First Few Reviews For TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION Hit; Promise More Of The Same

Ultimately, these are still just vehicles for the sale of more toys, and Hasbro is poised to clean up once again. My own kids have fallen in love with this series, and I can tell you exactly what they love about it: all the goddamn robots. They don't care about anything else. Each new Transformers film could just be two solid hours of new robot characters walking out and introducing themselves, then jumping into an ongoing fist-fight, and my boys would be perfectly happy with it. It feels to me like "Transformers" is, in many ways, one of the least cynical of the major franchises currently in progress because Bay knows that he's selling a product here, and he sells it with all the slick that he can muster. It is no accident that Bay is a TV commercial maestro. He is very good at selling, and "Transformers: Age Of Extinction" will indeed gets it hooks in deep in its target audience, and toys will fly off shelves, and the series will rake in another mountain of money both domestically and abroad. What I'm really curious about is whether or not they're going to pick up the surprising story threads introduced in the film's final moments when they make the next movie, because it suggests a film that would be utterly unlike anything else in the series so far. Whatever the case, "Transformers: Age Of Extinction" more than delivers on whatever promises Bay makes to an audience at this point. Giant robots. Giant mayhem. Destruction on a global scale. You know what you're in for if you buy a ticket, and Bay seems determined to wear you down with the biggest craziest "Transformers" movie yet.

Despite boasting an entirely new human cast and many a new onscreen mechanical warrior, plus a half-hour grand finale set in very different Hong Kong locales, Transformers: Age of Extinction isn't the breath of fresh air vitally needed by an aging franchise. No matter that these films set the tills ringing — all things come to an end, and if this is a reboot, Extinction promises the series will go out with more of a whimper than a bang further down the line. Still, the current film is very well-placed to rake it in big time in China and could surpass Dark of the Moon's record takings. Belying its ominous title, Age of Extinction barely skirts the idea that humankind and planet Earth are about to be totally annihilated. What is extinguished is the audience's consciousness after being bombarded for nearly three hours with overwrought emotions ("There's a missile in the living room!" Tessa hollers — twice), bad one-liners and battles that rarely rise above the banal. A trio of editors make a technical marvel out of the fight scenes, but can do little to link the story's multiple threads into something coherent.

It’s not just that the Autobots look more distinctive and easier to tell apart than ever in “Transformers: Age of Extinction” — as Optimus Prime never tires of reminding us, these robots have actual souls. So who cares if the human characters are even more dispensable and the plot even more scattershot than usual? Resurrected to take on man-made knock-offs of themselves, these metallic superheroes cause so much destruction, it’s as if they’re trying to find a literal new definition for the term “blockbuster” — and indeed, as in the 2007-11 trilogy, which raked in $2.6 billion globally, helmer Michael Bay continues to evolve ways to make robotic shape-shifting look increasingly seamless and realistic in 3D. Extensive location shooting in Hong Kong and China provides a colorful new battlefield as well as an opportunity to cash in on the franchise’s second most lucrative market, and boffo B.O. is expected globally following the pic’s world premiere in Hong Kong and its public unveiling at the Shanghai Film Festival.