I had low expectations going into Transformers: Age of Extinction (or Trans4mers as it really should be called), lower than low. I found the first Transformers film to be totally acceptable. It was funny, it had action, sexy ladies, and at the very least a decent story. Over the next two films this was gradually "refined". Each film was less funny, had more action, more sexy ladies, and less and less of a decent story. I still went, though, because I liked the action and the sexy ladies. And the story was passable enough for me to get through it. Not every film needs to be a Citizen Kane or Schindler's List, we need the popcorn blockbusters as well. They help us unwind, just get out of the real world's worries for a bit. Let someone else worry. Then we have Age of Extinction.
When I first saw the run time of the film, 165 minutes, I thought: "Okay, sure. That sounds a bit long, but I'm sure they have their reason." Coming out of it, I'm not sure they did. The film as a whole seems like a whole bunch of ideas crammed together to get as much bang for their buck as possible. The entire last hour of the film (and yes, I checked the clock, I was already getting antsy at that time) seems like it's a film on its own. They more or less closed up the story that started the film, and they enrolled on a similar, but still different mission. It's not the typical "oh, we were doing the wrong thing, now let's fix it" type of scenario, it was more of a "oh, we did a bunch of things, but now we're in a different film so let's do them again". I remember hearing about Michael Bay wanting to make a second trilogy of Transformers film, the fact that the first installment in it has two films worth of stuff makes me question that.
Alright, I've done the obligatory spiel on how long the film is, now what about something a bit more important. The characters. The human characters of the film are all new, and considering the greatness of some of the new actors (Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer) you'd think they'd be at least decent. They aren't. They are your run of the line characters. You have the troubled father, the rich maniac, the CIA agent out of control, the hot daughter, the shady boyfriend, and a whole lot of people not even worthy of mention. Sometimes in films like these that's all you need. You stick a few stereotypical characters in between a bunch of robots and you're good to go, but we have to spend three hours with these people. Three hours of them running around trying to do what the story tells them to do. The fact that I by the end of the film can't even remember their names, speaks volumes of how they are treated. The characters are all over the place, they're brave when the story wants them to be, stupid when the story wants them to be, scared shitless when the story wants them to be, they're just following the by-the-book story. You don't actually believe that they're real people, they don't seem like they're actually in the situations they are in. They seem far too comfortable with what's going on, and breaks down at the littlest of whims.
If you've read this far and you still want to watch the film you're probably thinking "eh, the others were alright, it's not like I had high expectations anyway", am I right? I had the same thoughts. The film has been out for two weeks in the USA as I'm writing this. I've seen the reviews coming in. Hating on it. Saying its horrible. I've even seen the hardcore Transformers fans in my twitter feed almost in tears over how badly executed it was, fans who were all over the third installment of the franchise. Still, after all that, I too thought "how bad can it really be?" The answer is simply "that bad". It's not worth your money. Wait till it's on Netflix, wait till it's on some shady cable network, wait till it's out on Pirate Bay, I don't care. It's just not worth your money. During this film I was for the first time, in my life, considering walking out. At the two-hour mark I had to talk myself down, I had already spent the money. I wish I hadn't talked myself down.
Epilogue:
Oh, by the way, remember all those dinosaur robots from the posters and trailers? If that's the only reason you're going, don't. Just don't, it's not worth it. Wait for it to be on YouTube.
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