Starkasm Reviews TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION
Hit the jump to read my thoughts on Michael Bay's fourth installment into the Transformers franchise. Spoiler Free!
Unfortunately, this film falls victim to the same problems at it's last two predecessors. A movie that doesn't know what story it is trying to tell. This film feels like 3 movies in one which ultimately becomes a catastrophe in the second and third act. With Orci and Kirkman no longer on writing duties, I thought this film stood a chance at telling a decent, cohesive story. But Ehren Kruger has managed to create a film that has more sub plots than TASM2, some of the most bizarre changes in character personalities mid way through the film and create one of the most generic and out-dated father/daughter relationships. All of which leave you irratated and full of doubt that a professional writer came up with this.
The editing was quite eratic at points, especially right at the beginning of the film. We get 3 sequences in the first 10 minutes which are so incredibly out of place that I was gobsmacked it got approved. The pacing of this film was incredibly slow which wasn't helped by the running time. The movie could have benefited immensely from shaving 20-30 minutes of pointless, unnecessary sub plots.
The new human characters lead by Mark Wahlberg are nothing special and get annoying real quick. With the same conversation between father/daughter/boyfriend seemingly had throughout the course of the film. A major improvement on Shia LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky though.
Another thing that was done well which hasn't been done since TF1, was some great, new bots. Bumblebee shares some of his screentime to give the newly introduced Autobots some time to shine. All of whom have some great personalities and interactions. Hound being my personal favorite.
If it were up to me, I would have kept Lockdown as the sole villain. He was a threatening, sadistic antagonist who needed more love.
Lastly, Optimus Prime's closing monologue was so incredibly cheesy and forced I literally laughed out loud.
The film is ultimately lacking in many key areas which is something that is to be expected now from this franchise. There was some pretty decent moments scattered through the film but were buried under a story with no vision and boring characters. This film seemingly kicks off a new trilogy but will need some drastic changes to get this ass in the seat for the inevitable sequel.