Review of Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) by Aragorn Ii E — 18 Mar 2015

My opinion of this... "movie" has only deteriorated over time. The effects are actually WORSE than the previous installments (there's one scene that looks laughably reminiscent of the villain's death via falling out of a building in the original RoboCop, cheesy 80's effects glory and all), and the acting is also downright awful, particularly Tessa's actress and her unlikable boyfriend's actor. I would give praise to Wahlberg and Tucci's performances, but they played characters so painfully generic and cliché that it completely undermined their acting talent. In addition, there is an ABSURD amount of obnoxious product placement. It's almost as obnoxious as if you're watching a huge battle scene, and then one of the characters randomly turns to the camera, holds up a Bud Lite, and says some corny line ending in "Drink Bud Lite!" In fact, it actually almost does that in once scene. They crash into a Bud Lite truck during a chase scene, and Marky's character picks one up, pops the lid off using some guy's car door, and starts drinking it.

On to the dialog. It is so poorly written that I almost laughed at a few particular points. First, "My face is my warrant!" And the other when Optimus is beating the crap out of the massive Dinobot Transformer who is supposedly Grimlock (even though he submits in under a minute, in which case, why do you want this thing fighting for you if it submits after a single weak blow??) where Optimus yells out, "We're giving you freedom!" and then a few seconds later, when he has mounted Grimlock (Yes, mounted), he scrapes his sword against Grimlock's face saying, "Defend my family, or die." Does that sound like freedom to you? Later in the movie he realeases them into the wild. Now how stupid is that? Letting go of several monstrous indestructible robot dinosaurs for them to wreak havoc as they please in the wild, or if they just so happen to stumble back into a human city (they were released just outside of no less than HONG KONG, ONE OF THE MOST POPULATED CITIES IN CHINA THAT WOULD LOSE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IF SOME GIANT METAL DINOSAURS GOT BORED AND WANDERED INTO THE CITY) Speaking of, there are Dinobots in this movie... I think. If they are, they're only in it for the last twenty minutes or so with about six minutes of total screen time, their impact on the plot is negligible at best, and their names are never spoken of once (hence why I said he was supposedly Grimlock; they never even tell you his name in the movie). Not to mention that some don't even look like Dinobots; a few look like botched genetic experiment involving lizards that got a few tons of rusty metal welded onto their bodies.

Did I mention the plot is idiotic and a complete copy/paste from the previous installments? Well, it is. Let's see, the villains learn about and go after a dangerous Cybertronian artifact that can destroy life on Earth, and the autobots and human characters try to stop them. My last criticism, is the run time. This movie has all the content you'd expect from a Michael Bay Transformers wet dream (ten explosions per second, battle scenes erupting around random hot girl extras, an UNDERAGE girl for the movie's main hot chick, and a moronic plot), and seemingly has the length of a Lord of the Rings film (the difference though, is that those films use their length to their advantage and flesh out the characters. This spends its time on explaining why it's okay for a 20-year-old to bang an underage 17-year-old). Also, don't just look at me and say, "Oh you're just a guy who jumped on the Michael Bay hate bandwagon", because I'm not. I'm one of the few people willing to go on record saying that I liked Dark of the Moon to an extent. That being said, I hope it carries some considerable weight when I say that this is an awful film.

Lastly, to those defending this garbage and saying that people who dislike it just don't know how to have fun with movies or some other stupid derogatory insult (seriously, I saw this one guy who said people giving this negative reviews should be hung), quit lying to yourself and realize that this movie has nothing that makes a movie good. No acting talent from a vast majority of the cast, wooden, one-dimensional characters (as well as a complete bastardization of Optimus' character), and bland, uninteresting action that offers nothing new or original. In addition, you can't say that this is good if it lived up to your expectations. If you go in expecting this kind of crap and you get it, that still doesn't make it good. That just means it was what you were expecting; they're two completely different things. If it lived up to your expectations of being an explosions-fest with wooden characters you don't care about, you still can't say it's better or even as good as an action movie with good characters, good dialog, good acting, and a good story. This has none of those.

Verdict - 2.3/10.

Seriously though, the things some of these 'positive' reviews say just make me lose faith in humanity.