We rolled Netflix, which gave us action & adventure and led us into today's... film...
Blegh. I'm really not a huge fan of giving out negative reviews. I think there's a place for them, but in my experience reading criticism online, the trend is usually towards just dishing it out for negativity's sake, or to appease a certain audience. Out and out saying a movie is bad and lacks any redeeming features strikes me as a really poor way to go about this, but... well... consider the film we're watching here.
The whole notion that modern films are nothing but giant explosions and mindless action and tits thrown in for fanservice is patently ridiculous. Even the vast majority of action films at least make some attempt at a coherent plot and show a modicum of restraint. But Michael Bay's Transformers films are, although I really hate to say this, representative of everything I find distasteful about modern film. Constant, never-ending action, characters with no development or relatable traits, camerawork that's hard to follow, backgrounds your eyes just can't process, a plot that feels like it's going in ten different directions and ultimately goes nowhere... Age of Extinction is just a bad movie.
I wouldn't call it the WORST movie I've ever seen, per say - until Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Serenity stop existing, I'm hesitant to hand out that particular title to anything. If it weren't for the ability to pause and make fun of the dumber parts to my chat friends for as long as I like before resuming, I don't know if I'd've made it through the whole film. It's not as offensive as 2 was, but when that's the highest praise I can offer, it's not saying much. Give the damned thing a miss.
...
...still, I am ostensibly running a blog with the aim of roughly 2000 words on each film, so I might as well give it a shot. I watched it all the way through and complained about it enough to friends during the runtime. I can spare a few words for the blog.
The plot, insofar as it stands, involves the Transformers being on the run after some huge catastrophe from the last movie (which I haven't watched, for the record) turned public opinion against them. The US military has sworn off all associations with the Autobots, but what I think is some rogue branch or a PMC or something has started working with the Deceptacons to kill off the Autobots and make them look like the bad guys, with the help of a new Transformer named Lockdown. Meanwhile, Mark "My Character's Name Isn't Important Because You'll Just Be Calling Me Mark Wahlberg" Wahlberg's work as a down on his luck mechanic with a needlessly sexualized teenage daughter to take care of results in him discovering Optimus Prime in hiding. He tries to befriend Prime, but it takes an attack by the militaryPMCwhatever unit to gain his trust and also pick up a boyfriend for the daughter, who constantly oscillates in and out of the Irish accent he's supposed to have because we really learned our lesson about making fun of minorities but not really. Along the way, they uncover a plan by a Steve Jobs come lately character who plans to use mined Transformium to create rip-off Transformers and also My Little Pony plushies and Beats headphones. However, he's also created an Optimus Prime rip-off that turns out to be Megatron, and Lockdown plans on stealing the Transformium and also Optimus so he can get his hands on a nuke that will coat the entire world in Transformium and turn everybody into living metal just like the dinosaurs who come up at the beginning except they never show up again but an entire different group of Dinobots show up and...
I don't know how any of this relates to one another. It's generally possible follow each of the plot lines pretty well. They're simple enough to understand. But in trying to actually follow how everything actually relates to one another and, more importantly, why I should care about any of it, I've got nothing. Everything is just stretched thinner and thinner and thinner throughout the movie's runtime, to the point where I just gave up by the very end. I completely neglected to mention all of the stuff about the ancient conspiracy about the origins of the Transformers, and several characters who I feel like I should know but Wikipedia tells me are completely new to the movie.
Put another way - I kept up with all the twists and turns in Metal Gear Solid 2 just fine, and swallowed every hour-long dialogue in 4, but I simply could not keep pace with this movie.
The effort might at least be worth it if the action was good, but it's really not. There's one or two little bits I like, such as the new longcoat Trasnformer (Crosshairs, I think) using dragshoots to fight Deceptacon dogs (?) in midair, or Hound's one-robot stand against the Deceptacons towards the end, but anyone who knows anything about these movies should know what the problem is by now. Supposedly high-stakes, high-excitement scenes get brought down to no-stakes and no-excitement by a lack of attachment to the characters and a focus more on huge shots where everything in the world blows up at once and convoluted situations abound. Everything's just so fucking loud and noisy, in both an audio AND a visual sense, so I can barely follow or get invested even when I want to.
Honestly, some of the set-pieces feel like parodies of what you'd expect in a decent Transformers film. Like a bit where the human characters get to do all sorts of cool car stunts while just out of frame we see two Transformers going at each other's throats. But no time for that, we've gotta use a randomly placed ramp in an abandoned building to jump down onto another perfectly placed ramp at the bottom. Or how about the bit where Mark "Be Like Me If You Want To Have A Hot Daughter" Wahlberg has crashed a hijacked Deceptacon ship into someone's car, threatens to kill the guy for demanding an insurance statement, then takes a chug of Bud Lite and asks his daughter for his gun. Could go with Optimus Prime talking about how he's all about freedom and liberty while beating several new recruits into the ground and peppering his speech with threats to kill them if they won't work with him.
Or, if we really want to go with my favorite incongruous moment, we could talk about a death early in the film. The one where Mark "I Have Many Silly Nicknames Bestowed Upon Me In Quotation Marks In the Place Where My Middle Name Should Go" Wahlberg's overweight comedy sidekick business partner - who, up to this point, had done nothing but crack wise even as his home and all his possessions were destroyed in an attempt by the military to murder him - falls behind as the rest of the group runs away, resulting in him getting hit by a Transformium minibomb that completely disintegrates everything but his now metal skeleton. They linger on this man's still-standing corpse for such a goddamn long time, acting all shocked and solemn over the fact that HEY A MAIN CHARACTER JUST DIED... despite the fact that we knew NOTHING about him. Then the scene's over and we've gotta get back to "I'm only here to fuck your daughter" quips.
If I had to characterize the movie, and possibly the whole franchise, it would be with that scene. Inaprorpiate light-heartedness during incomprehensible action scenes, followed by a really out of place moment (like a serious character death or a robot pissing on someone) before getting right back to status quo without any acknowledgement beyond the hope for an audience's laughter. Business as usual isn't any fun to hang around with, what with all its Dutch angles and jokes made out of product placement, and it's just straight-up awkward to sit through the sudden shifts.
I wish I could at least say the special effects look good, but unfortunately, they don't. The Transformers' transformation scenes still look serviceable, and I'm sure they're still technical marvels, but they still look ugly and don't read well at all, especially with their new more human faces. When they're in "real" sets, the only way to distinguish them is by color pallet, and in all CGI environments, they all just fade into one slightly clunky design. And, as a special point I really feel deserves particular mention; Galvatron's transformation sequence looks like ass.
Seriously, I do not know how a movie with so much money poured into it as a Transformers film got away with an effect like that. Instead of the usual complex but followable transformations akin to the ones in the cartoons and toys, he and any Transformers like him just turn into a cloud of CG cubes, fly through the air, and then reform into their alternate shape. They're not even GOOD CG cubes, because they don't look like they're made out of a truck or a robot, they just straight up look like CG cubes. I wasn't even IN the movie for any of its running time, and somehow they still managed to yank me straight out.
Just... ugh, it's a really bad movie. Again, not the worst I've ever seen, but certainly boring and lifeless, and that's bad enough on its own. I'm sure someone could make a GOOD Transformers movie - maybe one exploring Optimus' struggles as his friends and people are cut down by the very species they're trying to protect, with the temptation to give into his diametric opposite's ideology growing ever stronger (as opposed to the usual "OPTIMUS ANGRY" schtick) - but it seems almost impossible at this point. Normally, I do everything I can to respect others' choices in the media they consume, but with Age of Extinction and all the other films in the series, I just have to wonder why they choose to do this to themselves.
I'm gonna stop here before the relentless negativity gets to me, and just write down my assorted thoughts.
(Assorted thoughts:
-It's really weird that, out of all the franchises getting cinematic universes nowadays, Paramount hasn't tried to make one out of Transformers. They've got so many characters that, if the TF wiki is believed, could easily carry their own film, but they're still sticking to the old formula of announcing one sequel after the last one succeeds and leaving it at that. Maybe they'd have to show some restraint if they didn't pour so much money into every installment.
-Lockdown had a gun for a face, so that's kinda cool, I guess.
- "It's the MOVIES nowadays that's a problem. Sequels and remakes, all that crap." You don't get to make that joke.
- Apparently this was a soft reboot of the franchise, but aside from the absence of a certain actual cannibal, I didn't notice.
- Obama HOPE posters, but with Optimus Prime and HATE. They're only on screen for a second, but it's the definition of trying too hard.
- Why does Mark Wahlberg's robot dog make Transformers transformation sound effects, but not the Transformers themselves?
- On the matter of needlessly dark subject matter, I'm sure the best way to engender a positive audience response is by having the first Transformer you show be a fan favorite, and then brutally slaughtering him.
- I apparently called Mark Wahlberg's character Yaegherberg at one point. I don't know why I thought it was funny or worth noting here.
- "What kind of man trades his flesh and blood brethren for metal?" "The trouble with loyalty to a cause is the cause always betrays you." "I do not know if we will meet again, but every time you look to the stars, think of one of them as my soul." "I know you have a conscience because you're an inventor like me." There were a lot of meaningless meaningful quotes in this movie, weren't there?
- Do you think Galvatron constantly looking like Megatron has something to do with you keeping Megatron's head in the room, Mister Inventor Guy?
- Maybe it would have helped if they'd stuck to their "OUR TRANSFORMERS ARE BETTER IN EVERY WAY" mission statement and called him Optimal Prime instead of Galvatron.
- No "Me, Grimlock" = Bad choice. I barely know anything about Transformers, and even I know that.
-Basically I spent the entirety of the running time wanting to watch George Clooney use a jackhammer to rapidly stake vampires again. From Dusk Till Dawn, 10/10, highly recommend, watch that instead.)
Although I was complaining all throughout the post, I do find now all the complaining helped. I haven't had the best day the last few days, so getting to bash on an out and out shitty movie helped a little. Still, I'm heading up to university in a few days, so here's to hoping I get a good movie for Wednesday and Friday.
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