Transformers: Age of Extinction (’14 review)

3 outta 5

Michael Bay, director of The Rock, Pearl Harbour, two Bad Boys and now four Transformers movies, defiantly in his last Transformer outing, Dark of the Moon, broke his toys and walked away, seemingly forever.   Until, that is, his most recent entry, Transformers: Age of Extinction.  This instalment doesn’t reach the heights of the first great outing, yet the story is much better than the haphazard second film, however this doesn’t have the war-epic tone that made the third movie distinctive.   Extinction does add a few fascinating twists to the mythology, dispenses with characters that have worn out their welcome, tosses in a few really well cast villainous roles, and delivers robots smashing the bejesus each other.  And robo-dinosaurs pop up.  For no other reason than robot dinosaurs look cool, goddamnit! 

Years after the destructive battle in Chicago between good transforming robots, the Autobots, and evil transforming robots, the Decpticons, Transformers are hiding from a nefarious CIA spook, Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer).   Attinger’s task force, not so subtly named “Cemetery Wind”, consists of guys with guns led by a nasty field agent (Titus Welliver, who played the “Man in Black” on “Lost”) and their secret asset, a deadly and brutal bounty-hunter Transformer named Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan).  Meanwhile, a poor yet buff inventor, Cade (Mark Wahlberg), buys a broken down pickup truck, much to the annoyance of his daughter (Nicola Peltz).   Shockingly, the truck is a robot in disguise named Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), leader of the Autobots.  Soon Optimus, Cade, his daughter, and her boyfriend (Jack Reynor) are on the run with Optimus’ fellow Autobots to confront a billionaire tycoon, Joshua (Stanley Tucci), who is experimenting on robots to create his very own Transformer, Galvatron (voiced by Frank Welker).   Even worse, Joshua, Attinger and Lockdown are in cahoots for a scheme that could cause the extinction of mankind.         

The film presents Attinger as the bad guy and makes sure he tosses out some uber-evil “kill innocent people” commands for good measure, but his logic seems sound: this is not the Transformers planet but they often blow it to hell.   Considering the movie portrays the events of the last film as its version of 9/11 it’s hard to root for the Autobots as they create wanton destruction.   Aside from series standbys Optimus and Bumblebee the Transformers are a new crop with a standout being the gruff gunman robot voiced with gusto by John Goodman.   There’s a brief cameo by Autobot veteran Ratchet who meets a horrible demise at the claws of Lockdown and if you’ve watched the entire series knowing who Ratchet is, it’s kind of shocking.  Instead of Optiums being a likable Robo-Jesus as before he’s often petulant or outright bloodthirsty towards humans.    

There are a lot of villains, probably too many, but each is mean.  Grammer provides looming menace and Welliver is a good cold-blooded henchman.  The design of Lockdown is slick with a brutal efficiency to his movements.  Then there’s Galavtron with his origin tied into the Autobot’s greatest enemy.  What Galvatron represents in the Transformer mythology is interesting, yet the movie ultimately doesn’t do much with him and he feels second fiddle.   Tucci, always game for some shameless mugging, views the Autobots as inferior versions of his superior product and by the end he’s hollering in cowardice as things are exploding.  As the previous sequels awkwardly wedged the plot to include Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky its good they swapped him out for new human protagonists.  While Wahlberg as an inventor is a bit of a stretch he plays the overbearing dad well.   He also gets in one of the movie’s funniest bits where he crashes a spaceship, goes on a rant, chugs a beer, and demands an alien ray gun to settle a dispute. Peltz is basically squealing kidnap plot bait and Rayor is an annoyingly X-Treme race car driver.  There’s also a brief role for T.J. Miller as comedic relief and his exit is very memorable.

Age of Extinction offers a variety of set-pieces on different continents.  The stakes for the Autobots feel appropriately hopeless as Lockdown travels in a giant ship that can crush entire cities.  There are a few highlights such as the raid on Lockdown’s ship and the subsequent literal high-wire escape (that is added some artificial tension by the daughter acting like an idiot but Whalberg gets in a few funny lines).   The introduction of the man-made Transformers adds a neat wrinkle as they can transform faster and more efficiently.   The Dinobots arrival comes out of nowhere as whatever sanity and coherence is left in the franchise evaporates but it’s forgivable as we get to see robot dinosaurs shoot fire from their maws while laying waste to evil robots.       

Transformers: Age of Extinction is hard to completely hate or completely love.  It’s too freakin’ long with way too many asides but it’s certainly trying to entertain.  There are unresolved plot threads that will undoubtedly be picked up in more sequels so don’t expect closure.  Do expect giant robots smashing things.  Which is all you’ll want from a Transformers movie anyway.