Surprisingly, it was pretty good. And by that I mean I didn't hate it as much as the previous two abominations to come out of this franchise. This one wasn't quite as cringe-worthy, I will give it that. None of the human characters from the previous films return, which is a good thing for the most part (I do miss the soldiers though, those dudes were cool supporting characters and I'm sad to see them go). The only transformers that return are Optimus, Bumblebee, and a little annoying one that talks in ebonics. The others are completely new and useless but treated as though they've always been around. But the worst thing is the run-time: good god, this fucking thing doesn't end. I was sitting in the movie and thinking about when it was going to end, as the climax was dragging on for some time. I check my phone: there was an hour left, it wasn't the climax, it was the second act! A second act that consisted mostly of a 40-minute action sequence.
That brings me to my next complaint: the action. As the title of this review suggests, I didn't like the battle scenes. I don't care so much for these films because Michael Bay pays so much attention to explosive and CG-heavy action sequences that it seems like the writing on the human characters comes secondary. That wouldn't be a problem for me (I like dumb action movies from time to time), except that he decides to spend the first half hour only focusing on human characters, for the most part. So for the first 30-40 minutes, I just got bland, annoying, poorly acted, underwritten human characters who I couldn't give less of a shit about. The other major complaint, which the title also suggests, is that the action scenes are so chock-full of activity (usually between characters I don't care about or relate to in any way) and drag on for so long that they cease to become entertaining and becoming boring. Actually a better choice of words would be overwhelming and exhausting. I actually felt exhausted from watching half of a movie. I didn't even know that could happen. I felt like I had exercised, I just wanted to go to bed. That's right: Michael Bay has made it possible to get me to fall asleep from explosions and guns and bloodshed. I just don't know how he does it. The only cool bits were Optimus' first encounter with the Cemetery Wind task force and Mark Wahlberg's intense fight with an evil CIA agent in a Chinese shantytown during the climactic final battle. Those were actually fairly entertaining sequences; however, the amount of garbage I had to endure to get to those left me overwhelmed and unable to fully enjoy them. Just look up clips on YouTube, sitting through the whole movie isn't worth it.
The acting wasn't anything special, either. Mark Wahlberg is definitely more charismatic and action movie-ready than Shia LaBeouf could ever be, but I couldn't buy him as Cade. This was a problem in The Happening, too: Wahlberg has to act as a vulnerable and book-wormy scientist/inventor, despite the fact he's a muscular action hero type. Wahlberg is also a Texan, but doesn't at all lose his heavy Boston accent. Stanley Tucci basically recreates Jon Tuturo's character from previous installments, and God bless him, he fucking tries. You can tell Tucci was trying to have fun with the movie, but just like that guy who tries to keep an obviously dying and increasingly awkward party going, it's not fun: it's sort of pathetic and sad. And that's not to insult Tucci at all, he's a fine actor and I hope he's in more stuff, but it's meant to show how even the best actors can be dragged down by an awful script. Kelsey Grammar plays the main antagonist: Harold Attinger, a veteran CIA agent who distrusts and hates transformers who invented the Cemetery Wind task force to kill all transformers on Earth. Peter Weller returns to voice Optimus Prime, and sounds just as cool and bad-ass as ever, although it's sad to think such a talented voice actor basically just does these movies now. John Goodman voices Hound, a military-like and kind of aggressive transformer who is loyal to Optimus. Mark Ryan voices both the kind of immature but brave Bumblebee (who is transformed from the wise transformer at the end of the first movie to an emotional and reckless teenager-type character) and the villain Lockdown, a transformer/galactic bounty hunter who mercilessly hunts down other transformers for the government and for his alien employers. John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time) voices both Leadfoot and Crosshairs, who are just sort of there; a shame, as DiMaggio is a pretty talented voice actor and is really funny. Drift is voiced by Ken Watanabe. For some reason, they made this Autobot a stereotypical Japanese samurai caricature but one that turns into both a helicopter an the Bugatti, a European sports car. That totally makes sense. Frank Welker (an insanely talented voice actor who originally voiced Megatron on the animated series) is Galvatron, a wasted villain who is only in the movie for like 20 minutes, and is the reincarnation of Megatron, though they imply he will be back soon. Robert Foxworth voices Ratchet, the kind medic Autobot who is only in the movie for 5 minutes, and Reno Wilson voices Brains, the annoying-as-all-hell former Decepticon turned Autobot helper.
All of the Autobots are no longer intelligent or wise as before, but emotional, reckless has-beens (Bumblebee loses it because he sees an ad calling him old and ugly), and Optimus comes off as more of an idiotic avenger than a sagely bad-ass like before.
The rest of the human cast are as follows: Nicola Peltz as Tessa, Cade's young daughter (who is attractive, but a terrible actress); Jack Reynor as Shane, Tessa's annoying boyfriend (who has one of the worst Irish accents I've ever heard in my life, it's barely even an accent at all); Sophia Myles as Darcy, Tucci's British assistant; Li Bingbing as Su, the owner of Tucci's company's Chinese factory (also attractive, slightly better actress); T.J. Miller is Lucas, Cade's good friend and surfer dude (the "comic relief", although I will admit he got me to chuckle once or twice); James Bachman as Tucci's scientist employee (a better comic relief); Kassem G (YouTuber) as another scientist at Tucci's factory; and Titus Welliver as Savoy, the leader of the Cemetery Wind squad and Attinger's right-hand man, the secondary human antagonist. Going into details is pointless because almost all of them are underwritten caricatures. None of them feel like real, relatable people in the slightest.
The visual effects are actually okay, except for the transformium. Yeah, I know, right? The only name they could think of for the substance that can transformium itself into objects was "transformium". Almost as bad as "unobtanium" from Avatar. The transformium resembles a computer screensaver. The special effects on the robots are actually pretty good, and you can actually distinguish between the robots this time around because there are fewer of them and they all have distinctive colors.
The writing by Ehren Krueger (the man behind the last two films as well as Scream 3) is pretty bad. No offense, but this is worse than even Scream 3 or Transformers: Dark of the Moon. One of my favorite bad lines in this movies is when the CIA shows up at Cade's farm, Cade claims they have no right as they have no warrant, and Savoy responds "My face is my warrant!" I actually burst out laughing at how badly written and delivered that line was. Even the phrase "Chicago War" makes no sense, as it was one battle. What "war" only lasts for a few hours?
The directing by Michael Bay, full of lens flares, slow-motion, and confusing CG fights, is even worse than the bland writing. The saddest part: Bay was once a promising action director, making fun movies like The Rock and Bad Boys. Even the first Transformers was an entertaining, if dumb and silly, popcorn movie. Now he's become the laughingstock of Hollywood and one of the least-respected directors in the industry, especially concerning critics' opinions.
Transformers: Age of Extinction may be better than the previous two installments, but it's still a steaming pile of shit. It's full of bad acting, bland writing, confusing action sequences, flashy cinematography (which is more distracting than cool), and it just drags on forever. It feels longer than Lawrence of Arabia and Lord of the Rings (the whole trilogy, plus the two Hobbit movies) combined. It also is filled to the brim with blatant, sometimes hilarious, product placement. (The scene where Marky Mark chugs a Bud Light in full view of the camera is pretty funny.) The only positive things I can say is that Wahlberg and Tucci at least try to make the best of it, and the visuals can be nice at times, but none of this is enough to make me recommend it to anyone. 1/5 stars.
(Image: Wikipedia)
No comments:
Post a Comment