Film Review: Transformers: Age of Extinction

Now I'm perfectly happy to admit that I love the action films. Don't get me wrong, I can't express how much I appreciate an intricate plot, fascinating characters or a thought-provoking message in a film. That being said, I can still love a film that possesses none of the above and redeems itself purely though good action. It is for this reason that I am often the only person in a given group of people who is willing to defend the Transformers film series. After the most recent installment, however, I fear the franchise may have lost one of its most casual champions. Before I launch into why that is the case, I should say that the point of this post is to help moviegoers decide if they would like to see Age of Extinction or not, and it will not contain any spoilers.

Don't let the critical tone of the previous paragraph mislead you, Age of Extinction wasn't all bad. Like in previous installments, Michael Bay and the film's writers were able to introduce a host of cool new transformers without severe continuity issues. Among these new characters, two are worthy of mention for being particularly badass.The first of these is Drift, a samurai-themed autobot armed with  more than one obscenely huge sword. The second of these is Crosshairs, an autobot paratrooper whose metal exoskeleton includes a long, flowing coat to keep him looking sharp while he fires away with his pair of transformer-sized handguns.

I'd buy that coat if it came in my size.

And its not just the robots; a couple of the human characters weren't half bad either. Mark Walhberg's performance as Cade Yeager, the struggling single father and inventor, makes his character far more likable as the human hero of the film than the hysterical Sam Witwicky (performed by Shia LaBeouf) had been in the previous three installments. Additionally, Stanley Tucci's performance as Joshua Joyce, the initially arrogant technology manufacturer, ever so slightly improves the clunky and strained character development Joyce briefly undergoes during the film.

It is a little known fact that Bay
was the original choice to direct Titanic

However, if we have to point to character visuals and actor performances as the redeeming features of a film whose previous franchise installments were saved only by their action scenes, things start looking pretty bad for Age of Extinction. Indeed, the film failed to do the one thing it was expected to do: entertain the audience with some mindless action. This failure can be summed up in a sentence I never thought I'd say: Michael Bay finally went overboard with the explosions. This is by no means a new criticism of the director, and it should not be taken to mean that I think the previous Transformers installments were short on gratuitous explosions. However, Age of Extinction lacked some of the cinematography which made the action of its predecessors far more entertaining. The clip below from the third installment, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, shows what I'm getting at:

         
At around 0:40, Optimus Prime goes off on one of the best action rampages I've ever seen in a film, given how he effortlessly switches between a variety of weapons to seamlessly defeat multiple enemies. A variety of camera shots are used to help bring this out, such as the long-distance shot at 0:57 of Prime bringing down two decepticons with his sword in quick succession, shortly followed by a close up of him deploying some sharpened brass knuckles at 1:04 to tear open a final opponent. Finally, the background music for the scene, composed by Steve Jablonsky, adds to the impression of power created by Prime and helps make his rampage a minute of epic screentime.

Bet you never thought you could analyze a Transformers film like that, could you? Well you can, and while you might find that only a handful of scenes from the first three installments match up with the clip above, you certainly won't find anything from Age of Extinction which compares. Any potential for good action is masked by enormous explosions. Plus, as much as I like him, Jablonsky fails to deliver a score with engaging tracks. This is pretty bad news considering that Age of Extinction is the longest installment in the film series, with a running time of 165 minutes. As a director, if you're going all in on action as the means of engaging an audience, you better make sure the action makes up for the simple plot, relatively flat characters and time-worn messages. Sadly, the action in Age of Extinction fails to do this, so it doesn't take long for the film to start dragging as soon as you begin watching it.

Bay is no stranger to criticism, and the box office performance of the Transformers series has usually allowed him and the series' producers to simply shrug it off. The series currently stands as the 4th highest-grossing of all time when averaged to its gross per film of $653m. However, Age of Extinction has experienced a slower box office performance than any of its predecessors. According to Box Office Mojo, on the second weekend following its release, the film had accrued a domestic gross of only $175m. The three previous films, on the other hand, had secured domestic grosses of $224m, $293m and $261m, respectively, after the same length of time. Age of Extinction's slower performance become all the more noteworthy when you consider that its $210m budget is the largest of any film in the franchise.

Age of Extinction's slower box office performance is quite telling. The figures suggest that so far more people have been dissatisfied with the film and, crucially, convinced their friends and family not to go watch it than with any of the previous Transformers films. I would agree with those people: Age of Extinction is not worth the watch. What remains now is to see if this attitude will last long enough to have an impact on the film's lifetime performance at the box office.

Image Sources
1. uk.ign.com
2. collider.com
3. lolshelf.com