Transformers: Age of Extinction Review (Pros & Cons)

Amazing Character Design

If there's one positive thing that can be taken out of these Transformers movies, it is definitely some of the creative character designs and VFX work showcased throughout. Age of Extinction being the fourth entry in the series is no exception as the sequel offers various interesting to downright awesome Transformer designs to soak in and enjoy. One of my favorites introduced being a samurai themed Autobot that can transform into a car as well as a small chopper. There's also the Dinobots that are simply amazing to see in all of their grand scaled glory whether in their natural robot form or impressively crafted mechanical dinosaur mode. Being a kid that grew up in the 90's trying to get his hands on every awesome Transformers toy that he saw in K-Mart after watching an episode of the cartoon, this was something of a visual dream come true for me. 

Aside from a few others, my favorite of the bunch that automatically sold me as far as overall design was the new villain of the live action franchise, Lockdown. Lockdown's appearance was pretty amazing from his sleek black and green color scheme to his transforming weaponized cannon head. Effectively adding on as a companion piece to this sharp design is this eerily intimidating looking spaceship that hovered behind him in certain shots. My eyes were constantly glued to the screen whenever his ship or minions were shown off due to the alluringly dark and mysterious aesthetic of the character and his aesthetics.

Great Villain

Speaking more on Lockdown since, let's be honest, he's basically the one major positive highlight worth celebrating, the character itself is surprisingly more than just "a cool design". Not only is Lockdown well defined in his sinister aesthetics, but he's also arguably the best villain to enter this problematic franchise. I feel as iconic as Megatron is within the brand itself, he's sort of had this "come and go" pattern with each sequel either getting completely destroyed or running away whereas Lockdown shows up and singlehandedly captures Optimus prior to holding himself up during their final battle. They even make it to where he questionably had a pretty solid chance of killing our lead hero Autobot (minus the outrageously embarrassing human distraction element inserted). So, the fact that he was able to take down our big powerful hero of the franchise by himself, in addition to his visually noteworthy design, I can't help but at least give credit where credit is due.

Another thing to add here that I very much admired about the character was the fact that he was neither an Autobot or a Decepticon giving him more of a unique mystique and intriguing presence. This is a character that checks off all the right boxes for me when it comes to establishing a new threat in any of these big franchises, so again, give credit where credit is due even if the movie surrounding him doesn't remotely stack up in quality comparison. I will also point out that Kelsey Grammer's character, Harold Attinger, was the first decent enough human villain to be introduced to the series having a legitimate motivation for taking down the Transformers. But, much like Lockdown, he suffers the same problem of being placed in the wrong movie with the wrong production team. 

A Slightly Better Human Protagonist

Now I won't just sit here and proclaim that I completely hated the Sam Witwicky character in the previous films just to highlight a small positive for this movie, but it certainly became a bit tiresome seeing him undergo the same beats in each sequel. He has always played the damsel in distress role within the franchise no matter how much significance they tried to imbue him with partnering up with the Autobots. I couldn't count the amount of times where Sam was shown running and screaming for either Bumblebee or Optimus Prime's rescue. After the 3rd or 4th time, this broken record of Shia Labeouf yelling out an Autobot's name got kinda annoying pretty quickly and needed to be desperately scrapped for something else. Here enters the character of Cade Yeager, and one of the notable things that I already found refreshing about Mark Wahlberg's new human protagonist is the fact that he was an inventor who found Optimus and tried to help fix him back into shape.

This one pivotal detail alone already brought forward a much more useful role for a heroic human lead character to have. Cade had some sense of engineering in his background that perfectly came into place with different scenarios where his character was able to understand how some of the Transformer tech work (which I'm aware is unbelievably ironic). Although, I never really bought Wahlberg's performance as this character to the degree that I would've preferred, it was at least refreshing to finally have a protagonist who seems like they can actually aid the Autobots and be a team player to root for instead of constantly just screaming out for a quick last minute save.

The One Scene That Genuinely Had Me Excited

As much as I have consistently ranted on these movies (although I have always admitted to enjoying the first one for what it was), each sequel has provided at least one amazing scene that I loved deep down as a science-fiction/action nerd. For Age of Extinction, it was the moment where Lockdown interrupts Optimus and Galvatron's battle by shooting down Prime with his transforming head cannon. I remember completely geeking out in the theater when all of the characters drew their attention towards Lockdown emerging out of the smoke with his ship hovering behind him. It's one of the most amazingly executed sequences from a cinematic perspective that I've seen all year and definitely deserves major props for its direction. Also the original score during this scene was by far the best piece of music composed for the series in my opinion really selling the menacing presence of this new threat.

Awful Character Writing & Dialogue

Thinking about this franchise in retrospect with Age of Extinction being fresh on my mind, my biggest issue with this Michael Bay Transformers movies seem to mostly center on its approach to the writing and storytelling. The human characters are constantly given these terribly inserted "comedic" scenes that does absolutely nothing to serve the story nor are they the least bit funny (most of the time anyway). The dialogue overall is horrendous and downright cringe inducing in the worst way possible revolving around the forced in romantic relationship sub plot. I have ranted about the human characters since the first movie, but overall it really comes down to the poorly written dialogue and unnecessary feeling roles that they play in the grander scheme of things. It significantly shrinks down the decent quality that could've potentially been on display with these movies due to the fact that they always seem to glaringly struggle with an imbalance of narrative spotlighting between Transformers and humans. 

As for the Transformers themselves, I've never had too many issues with them in terms of dialogue (with the exception of the way Optimus has gradually become a one dimensional cold blooded murderous leader from the lines that they've been giving him), but there are some character issues that I had in terms of screen time. Drift (the samurai themed Autobot) is a welcomed new face for the Autobots being quite unique and refreshing in terms of design and personality, but unfortunately, he only gets a couple minutes of screen time doing almost nothing of note. Yes, he does engage in a few battles, but in the presence of a Michael Bay Transformers movie, you've probably missed him underneath the fireworks display of explosions and fast paced conversation scenes. As a result, like many of the other Autobots and Decepticons, he becomes another sad example of wasted potential. 

Speaking of wasted potential, another character to show up in this movie is Galvatron who, considering the mythology of his character from the animated series, could've been utilized as a significant and compelling villain. Alas, he ends up getting completely sidelined in the end as simply a sequel baiting tool for the audience. You know what's tragically funny about this predicament? It's the fact that even through a major transformation, Megatron will always be used as a knocked around sequel tease and nothing more which is crazy given that he is arguably the biggest villain of the entire brand. What's not so funny but just as tragic is the fact that Galvatron, in the animated property was the result of Megatron being born again after a deal with Unicorn which altered his personality and characteristics as a result. He became something even more powerful yet unstable making for a truly new and intriguing enemy whereas this movie just makes him a military project...how could you?

Last but not least is the Dinobots who instantly became the main focus behind the marketing of this sequel. Not only are they heavily featured on the posters, but just about every trailer placed a great deal of emphasis on Grimlock (the Tyrannosaurus Rex Transformer) in order to bring forth increased excitement and ticket sales. So how much of these hype worthy characters do we actually get when seeing the movie? Well, let's see. The Dinobots literally show up towards the end for only a mere few minutes to support the Autobots after a terribly written "union forming" scene with Optimus. The screen time given to these heavily advertised characters is one big expensive joke in my opinion and can arguably be considered as false advertising for some very disappointed moviegoers out there. They're hardly showcased as doing much of anything but rampaging through the city in their dinosaur forms rarely transforming and getting caught up in the never ending unimpressive gallery of chaotic action segments. But hey, at least they cool, right? ...Sure.

Terrible Use of Music

Rarely do I ever have an issue regarding the score or soundtrack of a film, but the Transformers franchise seems to have now become a repeating case for me. In Age of Extinction, many of the action scenes are carried almost solely by the score where the music itself feels completely forced in for a dramatic beat in the scene that never took place. I will say that the music itself, when listened in a vacuum away from the movie, is epic on its own and the composition should definitely be given credit where credit is due. However, when you replace the majority of the sound FX during the explosive battle scenes with just orchestral pieces, the overall feeling of these scenes become profoundly dull significantly bringing down the excitement factor. It's less immersive battle segments and more "look at how cool are VFX and pyrotechnics are" which can get exhausting rather quickly. I came here to see action that I can attach myself to and not an art gallery music video. But maybe that's just me.

As seen in many films involving a thrilling or action packed tone, the soundtrack is used as a tool to ramp up the intensity or dramatic element of a scene. For this to be successful, there is great deal of focus towards the emotional edge of the situation (usually a character's intimate perspective or experience reacting to something shocking). Unfortunately for Age of Extinction, due to the awful script and character development, there is little to no emotional edge within the action scenes resulting in an overly used and unnecessarily epic score. I'll also add that the song "Battle Cry" by Imagine Dragons (not that the song itself is bad) gets really annoying by the time the ending credits begin to roll in. This is due to me feeling as if someone played it on a loop throughout the entire runtime of the movie. I'm not entirely sure how many times the song actually plays, but it really did feel like it was inserted into many of the action and cringe worthy character scenes.

Highly Unnecessary Explosions

Speaking more on the explosive action scenes themselves, the entire franchise is famous for showing off its budget in pyrotechnics, and in the case of Age of Extinction, there is no line drawn between what's fun to watch and what's contextually absurd. There are countless of scenes where explosions fill the screen for no apparent reason than to practically blind the viewers from the horribly directed action taking place behind or within the fiery blasts. Never in my life growing up as a young kid loving the feel of 80's explosive action titles would I have ever imagined myself saying "Giant explosions are boring". Well, Michael Bay (assuming he is the man behind these specific decisions) somehow miraculously found a way to make this an unfortunate reality for me. There were many times watching Age of Extinction where I literally rolled my eyes at how many of the explosions came across as random fireworks shooting out from the sides of things having nothing to do with the source of the explosions themselves.

Adding onto that sentiment is the excessive slow motion that's utilized to drive these action scenes resulting in segments feeling completely dragged out for no real beneficial reason. I'm not too sure if it was clear or not years ago, but slow motion action scenes has been a slowly dying art and won't be magically improved by the aid of a 4th of July fireworks display and random metallic objects flying at the screen. I can only think of a handful of titles recently that have found creative ways to utilize this filmmaking style such as Dredd where it actually played a key role regarding the story. As for Age of Extinction, and most of the Transformers saga thus far, there is absolutely nothing stylistically or narratively speaking that ever truly feels worthy enough for this cinematic tool to be thrown in. I supposed it is simply there to cater to the adrenaline junkies that has yet to be bored out of their minds at the site of fire and metal clashing onscreen. Gotta reach every demographic, right? 

Several Moments of Disappointment

This category on its own can easily end up being a significantly long list of nitpicking, so I'll try to boil it down to the essential plot points and scenes that completely killed the overall experience for me. Here are just some of the points that I just had to mention in this review. First of, we have human-made Transformers showing up in this universe with a visual effect display worthy enough of being a Microsoft default screensaver and nothing more (kinda hurt my eyes). There's a scene regarding an alien weapon found onboard a ship that conveniently works like a human gun with no explanation or instructions given by the Autobots to at least sell the idea of a human using foreign alien tech. There were just too many prolonged scenes of human characters doing absolutely nothing of interest (seems to be a running theme here in this series), that at times, actually made me consider leaving the theaters which is unheard of for me. 

Lockdown being significantly affected by Mark Wahlberg's tiny alien gun more than Optimus Prime's attacks kinda frustrated me as we've already seen an amazingly introduced villain suffer the same unforgiven fate via Shockwave in Dark of the Moon. Also, adding on to that is the fact that this powerful and tactical alien bounty hunter is eventually taken down with the help of humans having absolutely no training whatsoever regarding this type of situation. It's utterly embarrassing and a terrible way to end arguably the series' best antagonists yet. Overall, let's just say that Transformers: Age of Extinction is 10% amazing stuff (a few standout character designs) and 90% illogical nonsense (everything else) making this arguably the worst movie not only for the franchise, but for the entire year thus far.

Rating: 3/10