Transformers: Age of Extinction

     Well…the time has come once again, for another “Transformers” film. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really care about the films from the beginning. Seriously, I couldn’t give less of a shit if I tried. While I may have been a fan for a short time, my enjoyment for it died out within the span of a couple years. Since then, I didn’t really have much interest over what else would come from the franchise. When I saw trailers for the first film, I didn’t go see it, because I wasn’t into the stuff anymore; when I caught it off tv months afterwards, I just thought it was mediocre. Then we get the second one, which I didn’t bother going to see, due to a phase I was going through; when I finally saw it, I didn’t like it. Then we get to the third film, which I wasn’t planning on seeing to begin with, because I thought it would have been much of the same stuff; and it pretty much was, but there were some elements that I did enjoy, and actually started to have a bit of investment in. However, looking back on it, there really isn’t a whole lot about it that stood out that much for me.

                Case and point, I don’t care about “Transformers” as much as everyone else does. So going into the fourth film, I went in just simply to kill time, since I literally had nothing else to do that day. And…what are my thoughts? Well…let's find out.

                Years after the events in Chicago, Cade Yeager, an inventor, finds a badly beaten Optimus and helps him back up to full speed, only to result in him and his family being tracked down. The reason for this is that the Transformers are being hunted by the government, so they can get the metal they’re made of, and by Lockdown, a hunter who has put a bounty on Optimus Prime, to add to his collection. While the film does have some elements that work, the rest of it turns out to be much of the same shtick that Michael Bay’s been putting in the previous films.

We still have comic reliefs, we still have a hot girl in the middle of action, and we even have some of the generic government crap that’s always common in these films. It isn’t as bad as when it was done the first time around, but when it’s constantly being repeated in each of these films, it tends to get tiresome. Granted, the comic reliefs aren’t done as badly as the Whitwickys, but I digress. My point is, when you get down to it, these films have repeating elements, only with slight changes here and there, and it just tends to get stale and boring, even when you have action scenes that we’ve seen beforehand.

One thing that was a slight nuisance was the resurrection of Megatron, now brought back as Galvatron, was man-made and originally set out to be a government controlled Optimus Prime. For those who don’t know, Galvatron wasn’t Megatron resurrected by humans; he was revived by Unicron, the planet eating Transformer. People, I’m not a Transformers fan, and EVEN I know this! That, and the film is TWO HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LONG!! This thing is as long as “The Lone Ranger,” and it really gets tiresome! Seriously, somebody get a proper editor for these films!

Now, is there a silver lining to this film? Well, of course. For starters, the tone of the film is very serious, aside from some annoying bits. You actually do feel some act of desperation with the characters, both human and robot. Some have criticized Optimus going a bit psycho, but I actually can understand the turmoil he’s going through. I mean, he’s lost some of his only friends to the people who he’s been protecting for years, and this is how they repay him; I’d go a little fucking nuts too, if this happened to me. Not only that, but with some of the action scenes, we actually do get a bit more color to depict which Transformers are what, instead of being completely metal blurs throughout the whole thing. Hell, I’ll even admit the action is a little bit better than the first two.

That brings us to the two actors that really do their best here: Kelsey Grammar and Mark Wahlberg. Grammar as a government agent does do a pretty damn good job here, but I’d be lying if it wasn’t out of place. I mean, the man’s really damn good in the film, but he feels more like a “Die Hard” villain than he does a Transformers villain. Then there’s Marky Mark as Cade Yeager, who is a HUGE improvement over Shia LaButtfuck in the previous films. For one, Mark actually does look like he gives a damn in this film, and can really make half of the stupid shit in the script work to his advantage and make it funny. Hell, there’s a scene in the movie where he crashes a spaceship into a car, and the driver asks for his insurance, to which he responds with “oh yeah, insurance on a goddamn spaceship! Get me my alien gun, Lucas!” and just cracks open a beer that got scattered onto the street and jugs it. It works, because Mark is that damn good of an actor, and Cade is an actual character that does shit! In all honesty, if this film was just edited down to at least two hours, and was the true first “Transformers” movie given back in 2007, it would be worth it just for Mark as Cade.

                Overall, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is nothing new, at least to me. I did like Mark Wahlberg and Kelsey Grammar, as well as few other things, but with some of the repetitive stuff and how long it is…I’ll let you decide.

Rating: 5/10