To be honest with you wonderful people, it took me awhile to decided how I wanted to attack this 🙂 but I think I found a way I can be fair. So to start, Transformers: Age of Extinction is another incredible action flick to add to the Transformers series. With Michael Bay you can expect tons of CG and lots of explosions and he definitely delivered.
If you look on IMDB for this movie, you’ll find a one-sentence storyline and a run-on sentence in the “summary” section. So let me give you a little help 😀 A mechanic/inventor named Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is sent to an old, dilapidated movie theatre to see what can be salvaged. Along with his assistant Lucas (T.J. Miller), they sift through the run-down mess and stumble upon a truck (surprise?). After they buy the truck Cade announces his plan to strip it for parts. Once they end up at Cade’s house, they have to explain why they purchased an irreparable truck to his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz). I’m sure you can see where this is going.
The antagonists of course are the CIA and government contractors. But I’d like to thank Transformers for giving us Kelsey Grammer and Stanley Tucci as the finer parts of this movie. By announcing both of their names, I have officially listed all of the positives about this movie. Now to the nitty-gritty….
Not only did this movie hit every character stereotype you could possibly think of, they force you to sit through it for 3 HOURS. If I had to endure 10 more minutes of Tessa and her stereotypical valley-girl moments in those cut-up shorts, I promise you I would’ve walked out. 90% of her dialogue was utter trash and the guy who played her boyfriend was so terrible I’m not even listing his name. I hate when Hollywood puts Americans in roles of minorities or internationals (Remember Jake Gyllenhaal in “Prince of Persia”? You mean to tell me you couldn’t have found a PERSIAN to play the Prince of PERSIA?). Whoever this guy was that made this lackluster attempt of being Irish failed with a capital F.
If you actually know the Transformers storyline about Dinobots and follow the cartoons and comics, you are definitely not going to like this movie. Also to note, this movie is not a continuation from the last Transformers movie, this is a new one with new characters and a lot of things that pop-up that don’t get explained.
So let’s go over this again just to be clear:
Good things– Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, lots of action, cool fight scenes, tons of explosions.
Bad things– Too much talking and action from the humans, too much dialogue from John Goodman (who voiced one of the Autobots), not enough explanation behind events and characters, poor dialogue from Tessa and her boyfriend, every other scene was a commercial, it was far too long (3 hours and felt like it).
We didn’t even go over the fact this could be considered a 3hr long commercial! I’m not even going to ruin it but keep track of all of the brand names you see. Brands that might get blown up but the name still shows LOL! So obvious and tacky, you can’t help but laugh. The sad thing is that it happens so often 🙁
I tried to be fair as possible with this one and it was hard. Highest I can give this is a 6.5 out of 10. I’m seeing a lot of 40/100 and 4’s out of 10 online, but I’d say 6.5 is about right. The only reason you might not want to see this in 3D is because if you start to get bored or want to leave, you’ll be angry you paid $15 for those goofy glasses 😉 but if you can get over the run-time it’s an excellent movie for 3D!
-Jon
TPR