Transformers: Age of Extinction

In a world of thrifty ninety-minute movies, this could have been a blockbuster trying for the title of “best part of the saga", there’s certainly enough material for it. For some mysterious reason this spuriously swelled to the length of two regular feature films and so each great minute/scene/wisecrack is alternated by two to three minutes/scenes/wisecracks that are boring, irrelevant filler (at best) or brought ad absurdum to kitsch infantility in Bay’s inimitable style (at worst and unfortunately most frequently). (21/09/2014)

Undiscerning lovers of robots big and small will be satisfied, I’m sure. But what about the rest of the unfortunate audience? This reboot confirms that the cast of the first trilogy was far from bad. Installment number four lacks the human element of Shia LaBeouf, not to mention the comical element provided by excellent actors such as Frances McDormand and John Turturro. The fourth Transformers contains exactly one funny line of dialogue (“The movies nowadays, that’s the trouble - sequels and remakes, bunch of crap”) and it comes in the very beginning. The following two uninteresting hours leading to the Hong Kong climax contain just two short relatively good sequences (Tessa’s kidnapping and the steel cables in Chicago), the first one being the only moment in the movie capable of evoking some emotion and the other the only original idea we haven’t seen done before. The Chinese metropolis setting is pleasantly refreshing, but I wonder how many viewers are able to follow the plot line through the scuffle in the city streets, after the previous two hours of staring at the screen in bafflement. There’s nothing to talk about regarding the characters and their relationships (like in the first episode), and the climax loses in epicness to the militaristic sequence in Transformers 3. The marines, by the way, are also missing here. They had their place in the Transformers universe. Watching this to the end took a lot of effort on my part. (25/06/2014)

In the "American Blockbuster" column, this is probably the most vivid collection of the worst that can be found in contemporary Hollywood. Watching the new Transformers is like opening up all the US Army ammunition depots and handing them to those who want to kick the filmmaking Mecca. It is almost ethereally paradoxical that this was done by a man I have admired immensely in this discipline, and who until now has paid the ultimate price in the art of turning a film field into a dollar. I don't think Bay has lost his good judgment. The previous fitness pumping clearly screamed how much better he can do behind the camera. He just lost all humility and mindlessly milked a cow for three hours that was long overdue to be embalmed. For the first hour, when they seem to introduce the characters in a style that could be done in ten minutes, I thought that my patience level still had a bit left in the tank. I still accept the fact that it's impotent in terms of its plot, completely off in the acting (OK, Stanley Tucci has a lot of fun copying John Turturro), and absolutely deaf musically. But then there was the event that redefines the term "digital brothel" for the new edition of the Interpretive Dictionary, and my personal fuse was finally blown. After all the destructive feasts I've enjoyed so much at the movies over the years, I've started to wish this era would go mercilessly to... (24/09/2014)

Contrary to many users here and the rating of the film in general, I liked the fourth episode of Transformers more than its predecessor, which is also due to the recasting of Shia LaBeouf, who was very annoying in the third. While Mark Wahlberg is not to blame for the somewhat crappy script, he was nevertheless much more tolerable, which cannot be said for his daughter and her boyfriend, who were similarly annoying as Shia. The partner-family story line went completely over my head and the film could have done without it just fine. Stanley Tucci could have been given more space and Kelsey Grammer was fine, but his villain didn't have enough charisma. To accuse the film of an over-long running time, lack of emotion and a silly script would be like carrying firewood into the woods, as the franchise builds on this combination – and in this case it bothered me less than with the third part. As for the technical execution, it is again an audiovisual orgy, of which I liked the alien ship, the escape from it and the final battle in Hong Kong the most. Besides that, as a die-hard dinosaur fan, I liked the film incorporated these giant creatures into the plot, even though it might have looked excessive. In the end, it's a weaker three stars, but since I found Extinction better than its predecessor, I'll give it a boost to differentiate the two works qualitatively. If I’d seen the film in the cinema, however, it would be a clean three stars. (01/09/2019)

Relative brain loss / the fun is worse than part two and three. Something keeps getting moved from place to place under a flimsy pretext, takes a position, destroys everything within reach and travels further for another flimsy reason. The 165 minutes and the lobotomized story sometimes made it difficult for me to understand why, because it all seems so sparse, a bit like an advertisement for (mostly American) cars accompanied by pyrotechnic effects. At the end, the film plays to the Chinese audience, everyone hugs and the story returns roughly to where it was at the beginning of part one, and only the appearance of the actors and their casting changes a little. If you're able to spend two and three-quarters of an hour to see the capabilities of 3D IMAX detail, you're ok, but while Edwards recalled the magic of the perspective in Godzilla, this sounds like a fucking waste of time and money to me. For fans of the series, the good news is that Transformers can continue to run in an endless loop, because "we all have a boss" and even the highest boss has a higher boss. [40%] (25/06/2014)