Transformers 4: Age of Extinction

[thenammagazine]

Well I rented the 3D version and watched it last night. I'm shocked that a lot of you seemed to rate this lower than Part 2 and 3. I thought it was MUCH better. No Shia, no Tad Hamilton military team, no belching, farting, leg humping, giant balls or any of that crap. Honestly it felt like a 1990's Michael Bay movie to me. Much more in the tradition of The Rock and especially Armageddon compared to most of the junk he's done from Pearl Harbor to now.

It had a very good cast, no one that I found annoying. Even the daughter and her boyfriend were surprisingly decent.

What's really cool is that it pretty much works as a direct sequel to the 2007 original. In Revenge of the Fallen we are stupidly presented with the notion that the final city battle in the first one was somehow swept under the rug and people don't really believe in transformers. But AoE starts with people pissed off about the urban destruction. A more fitting evolution, IMO. You can just watch TF 2007 and then Age of Extinction and assume that Stanley Tucci got Megatron's head from the bottom of the ocean. Ignore ROTF and DOTM entirely. You can't ask for much more of a palette cleanser than that (minus a full reboot under a new director which would be great but honestly just not something we can get worked up about at this point.)

I felt Age of Extinction had a bit of a 1986 animated movie vibe with some of its early good guy deaths, Galvatron, and a powerful third party enemy in space. I was hoping that the "creators" would be revealed to be those guys with the three faces that would say, "guilty" in the original cartoon. I'm excited to see where Optimus was going at the end of the movie.

The big criticism is of course the freaking running time. Good gosh, I don't know how often I'll ever have the energy to sit through the whole thing. I remember toward the end of the movie thinking back to the early stuff at Mark Wahlberg's barn and thinking "was that really a part of this same movie, I feel like I'm watching a trilogy marathon," lol.

Anyway, I thought it was fun and harmless check your brain entertainment. Not on par with the great summer films we've gotten this year of course but probably as good as we could have hoped for from Bay.

 

[Ondi]

Well I rented the 3D version and watched it last night. I'm shocked that a lot of you seemed to rate this lower than Part 2 and 3. I thought it was MUCH better. No Shia, no Tad Hamilton military team, no belching, farting, leg humping, giant balls or any of that crap. Honestly it felt like a 1990's Michael Bay movie to me. Much more in the tradition of The Rock and especially Armageddon compared to most of the junk he's done from Pearl Harbor to now.

It had a very good cast, no one that I found annoying. Even the daughter and her boyfriend were surprisingly decent.

What's really cool is that it pretty much works as a direct sequel to the 2007 original. In Revenge of the Fallen we are stupidly presented with the notion that the final city battle in the first one was somehow swept under the rug and people don't really believe in transformers. But AoE starts with people pissed off about the urban destruction. A more fitting evolution, IMO. You can just watch TF 2007 and then Age of Extinction and assume that Stanley Tucci got Megatron's head from the bottom of the ocean. Ignore ROTF and DOTM entirely. You can't ask for much more of a palette cleanser than that (minus a full reboot under a new director which would be great but honestly just not something we can get worked up about at this point.)

I felt Age of Extinction had a bit of a 1986 animated movie vibe with some of its early good guy deaths, Galvatron, and a powerful third party enemy in space. I was hoping that the "creators" would be revealed to be those guys with the three faces that would say, "guilty" in the original cartoon. I'm excited to see where Optimus was going at the end of the movie.

The big criticism is of course the freaking running time. Good gosh, I don't know how often I'll ever have the energy to sit through the whole thing. I remember toward the end of the movie thinking back to the early stuff at Mark Wahlberg's barn and thinking "was that really a part of this same movie, I feel like I'm watching a trilogy marathon," lol.

Anyway, I thought it was fun and harmless check your brain entertainment. Not on par with the great summer films we've gotten this year of course but probably as good as we could have hoped for from Bay.

 

[Khev]

One thing's for sure, TF4 had the best 3D I've seen in any movie, period. Every other scene had a lens flare or ash or snow or cannon or something sticking out of the screen. There was one scene where the camera was panning across the farmhouse and it caught the 3D sunrise and the glare from the sun made me squint my eyes. Either Bay or his cinematographer really knows what he's doing when it comes to the new technology.

 

[Ondi]

One thing's for sure, TF4 had the best 3D I've seen in any movie, period. Every other scene had a lens flare or ash or snow or cannon or something sticking out of the screen. There was one scene where the camera was panning across the farmhouse and it caught the 3D sunrise and the glare from the sun made me squint my eyes. Either Bay or his cinematographer really knows what he's doing when it comes to the new technology.

Well I can't comment on the 3D as I didn't see it in that format. Sounds very impressive from what you've written but everytime I watched it in the past I came out with a headache so I gave up on it

Either way I couldn't forgive this movie. The new autobots with the exception Hound didn't even seem loyal to prime with some of the banter throughout the film. Bee was lost in the mayhem for me.
Prime? well I liked him at the start but they just seem to have lost the essence of him which I thought they got pretty spot on in the first film. His attitude and manner has become quite cold IMO now (yes I realise he's been persecuted and all but Prime was always bigger than that). If Peter wasn't voicing him I wouldn't know who I was watching anymore. Anyway those are my personal opinions and I say that as a massive fan that sat in the cinema without one iota of excitement throughout the entire ride.

One thing I do look forward to is a new director as I'm sure we all are

 

[Khev]

Either way I couldn't forgive this movie. The new autobots with the exception Hound didn't even seem loyal to prime with some of the banter throughout the film. Bee was lost in the mayhem for me.

Yeah they were a pretty jaded bunch this time around. I guess I just rate it as a Bayformers movie at this point and it had just *enough* classic stuff that I wasn't really bothered by anything. I can see how it'd be a dealbreaker though if you really wanted Prime to be unwavering in optimism and his cronies totally loyal to him. I actually did buy that the Autobots *had* been through hell and were just doing their best to deal with it. I actually liked Prime just saying "eff it" and attacking the transformium plant in broad daylight the moment he realized what the humans were doing. I also liked watching him just blow away

Spoiler

Kelsey Grammar.

I felt his lethality was justified in this movie compared to the last one where he mercilessly executed a robot that was begging for his life.

 

[Ondi]

I agree with you, good points, my nostalgia is in overdrive for Optimus no doubt about it. He was a big deal for me as a kid.

I just think even dialogue can change what you see on screen (eg. rather than "kill them all!" why not just say 'take them down Autobots' or something like that. It would help keep the integrity of the character, now he just seems like a dark brooding killer.........I guess it adds more weight to what going down I suppose).............. just my nostalgia talking again just ignore me khev

I felt his lethality was justified in this movie compared to the last one where he mercilessly executed a robot that was begging for his life.

So much 'Yes' right there

 

[tylerdurden]

while "age of extinction" is a terrible movie in its own right, i do agree that it is noticeably better than parts 2 and 3.

 

[chewblacca]

Went to best buy this afternoon and 3 days after its release the shelf was full of not only the regular release but the steel books as well. There had to beat least 20 of them. I have never seen an exclusive still around after the first two days, and if it was there were maybe 1 or 2 of them. I saw the same at Walmart including some box set with toys. I guess this movie is pretty bad.

 

[golobulus]

Bought the Blu-ray and watched it for the first time last night. I will say that it was refreshing to have Transformers without Shia LaBouf for a change and I thought Wahlberg did a good job. I preferred him and his daughter as the main characters instead of the Witwicky clan. It seemed pretty long but I enjoyed it. Didn't really get where the "collector" guy came from or some of the back story regarding the dinosaurs but I'll watch it again and probably pick up some missed subtleties if they were there. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and it exceeded my expectations. The human characters were a little over the top. What kind of weiner would be hunting autobots that just saved humanity from the Decepticons? I guess there are enough wack jobs out there that it could happen.

 

[Khev]

Bought the Blu-ray and watched it for the first time last night. I will say that it was refreshing to have Transformers without Shia LaBouf for a change and I thought Wahlberg did a good job. I preferred him and his daughter as the main characters instead of the Witwicky clan. It seemed pretty long but I enjoyed it. Didn't really get where the "collector" guy came from or some of the back story regarding the dinosaurs but I'll watch it again and probably pick up some missed subtleties if they were there. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and it exceeded my expectations. The human characters were a little over the top. What kind of weiner would be hunting autobots that just saved humanity from the Decepticons? I guess there are enough wack jobs out there that it could happen.

He was just an evil bastard that wanted a billion dollars. Nothing more than that. Stanley Tucci needed transformium and there wasn't enough from just Decepticons alone so Grammer had his black ops team hunt Autobots as well (of course he told both the White House and Tucci that they were only after Decepticons.) Grammer was also supposed to provide the "Seed" to Tucci in order to get his share of the company and that meant hunting Prime for Lockdown. As far as "complicated plots" go I actually thought that they did a pretty good job of setting up the various overlapping character motiviations.

I watched the first TF (2007) again last night all the way through for the first time in quite a few years and still found that it had a certain charm but even it had more annoying characters and crude toilet humor than AoE. Right now of the four I'd probably rank AoE as #1. And you really can watch it as a direct sequel to the original and ignore parts 2 and 3, which I think is really good. AoE opens with Megatron "dead" just like he was at the end of the first one and after a heavily referenced "Chicago invasion." The nice thing is that they show quite a few clips of the Chicago battle so you get the jist of it just fine. Pretend that Starscream is still up in space somewhere (since that's where he blasted off at the end of the first one) and you've got a nice one/two combination.

Also in AoE a big deal is made about Prime breaking his one rule (never harm humans) and you never really hear him make a big deal about that after the first movie. So again, watching 1 and then immediately jumping to 4 just has a much better dramatic flow (assuming you even care about such things when watching Bayformers.) AoE really is the sequel we should have gotten in 2009.

 

[golobulus]

^^^ good points, I agree.

 

[Niltusk]

Finally got around to watching this. Wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined, but I was watching it as a 'giant robot' movie, not a transformers movie. Was really, really glad that annoying Human got starched pretty early on (Thor producers please take note that annoying humans shouldn't survive) of course they had to bastardize the hell out of Galvatron, but at least he looked pretty decent, better than he's looked in any of the other flicks imo, and he retained Megatron's mind, and actually seemed to have personality. Also, gotta admit, if they were going to totally **** the Galvatron character like that, at least going for the Nemesis Prime look was a nice touch. Not knowing one thing about this before hand, except that the Dino bots were in it, I definitely loved seeing Megs in that black semi form.

 

[KitFisto]

This was alot better than 2 and 3 IMO. I think most of the hate is based off of how much people despised 2 and 3 so it carried over to 4. I'm NOT saying this was a great Transformers movie, but as a movie it was entertaining and certainly better than the previous 2.

 

[Matt S]

It was a fun movie. IT had more BAYSLOSIONS than the last one for sure. No parents = good thing

 

[dan350zr]

Typical Bay movie, all action no story....

It was entertaining summer popcorn movie but I have no desire to see it again or buy the blu-ray of it...

 

[jnmx2000]

Saw this film last night, awful movie, so many random subplots that have no need to be there, not to mention they killed the funniest character in the film early on, I actually preferred the old cast to this one, minus the parents though. All in all just a bad movie, was that supposed to be the dinobots at the end? because that was a sorry excuse for the dinobots, they were a pretty pointless add on and pretty much just spit on the actual greatness of the real dinobots, here's hoping someone picks this up that actually knows transformers.

 

[KitFisto]

Are people still looking for actual Transformers movies out of these? If so, why?

 

[evenflow]

This was alot better than 2 and 3 IMO. I think most of the hate is based off of how much people despised 2 and 3 so it carried over to 4. I'm NOT saying this was a great Transformers movie, but as a movie it was entertaining and certainly better than the previous 2.

I agree as well. And no Shia is a plus.

 

[Niltusk]

Saw this film last night, awful movie, so many random subplots that have no need to be there, not to mention they killed the funniest character in the film early on, I actually preferred the old cast to this one, minus the parents though. All in all just a bad movie, was that supposed to be the dinobots at the end? because that was a sorry excuse for the dinobots, they were a pretty pointless add on and pretty much just spit on the actual greatness of the real dinobots, here's hoping someone picks this up that actually knows transformers.

You liked the dip**** friend who ****ed everything up and you miss Shia? My god, you're a special flower.

 

[Niltusk]

Are people still looking for actual Transformers movies out of these? If so, why?

Yep! Even having Peter Cullen talk for half a movie and I still don't think its a Transformers movie.