Runtime: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Michael Bay
Quick Impressions:
At the very end of the movie, Optimus Prime intones sonorously, “I’m coming for you.”
Immediately my daughter turned to me and asked, “Yes, but who is you?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said.
Shaking her head, she told me, “I don’t even know who they mean by you. I don’t think they really ever explained that in the movie.”
That was a pretty spot-on bit of critique. Probably by the time she starts kindergarten this August, my daughter will be writing these reviews instead of me. She’s not afraid to be blunt when necessary.
As I see it, the identity of this mysterious you is such an egregious loose end that I found myself wondering, “Did Damon Lindelof write this script?” (He didn’t, by the way. It was Ehren Kruger.) But he certainly could have. At about four separate points during the film, I caught myself thinking, This reminds me a lot of Prometheus (the movie, not the myth). Not only is it preoccupied with stuff like mysterious creators and world-seeding, but it also includes spell-binding action scenes that occur for no reason and serve no real purpose.
I’m sure they plan to address this “you” issue in the next Transformers movie, and when they do, I certainly hope they bring back Stanley Tucci, Bingbing Li, and Sophia Myles. I’m going to be brutally honest. Without them, the movie would have no redeeming qualities. (Well, maybe that’s excessively harsh. Let me say more gently, although I did not hate most of this movie, the parts with Tucci and his female sidekicks were the only scenes I actually actively liked.)
When I asked my eleven-year-old stepson, a huge fan of the Transformers franchise, how he thought this compared to the other movies, he answered immediately, “It was better.”
Perhaps I seemed too incredulous as I squawked in disbelief, “Really??!” I tried to dial back my extreme reaction a little too late.
Some fans may agree with him that Age of Extinction is the best Transformers movie so far. I can think of only one thing to support this crazy notion. This fourth movie is by far the most serious/least silly of the entire franchise. Gone is Sam’s mom and all of her wacky, off-the-wall, over-the-top, zany humor. The only problem for me is, I loved Sam’s mom. I actually think the first Transformers is a pretty good movie (for what it is), and part of what makes it enjoyable is the goofy humor. As far as I’m concerned, the original 2007 movie is by far the best of the series. Yes, it’s tonally all over the place, often sacrificing realism for a laugh (though one might argue that any movie that shows the audience Shia LaBeouf acting like a maniac for no apparent reason is actually quite realistic). But at least when the film does anything for a laugh, the audience sometimes laughs. I mean, the movie is about a toyline of 80s robots from outer space. It’s not exactly The Thin Red Line. Plus the first movie has (by comparison) tons of character development and features a strong, compelling relationship between Sam Witwicky and Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, and the rest of the Autobots.
About two hours into this movie, my daughter (who had been shifting and complaining a lot) abruptly decided, “Hey I think I suddenly like this movie! It just got good.”
The funny thing is, she was right. Unlike all previous Transformers installments, this one gets better as it goes, so the last 30-45 minutes is the very best part. (Maybe even—dare I say it?—the only good part.)
Of course, it’s not ideal when you have to watch a movie for two hours before it starts getting good. Then again, after two hours, most movies are over already. But Transfomers: Age of Extinction bucks this trend by lasting approximately two thousand years. Finally for the first time on the big screen, we learn the true reason that the dinosaurs died…somebody made them sit through Transformers…Age of Extinction. (Just kidding—though we may never know for sure.)
The Good:
Although I won’t pretend this is my favorite movie, and it’s not one I would have chosen myself simply for my own viewing pleasure, and enduring the first two-thirds of it nearly killed my daughter, there are some things I liked about Transformers: Age of Extinction.
1) The visuals are exhilarating. In essence, this movie is like a grave digger reflected in a funhouse mirror—much too long with a plot that’s all over the place. But start to finish, the whole thing looks pretty awesome. We get treated to a variety of exciting landscapes and dynamic filming techniques. We soar through canyons, gaze into the sunset, or scale the side of a skyscraper. Whether we’re looking at nature’s splendor or urban grandiosity, we usually like what we see (and there are always plenty of ads, so we know who it’s all brought to us by). Plus, for whatever reason, we get constantly disorienting camera angles to keep us on our toes. I don’t know if it’s Michael Bay or his cinematographer, but somebody really likes to frame a scene by going low and looking way up at a subject. (Maybe the cameramen were having a limbo contest. It’s not impossible.) And if all that’s not exciting enough, we also get treated to lens flare, dramatic explosions, and expensive cars.
2) The movie has several clear “morals” and presents some of them surprisingly artfully. Yes, it’s pretty pointed when Mark Wahlberg lectures Optimus Prime that great things can come from human mistakes. But there’s another idea in there, too, one that clearly reflects our society’s mood at the moment. In previous Transformers outings, there have been good guys and bad guys, Autobots versus Decepticons. This time around, morality is much murkier. This time around, there really are no good guys. Everyone’s looking out for his or her own interests. The aliens are at best indifferent to us. Our own elected officials are actively lying to us. Big business is trying to cheat us. Even children lie to their own parents. In 2014, we’re starting to suspect that there are no good guys. So what do we do? In this movie, the answer is to pick someone to trust based on personal charisma and then follow that person loyally and blindly. There’s a great scene when Optimus Prime takes a risk to find some more allies. The other Autobots with him basically admit that even they don’t quite understand what’s going on at this point. (The plot is that convoluted. Not even the Transformers know what is going on.) But they intend to follow Optimus and let him sort everything out. One of them says pointedly that Optimus is such a great leader, such a motivational speaker. Intellectually, I found this pervasive message surprisingly coherent and captivating. Given how bloated this Michael Bay film is, I didn’t expect it to contain any insight nearly so thoughtful.
3) The scenes in “Texas” really do look like Texas. Watching, I thought, That looks like the Hill Country. They could have shot it down the street from my house. In fact, one of the movie’s filming locations is Austin, so maybe they did shoot it down the street from my house. As a Texan, I love to see Texas accurately represented in movies. Cinematically, there’s a long strange history of trying to pass off Arizona desert as Texas. Hollywood apparently cannot tell the difference. The only exception seems to be when something takes place in Dallas. Then everybody is rich, wears a big white cowboy hat, and talks with a “Texan” accent that makes them sound like they’re from Atlanta. I’m currently working on a trilogy set in and around Austin, so I really had fun looking at the beautiful scenery and imagining how great it would be if my books someday get adapted for the screen, and they decide to film in the real Texas.
4) Mark Wahlberg is supposed to be a native Texan mad-scientist who makes robots in his barn. I don’t care where you’re from. That’s just funny. It’s also kind of funny that he and his daughter are quickly joined by a “friend” who is, in fact, an Irish racecar driver, quickly dubbed “Lucky Charms” by Wahlberg’s character. There’s just something so delightfully absurd about the whole thing. It’s like the movies finally figured out where Texas is, but they still have no idea who lives there.
5) Peter Cullen still voices Optimus Prime. My daughter said after the movie that Optimus Prime was her favorite character, and I can definitely see the appeal. He’s one of the strongest characters in this movie, one of the only easily identifiable “good guys.” On the ride home, my husband and I were trying to impress on our kids how cool it is that the original voice of Optimus Prime from the old cartoons we watched as kids still voices him in all the movies. (I remember when my stepson was four and sometimes called him Ultimus Crime.) Honestly, this time around, the rest of the Transformers are disappointingly thinly drawn if you ask me. He’s really the only worthwhile Transformer left.
6) Stanley Tucci and the two women in his life are just so amazingly wonderful. I swear Tucci and his scene partners must be doing some ad-libbing because his scenes are conspicuously more entertaining, especially the later in the movie we get. In a smaller part, Kelsey Grammer is also not half bad. Some of his lines are ridiculous, but he wins major points for delivering them with intensity and never acknowledging how silly they are.
Best Scene:
Like Optimus Prime when Wahlberg’s character finds him, the movie is incredibly slow starting. The beginning is not exactly bad. The opening scenes are quite high-energy and captivating, and then when we get to Texas, at least we really are in Texas.
I like Mark Wahlberg in general. And T.J. Miller is pretty good, too. (I liked him as Hud in Cloverfield.) Neither of them exactly screams, “I am from Texas!” of course. But I’d rather see this kind of Texan onscreen than more overblown cowboy stereotypes like the ones we usually encounter.
Despite the pleasant scenery and competent actors, though, the movie really doesn’t find its legs until Stanley Tucci’s character goes to China. And that’s truly unfortunate because these events happen quite late in the movie. (Tucci’s Joshua Joyce isn’t even introduced, in fact, until what must be a solid hour into the film.)
So the best part of the movie takes place in China. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Bingbing Li’s Su Yueming suddenly comes into her own as a character during this part of the film. She’s in a few earlier scenes, but we mainly just see her face or barely notice her standing in the background. But then we get ready to go to China, and suddenly, her character becomes increasingly fascinating.
The best part for me is when she and Tucci run off together, first on the motorcycle, then in the elevator. I swear that scene on the bike seems like a self-conscious parody of The Bourne Legacy. And after watching their brilliant work in the elevator, I’d be stunned to learn that Tucci and Li are not adlibbing and making more of their part than what’s written. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.
Besides Optimus Prime, Su Yueming was my five-year-old’s favorite character, and the scenes in China were the only ones in the entire movie she liked. To be honest, I agree with her.
When Yueming gradually began to get more and more screentime, I started wondering, Why exactly weren’t we following this character the entire time? Why isn’t she the protagonist? I would have loved to see a movie focusing more on the not-exactly-love-triangle occupied by Yueming, Tucci’s Joshua Joyce, and Darcy Tirrel (played by Sophia Myles). Li, Tucci, and Myles had all better be back for the next Transfomers outing.
Best Action Sequence:
The crazy motorcycle escapade of Li and Tucci already reminded me of a Bourne Legacy parody. The fight between Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager and Titus Welliver’s James Savoy totally continued this impression. Seriously it’s like they’re sending up the Bourne franchise, mocking Bourne style action by showing how ridiculous it looks when tried by ordinary people. I don’t know if that’s the intention or not, but the fighting (and then the pursuit from window to window) definitely contains some of the most effective humor of the movie (besides looking very cool).
Best Scene Visually:
The whole movie looks good. It sounds great, too, particularly if your heart thrills at the revving of a well-oiled engine.
But the best scene visually is definitely that final battle/chase on the streets of Hong Kong, particularly the part where enormous ships keep falling all over the road. I can only imagine how amazing this must look in 3D. Newly engaged with the movie, my daughter found this scene delightful—even sometimes funny. It’s a thrill to watch, for sure.
The scenes showing the Autobots standing around in front of a massive waterfall are quite appealing as well. And my stepson really, really liked the dinobots. (My daughter was less impressed. They freaked her out.)
The Negatives:
Unlike Transformers: Age of Extinction, I know that sometimes, we need limits, so I realize that going on and on about what’s wrong with this movie for the next two hours and forty-five minutes would be completely excessive and out of the question.
For a minute, I’d like to beg you to be honest. Did you expect Transfomer’s Four directed by Michael Bay to be a flawless masterpiece that made the nation’s critics weep with transcendent joy?
It goes without saying that this movie has some serious flaws. But I’ll limit myself to six. I listed six good points, so naming that many of the movie’s failings seems reasonably fair.
1) The plot is needlessly convoluted. I disagree with people who say that the movie has no plot or that it makes no sense. The plot of the movie does make sense. It’s just extremely complicated, far more complicated than it needs to be. I think the “makes no sense” complaint arises not from plot holes but from the fact that the characters behave in inconsistent, unrealistic, and unnecessary ways. Basically the real issue is that nobody knows what’s going on. Ever. There’s one very pointed scene that clearly reveals to us that even the Transformers themselves don’t know what on earth is happening or what’s supposed to happen. There are really no longer good guys. Everybody is just kind of a jerk. So instead of a series of essential phases in a coherent plan designed to by “good guys” to save the earth, we get this big, crazy free-for-all. The selfish try to figure out how to get what they want and act in their own interests. Meanwhile, the would-be heroes have no idea what needs to be done, so they just run around like crazy people haphazardly trying everything. The results are—largely—boring.
2) All of the Transformers are jerks now. Seriously, the humans have inexplicably lost all honor, and the government doesn’t seem functional. (Of course, some people would just call that realism.) But the Autobots aren’t really nice anymore, either. Most of them are at best annoying, belligerent, and self-seeking. Only Optimus Prime has any nobility. (And by the way, there’s a moment with his character and Kelsey Grammer near the end that should have gotten much more attention. We needed to linger there a bit. Don’t tell me there wasn’t time.) John Goodman’s Autobot is like a comic variation on his character in The Big Lebowski. Ken Watanabe is basically wasted. I guess Bumblebee is still reasonably likeable, but nobody has a special relationship with him anymore—unless you count some fans of the first movie in the audience.
3) Nicola Peltz is easily the most boring, dull, lifeless girl they have tried out in a Transformers movie yet. I remember last time around thinking that Carly was a big step down from Mikaela (whom I never even liked in the first place), but Tessa Yeager outdoes them all in blandness. Now I’m not really familiar with Peltz’s work in general, so I don’t mean this as an attack on the actress. I have no idea what she’s like outside this movie. (Natalie Portman, for example, is a good actress, but is poorly directed in the Star Wars prequels.) The Tessa character just seems very one dimensional and also vaguely dull and generic. By comparison, both Bingbing Li and Sophia Myles are fantastic in the same movie. Does Tessa really need so much screentime? She does so little with it. Li and Miles both seem more alluring than Peltz, too. She just comes across as very boring, though I’m sure she could be pretty under the right circumstances.
4) Now that I’ve bashed poor Nicola Peltz (who definitely has more fans than I do), I’d like to add that this movie struck me as having a sort of nasty undercurrent of misogyny, and normally I don’t complain about stuff like that. I’m much more likely to let these things go, usually. But over and over again in this movie, I found myself getting really annoyed. And honestly, I’m not sure it’s only misogyny. There’s a fair amount of general misanthropy, too, the portrayal of everyone as base and disgusting. (John Goodman’s character has a moment that’s, frankly, disturbing precisely because it’s needlessly awful.) Maybe that’s supposed to be a statement about what war does to people. I don’t know. All sorts of little things began to add up for me, but one of the most obvious examples of lazy/ridiculous writing comes when Peltz’s character Tessa refuses to go forward on the cables with Cade and Shane. I can understand that she might be afraid. But come on. Her behavior is ridiculous. It’s like a scene from I Love Lucy, especially when she declares that she’d rather get back on the space ship and actually starts going backwards. Now, to be fair, this scene probably isn’t any worse than a lot of other scenes in movies. But the problem is, it’s not entertaining or funny. It’s just annoying. Maybe that’s because Peltz is not a very good actress. (Certainly, she’s not given much to work with.) I mean, how often have you seen something and laughed hysterically but then later realized, That was actually unrealistic and sort of insulting to women? But this isn’t even funny. It’s just the dumbest thing ever.
5) This is a big one. Over halfway through the movie, we suddenly get this big, new, exciting bombshell. It’s the thing my daughter was asking about at the end of the movie. Age of Extinction teases us with this tantalizing, revelatory idea, but then it promises new information that it never delivers. Seriously you cannot imagine how surprised I was to realize that the movie might be going in this new direction. For about ten seconds, I was on the edge of my seat. But the movie never follows through with this (or many other) tease(s). Also, talk about a huge pacing problem! Again and again, the best stuff happens far too late in the movie when it can’t be explored thoroughly or seen through to its natural conclusions.
6) You cannot truly understand the plot simply by watching the movie. This flaw may sound strange, but it’s actually more common than you may realize. Back when I was a kid, this kind of thing actually happened all the time. Imagine that you’re a child in the 80s and you hear a bunch of kids raving about how awesome Boba Fett is. Hoping for more information, you watch the original Star Wars trilogy. Obviously, that’s not going to give you the answers you’re looking for. Sometimes, to get a movie, you have to do more than just watch the movie. Sometimes the answers you’re seeking are found in the little booklets that come with a toy line, or in other tie-in merchandising like cartoons or video games. Or sometimes you have to listen to the director’s commentary or cast interviews. About halfway through, I started to suspect that Age of Extinction was going to be this kind of movie. And guess what? After it was over on the ride home, my stepson started talking about how he’s watched the cartoon where they explain all about the topic that kept baffling Optimus Prime and my daughter. I knew it! But what does that say about this movie as a movie? Nearly three hours long, and there’s not even time to fit in the plot? Talk about poor clock management!
Okay, that’s enough. If you want to find out all the other things horribly wrong with this movie, you’ll have to buy a ticket and watch it for yourself!
Overall:
Transformers: Age of Extinction is probably the second best Transformers movie after the original, which is not saying much. (In my opinion, only the first is not terrible. This fourth installment is the least terrible of the rest.) My eleven-year-old stepson loved it, and my five-year-old daughter loved the antics of Stanley Tucci and Bingbing Li in the final forty minutes.
I will admit that much to my shock, I did end up liking the last part of Age of Extinction. In the past, I’ve liked only the first two-thirds of each Transformers movie. Then I zone out during the interminable final action sequence. But this time, the last third of the movie was by far the best.
Fans of the movies who go in knowing they’ll love this one will almost certainly be right. I didn’t love it, but at least I survived, which is more than I can say for the dinosaurs! (Oh, and speaking of dinosaurs, I almost forgot to mention that the soundtrack contains some songs by Imagine Dragons that even my daughter found “so cool.”)