REVIEW -- Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Autobots, transform and roll out! 

Better late than never right? This is the first of MANY reviews I have been sitting on since end of 2014, but finally got around to posting in their entirety. Better late than never right?

Transformers: Age of Extinction (or simply Transformers 4) is a 2014 science fiction action film based on the Transformers franchise. It is the fourth installment of the live-action Transformers film series and stars Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, with Peter Cullen reprising his role as Optimus Prime. It is both a sequel to 2011's Dark of the Moon and a soft reboot of the franchise, and takes place five years later, after the Decepticon invasion of Chicago. Like its predecessors, the film is directed by Michael Bay and executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Ehren Kruger is the film's screenwriter, having written every Transformers film since Revenge of the Fallen. The film features an entirely new cast of human characters and is the first in the series to feature the Dinobots. Returning Transformers include Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Leadfoot, and Brains. The film was released on June 27, 2014, in IMAX and 3D.

Cast:

Humans

Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager
Stanley Tucci as Joshua Joyce
Nicola Peltz as Tessa Yeager
Kelsey Grammer as Harold Attinger
Jack Reynor as Shane Dyson
Sophia Myles as Darcy Tyril
Li Bingbing as Su Yueming
Titus Welliver as James Savoy
T. J. Miller as Lucas Flannery
James Bachman as Gill Wembley
Thomas Lennon as Greg
Charles Parnell as the CIA Director
Melanie Specht and Victoria Summer both played Joshua's executive assistants. Ray Lui played a motorcyclist in Hong Kong while Michael Wong was cast as a Hong Kong police officer. Han Geng has a cameo, singing and playing the guitar in a parked car that is magnetized by Lockdown's ship. General Motors Vice President of Design Edward T. Welburn has a cameo appearance as a KSI executive.

Transformers

Autobots

Peter Cullen voices Optimus Prime
John Goodman voices Hound
Ken Watanabe voices Drift
John DiMaggio voices Crosshairs
Robert Foxworth voices Ratchet
Reno Wilson voices Brains

Decepticons

Frank Welker voices Galvatron

Others

Mark Ryan voices Lockdown

Plot: (FULL Spoilers)

Sixty-five million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, beings known as the Creators detonate many metallic devices known as Seeds, wiping out most life on Earth. In the present, a geologist named Darcy Tyril discovers a dinosaur corpse covered in a strange metal in the Arctic.

Five years have passed since the Battle of Chicago and humanity has grown fearful of the Autobots and joint combat operations between them have been severed. Officially the Autobots are granted sanctuary but secretly, even without the U.S. President's knowledge, Cemetery Wind, an elite CIA unit headed by paranoid agent Harold Attinger and team leader James Savoy, tasked with hunting down the remaining Decepticons, is also secretly hunting down Autobots, believing them to be a threat, and have killed most of them. With the aid of the Transformer bounty hunter Lockdown, they ambush and brutally kill Ratchet. Their primary target, however, is Optimus Prime, whom Lockdown personally wants alive.

Meanwhile in rural Texas, Cade Yeager, a struggling inventor, and his friend Lucas buy an old truck to strip it for parts in hopes of sending Cade's daughter Tessa to college. Cade soon discovers that the truck is an injured Optimus Prime and repairs him. After locating Optimus in Texas, Cemetery Wind and Lockdown travel there and confront Cade, Tessa, and Lucas. Optimus comes out of hiding and attacks the operatives, allowing Cade and his friends to escape. They are saved by Tessa's secret boyfriend, Shane Dyson, with whom they escape, though Lucas is killed by Lockdown's grenade. While in hiding, tensions between Cade, his daughter and Shane rise due to the fact that the two teenagers kept their relationship secret. Optimus, meanwhile rallies the last remaining Autobots: Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, andCrosshairs. Cade hacks into a drone he took from the attack in Texas, and learns that Cemetery Wind is working with a corporation called KSI. They decide to infiltrate KSI headquarters in Chicago for information.

Meanwhile, Joshua Joyce, the head of KSI, shows Tyril that he has perfected transformium, the codeable, molecularly unstable metal that of which the Transformers are comoposed. He has imprisoned Brains to decode dead Transformers' brains and utilize their data for human-created Transformers. He shows Tyril his prized creation,Galvatron, who was created using data from Megatron's brain. Optimus and the Autobots storm the facility, free Brains, and start to destroy the facility. Joyce stops them, and when he explains that humans don't need the Autobots anymore, now that they can create their own Transformer soldiers, the Autobots leave.

Attinger forces Joyce to launch Galvatron and another man-made Transformer, Stinger, to pursue the Autobots. Galvatron and Optimus battle before Lockdown wounds and captures Optimus, along with Tessa, into his ship, where he locks Optimus in the middle of his trophy room, which also houses the Dinobots, who are regarded as legendary knights. Lockdown explains that the Creators want Optimus back. Before leaving, Lockdown gives Cemetery Wind a Seed, a bomb that can cyberform any area of land, giving Cade, Shane, and the Autobots time to board the ship. Cade and Shane save Tessa, and escape with Bumblebee. The other Autobots save Optimus and escape on the detachable section of Lockdown's ship containing the trophy room, before Lockdown's ship enters deep space. Optimus and Brains reveal that Galvatron is Megatron reincarnated, and that he has been manipulating KSI to build an army and steal the Seed in order to wipe out humans and create more Decepticons. Joyce retreats to Beijing with Tyril and his business associate, Su Yueming, to use the production facilities there. Cade warns Joyce, who decides to go back on his deal with Attinger. As the two argue, Galvatron activates by himself and infects all the KSI prototypes, enabling him to command them to do his bidding.

As the Autobots try to retrieve the Seed in Hong Kong, their ship is shot down by Galvatron's army, leaving Hound and Bumblebee to fight the battle outnumbered. Knowing this, Optimus releases and tames the Dinobots. With their help, they destroy Galvatron's army. Lockdown returns and uses a magnetic weapon in an effort to reclaim Optimus and the Dinobots. However, Optimus destroys it and proceeds to fight Lockdown. Cade, after managing to evade and kill Savoy, tries to help but is held at gunpoint by Attinger, who is disgusted by Cade's choice to side with the Autobots. Optimus saves Cade by killing Attinger, but Lockdown impales Optimus with his sword into a wall. Cade and Bumblebee distract Lockdown while Tessa and Shane take the sword out of Optimus, who then kills Lockdown. Galvatron retreats, vowing to battle Optimus another day. Optimus sets the Dinobots free and requests the Autobots to protect Cade and his family before flying into space with the Seed, sending a message to the Creators that he is coming for them.

The Verdict: 

I've been sitting on this review for a few months now (I've actually had these notes handwritten since seeing it in the movie theater last summer), so I'm going to keep this short by splitting this down the middle between pros and cons.

Pros

• Mark Wahlberg definitely makes a better protagonist and Shia Lebeouf. I don't mind Wahlberg replacing him from here on out - for good. 

• Lockdown is hands-down the best villain this series has seen to date. He was as terrifying of a villain on screen with his presence as the Winter Soldier in Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier. 

• Although I was pissed at Ratchet getting killed, I was pleased with Hound, Crosshairs, and Strafe as new additions to the Autobots. I didn't mind the Dinobots either, but we're going to talk about more later.

• Li Bingbing added some oriental flare to the last half of the film, but I couldn't help but think that she was only cast into this film to garner more international attention, much like Resident Evil: Retribution.

• I was relieved that Bumblebee doesn't hog the spotlight this time around, unlike the last three films. Instead, he's given some minor roles in roughly two to three major sequences. 

• There's a few Generation 1 Transformers and even M.A.S.K. references littered throughout this film. For example, Optimus Prime is found by Cade Yeager in his guise of his G1 truck configuration with the classic trailer. The gas station that the crew hides out at looks exactly like the G.A.S. station found in M.A.S.K. 

• Even though Michael Bay went a little overboard with the explosions (as usual), Age of Extinction sported some stunning visuals, but I found it that very few people die from all of the explosions blowing everything up around them. It seemed very reminiscent of Battle: Los Angeles. 

Cons

• This film is a little too long. Michael Bay was asking a lot from the audiences' attention spans. The runtime clocks to a roughly three hours total. I would have cut out the entire "double cross" from Megatron/Galvatron completely and saved that for a future sequel while Lockdown remained as the sole villain for this film.

• The human element is sill an eye sore in these films and plagues this series' narrative. I know that Michael Bay is going for some form of identification, but more airtime of this film's narrative should have been given to the Transformers. I don't understand why Michael Bay insists on shoving the human element down our throats when the Transformers are who audiences are here to see. 

• Galvatron or rather, Megatron, were completely wasted in this film as the "clone" or "copy" of Optimus Prime. At first glance, I thought they were leading into Nemesis Prime, but nope, Michael Bay threw in his own spin onto the Transformers' lore.
  
  I can say that the Dinobots were wasted as well, as they were littered throughout the commercials and trailers for this film as if they were the main attractions of this film. Instead, they were falsely advertised just like the Rhino in the commercials for Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Dinobots were merely prisoners who were conveniently on the ship that the Autobots stole that merely acted as last ditch backup to be rushed into the final twenty minutes of runtime to pull the Autobots' asses out of the mess they got themselves into.

• Since when Optimus Prime can fly? In the last two films, he's needed the flight pack upgrades from Jetfire. That's one HUGE plothole right here.

• Cade Yeager's daughter, Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz), and her boyfriend, Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor) were more annoying than funny or useful throughout the film. What is up with Michael Bay's obsession with female leads playing these generic, boring parts in these films? First, we saw it with Megan Fox for the first two films, the last film had Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and now we have this chick. I really have to wonder if Michael Bay was merely casting these women simply after seeing their Victoria's Secret or Sports Illustrated spreads... 

• I thought it was the ultimate act of stupidity to kill off the funniest guy, Lucas (T.J. Miller) in the film within the first fifteen to twenty minutes into the film. Oh well, at least he got his chance to shine in Disney's Big Hero 6 later that year. 

• Optimus Prime kills Lockdown in the same Mortal Kombat-esque fashion that he defeats EVERY antagonist in this series to date. Why couldn't they have a stalemate and allow Lockdown return in a sequel? I tend to criticize Marvel Studios for making their villains expendable, but Michael Bay has killed off all of the Decepticons to the point of extinction in these films. He treats his villains as disposable as dirty diapers. What the hell, man...

• What was up with the TONS and tons of product placement in this film? I mean, much more than usual in these films. There was Victoria's Secret, Budweiser, Epson, and the usual product placement in the form of the latest new cars.
• My final gripe with the film was the kneejerk reaction where the plot changed from an inventor's story to a narrative about "OH MY GOD, I gotta save my teenage daughter!" The whole premise about the film being about an inventor was lost by the end of the first 45 minutes of the film. 

Final Thoughts

I saw this film about three times over the past few months since its theatrical release and I have to admit that it's Michael Bay's most visually stunning Transformers film to date. The new cast of humans is a nice breath of fresh air, as Mark Wahlberg is a welcome addition/replacement to Shia LaBeouf. The new cast of Autobots were welcome additions as well, but I wished the Dinobots got more screen time. While Lockdown provided this franchise with it's first truly terrifying villain to date, it was a damn shame to see him defeated after his debut appearance. I personally would have preferred to see him working side-by-side with these so-called "Creators" that him and Prime were referring to. Oh well, we know this is the start of a new trilogy from here on out as Bay is going to keep cranking these things out as long as he's making a profit off of them.

If you've seen all of the previous entries, go ahead and see this one. You're not doing yourself any harm. If you're new to the franchise, give it a rental. This is a better take on the series than it's predecessors. I'm giving Transformers: Age of Extinction a 7.75 out of 10.