I like what I do. I like watching movies. I like writing about movies for you guys to read. It’s a pretty sweet deal; I really can’t complain about any of it. But I’ll be damned if watching Transformers: Age of Extinction wasn’t a fucking endurance test. For starters, the bloody thing is two hours and forty-five minutes. Two hours and forty-five minutes! I can’t get that time back. No amount of hoping, praying and praising the sun is ever going to restore that time. Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn’t even that long, and out of the two movies with “Colon Age of” in the title, Avengers is the one that actually could have used that extra length. Now, I have to spend even more time thinking about Michael Bay’s movie, instead of obliterating the memory with a gigantic glass of red wine and root beer (a.k.a “The Nectar of 1,000 Sorrows”). Oh well…at least I can get angry and belligerent and share that with all of you wonderful people. Now, let the hunting expedition begin!
The Netflix description of Trans4mers really tells you everything you will ever need to know about it.
In the fourth CGI-Fueled Transformers actioner, Cade Yeager, is a father trying to protect his daughter, Tessa, from the perils of the outside world.
Let’s break that down a bit. First off, we have “fourth.” Dear merciful Zuul, they’ve made four of these. And people wonder why I drink. Next, there is “CGI-Fueled.” I’m pretty sure that enough of this was made on a computer to qualify it as an animated movie. If you told me that lead-actress Nicola Peltz was really Andy Serkis doing some amazing mo-cap work, I would be inclined to believe you.
Finally, we come to the piece de resistance: the thing that summarizes the entire Transformers‘ franchise. Nowhere do they mention what the Autobots or Decepticons are doing. No, we’re told that Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is trying to protect his daughter (Peltz) from “the outside world.” What’s in that outside world? Giant Fucking KillBots from another world? Nah, no reason to put that in the description. From the first film in this series, Bay and his team have had this fascination with putting the human characters at the forefront and revolving the plot around them. Why does he think that any of us care about the antics of Shia LeBeauf or the weirdly sexual father-daughter dynamic of Wahlberg and Peltz, when we can watch Alien Robots turn into sport cars? As the old saying goes, “The world may never know.”
But I don’t have to tell you the movie is bad. Every critic worth their salt told you the movie was bad last summer. What I want to talk about for a bit is how Optimus Prime is kind of evil in this film. His first line in the movie is literally, “I’ll kill you!” I wish I could make that shit up! Optimus Prime, one of geek culture’s scions of virtue, makes his initial appearance by just threatening death to…no one in particular. He later says he’s going to violate his self-imposed “don’t kill humans” rule by killing a human. But none of that compares to what happens towards the end.
After more than two hours we finally see the DinoBots, who were promised to us in all of the promotional material leading up to the release of this movie. I’m not sure where they came from exactly, because by this point I had made a sandwich and could only give so much of a fuck. Anyway, Optimus says to them in nearly concurrent lines of dialogue, “We’re giving you freedom,” and, “Defend my family or die.” If that doesn’t sound like a form of slavery, or at the very least forced servitude, I don’t know what does. And he just has to say it right after the whole “live free and prosper” line, making him a total hypocrite. Did anyone proofread this script? Who thought any of this was a good idea? Fuck!
Ok, I’m getting worked up and that’s not how I want to be right now, so to end this article and lighten the mood I would like to present, for your reading pleasure, a list of out-of-context quotes from Trans4mers!
“We are geologists first!”
“My face is my warrant.”
“What the hell is that?” “Just some dumb inventor.”
“His name’s Shane, and he drives, Dad.”
“Algorithms! Math!”
“You’re so square.”
“You have no soul!”
“You’re just too disturbing to live!”
“Where are you going?” “To lay some hate.”
“I know you have a conscious because you’re an inventor, like me.”
“I’m a wicked warrior robot!”
I promise the next movie I write about will be good. I promise.
