Transformers: Age of Extinction Review

Transformers: Age of Extinction Review

Can the newest Transformers movie revitalize an old and tired franchise?  

Growing up in the 1980s and 90s meant that you probably at some point played with and watched Transformers.  When I first heard that the Transformers were finally coming to the big screen and with the same voice that Optimus Prime had on the old cartoon, I was very excited.  Fast forward 7 years and four films later and my love for the once nostalgic toy and show from my childhood has dwindled.  

Age of Extinction starts out as all three previous films do, we see a sinister threat to Earth  building, and then meet our human co-stars.  The new human co-stars are a small bright spot in this film.  Replacing Shia LaBeouf's whinny & annoying character Sam Whitwicky is Mark Wahlberg playing broke inventor Cade Yeager, who is struggling to make ends meet and take care of his 17 year old daughter.  While doing his best "American Pickers" impression, Cade comes across a peculiar old big rig, purchases the broken down heap, and eventually discovers that this is no rust bucket, it is Optimus Prime in disguise.  This is when the real fun starts as we learn the U.S. government is involved in hunting down both Autobots and Decepticons with help from a mysterious third party. 

The film delivers everything we have come to expect from a Michael Bay & Transformers film, and that's exactly the problem with this movie.  Huge over the top explosions, ridiculous fight scenes where giant robots somehow manage to fight but yet not kill their human co-stars, no character development, poor story-telling, and poor acting.  Perhaps the last problem being a bit of a surprise.  With a fairly star-studded cast including Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, and voice actors Peter Cullen, John Goodman, and Ken Watanabe you would think the acting should be pretty good.  However Bay finds a way to tell us a story with zero room for human actors and even though the film runs nearly 3 hours, zero room for character development.

Ultimately, I will always be a fan of the Transformers, and there were a few small spots in this movie that I really liked.  However the storyline and franchise is just old and broken down much like Optimus Prime when this film begins.  Michael Bay had created a Transformers trilogy that started pretty good in 2007, broke down and was awful in the second film in 2009, and in what we thought was the franchise finale in 2011, ended nicely.  In Transformers: Age of Extinction we get more of the same which leaves the fans and movie-goers wanting more.  I give this film a 1.5 out of 5 stars.  Unless you are a huge fan of Transformers, I would save your money and wait for this film to hit TV or Blu-Ray.