THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS, THEN AGAIN THERE ISN'T REALLY MUCH STORY TO SPOIL...
Before I start I actually went into this movie expecting nothing buy a simple movie to unwind with after a long day at work and somehow this movie let me down on my simplest of expectations. Age of Extinction is the fourth entry in the subpar series of Transformers movie which went downhill after the iteration, oh and it is also the start of a new trilogy. I know that these movies are made for the fans which is why critics bash the movie hard but for the past 2 and this one I can understand the hate because this movie does almost nothing right at all. The only good thing this movie did was start fresh with a new cast which in my opinion were much better than Shia and co. This movie casts Wahlberg who is just a vanilla character, Nicola Peltz as his daughter who is also fine in her role and the token hot girl and a couple other forgetful characters. What Wahlberg does that I did enjoy is that he wasn't constantly screaming "Bumblebee!' or 'Optimus!!', he actually took initiative unlike Shia Labeouf.
The story in this movie is pretty much non existent after the opening act which is a shame cause this movie was actually starting out fine but somewhere along the line it just went off the rails and started to make less sense as the movie droned on. I say droned on because honestly this movie was way too long and many of the scenes were irrelevant and didn't serve any purpose to the film. The irrelevant scenes were basically scenes to explain stuff which was self explanatory pretty much making this movie play out like a children's book, further solidfying that movie is indeed aimed at children and the casual movie goers. One thing that really got on my nerves about this film however was the fact that the whole last portion of the movie was just explosions, literally, no story or dialogue just boom after boom which got irritating at a point.
The human cast of the movie was very vanilla and I didn't really care for them at all much like in the Godzilla film. The human's only purpose seemed to be was that they do whatever they want resulting in some sort of massive world ending scenario. One thing which really annoyed me was the fact that throughout the movie Wahlberg's character had to deal with his daughters' accent switching boyfriend who was trying to get his approval and we didn't see any reason in the film for Wahlberg to approve of him in anyway but by the end of the film he did for some odd reason, despite the boyfriend being a coward. The human's played their part and that is it, there were no real memorable scenes with humans at all in this film.
Moving on to the real reason people go to see these films, the Transformers. I was actually disappointed with the transformers this time round, the Autobots other than Hound were pretty crap and not enjoyable to watch at all. There was one Autobot that really got on my nerves and that was Drift, we get it he is a samurai but I guess we constantly needed to be reminded that he was with a rather racist asian accent. I say racist because it seems that his lines were specifically catered to make sure the accent is thick, I don't know if this was supposed to be a joke but I honestly found it rather annoying and distasteful.
The other reason I really wanted to see this movie was cause of the friggen Dinobots. The whole movie I was waiting for them, and waiting until they finally showed up for the last act and thats it. The Dinobots were severely underutilized, with the film's long run time should have included more dinobot action because they kind of just came and went and the initial confrontation between Optimus and Grimlock was kinda shit because we saw literally all of it in the trailer, that's right the whole fight between Optimus and Grimlock lasted a whopping 2 minutes and ended with one hit. That was another thing I disliked, the fact that Optimus made Grimlock and co submit by hitting him once, then mounting him like a pony. For my the Dinobots could have elevated the film to a higher level but instead it kind of dragged it down because I expected them to do something awesome and amazing but they didn't.
Overall this film was a massive letdown, even the CGI wasn't up to par (the other sequels had better CGI imo) because all we saw in this movie was debris making it a bit hard to follow the action. The other downside is the lack of story and many plot holes in the film which made you wondering how the heck something happened. For example when we first met Optimus he was damaged and said he needed a medic but as soon as he scanned another truck, he was back up to speed and free of damage and the movie keeps going expecting us to just accept it.
I give this movie one and a half Grimlock heads out of five. The fact that this movie had dinobots was good but I do hope that in the future they utilize them more than they did in this film and also the last act of the movie was just mind numbing explosions non stop. If you enjoy that stuff or loved the previous Transformers movie then chances are you will enjoy this one as well. If you hated the other Transformers movie maybe just give this one a sip as you aren't really missing out on much.
Review by Armour Dude
Before I start I actually went into this movie expecting nothing buy a simple movie to unwind with after a long day at work and somehow this movie let me down on my simplest of expectations. Age of Extinction is the fourth entry in the subpar series of Transformers movie which went downhill after the iteration, oh and it is also the start of a new trilogy. I know that these movies are made for the fans which is why critics bash the movie hard but for the past 2 and this one I can understand the hate because this movie does almost nothing right at all. The only good thing this movie did was start fresh with a new cast which in my opinion were much better than Shia and co. This movie casts Wahlberg who is just a vanilla character, Nicola Peltz as his daughter who is also fine in her role and the token hot girl and a couple other forgetful characters. What Wahlberg does that I did enjoy is that he wasn't constantly screaming "Bumblebee!' or 'Optimus!!', he actually took initiative unlike Shia Labeouf.
The story in this movie is pretty much non existent after the opening act which is a shame cause this movie was actually starting out fine but somewhere along the line it just went off the rails and started to make less sense as the movie droned on. I say droned on because honestly this movie was way too long and many of the scenes were irrelevant and didn't serve any purpose to the film. The irrelevant scenes were basically scenes to explain stuff which was self explanatory pretty much making this movie play out like a children's book, further solidfying that movie is indeed aimed at children and the casual movie goers. One thing that really got on my nerves about this film however was the fact that the whole last portion of the movie was just explosions, literally, no story or dialogue just boom after boom which got irritating at a point.
The human cast of the movie was very vanilla and I didn't really care for them at all much like in the Godzilla film. The human's only purpose seemed to be was that they do whatever they want resulting in some sort of massive world ending scenario. One thing which really annoyed me was the fact that throughout the movie Wahlberg's character had to deal with his daughters' accent switching boyfriend who was trying to get his approval and we didn't see any reason in the film for Wahlberg to approve of him in anyway but by the end of the film he did for some odd reason, despite the boyfriend being a coward. The human's played their part and that is it, there were no real memorable scenes with humans at all in this film.
Moving on to the real reason people go to see these films, the Transformers. I was actually disappointed with the transformers this time round, the Autobots other than Hound were pretty crap and not enjoyable to watch at all. There was one Autobot that really got on my nerves and that was Drift, we get it he is a samurai but I guess we constantly needed to be reminded that he was with a rather racist asian accent. I say racist because it seems that his lines were specifically catered to make sure the accent is thick, I don't know if this was supposed to be a joke but I honestly found it rather annoying and distasteful.
The other reason I really wanted to see this movie was cause of the friggen Dinobots. The whole movie I was waiting for them, and waiting until they finally showed up for the last act and thats it. The Dinobots were severely underutilized, with the film's long run time should have included more dinobot action because they kind of just came and went and the initial confrontation between Optimus and Grimlock was kinda shit because we saw literally all of it in the trailer, that's right the whole fight between Optimus and Grimlock lasted a whopping 2 minutes and ended with one hit. That was another thing I disliked, the fact that Optimus made Grimlock and co submit by hitting him once, then mounting him like a pony. For my the Dinobots could have elevated the film to a higher level but instead it kind of dragged it down because I expected them to do something awesome and amazing but they didn't.
Overall this film was a massive letdown, even the CGI wasn't up to par (the other sequels had better CGI imo) because all we saw in this movie was debris making it a bit hard to follow the action. The other downside is the lack of story and many plot holes in the film which made you wondering how the heck something happened. For example when we first met Optimus he was damaged and said he needed a medic but as soon as he scanned another truck, he was back up to speed and free of damage and the movie keeps going expecting us to just accept it.
I give this movie one and a half Grimlock heads out of five. The fact that this movie had dinobots was good but I do hope that in the future they utilize them more than they did in this film and also the last act of the movie was just mind numbing explosions non stop. If you enjoy that stuff or loved the previous Transformers movie then chances are you will enjoy this one as well. If you hated the other Transformers movie maybe just give this one a sip as you aren't really missing out on much.
Review by Armour Dude
Good review. Could have been mindless, harmless summer fun, but because it's so long, it's something hard to watch.
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