Why So Blu?

Transformers: Age of Extinction – The Bowel Movement (Movie Review)

Let it be known before we get started here that I wanted nothing to do with this fourth film in the Michael Bay Transformers franchise.  The last two, minus seeing Megan Fox and her clubbed thumbs in the second film, were absolute crud.  How many times can we see the same story repeated over and over again?  Decepticons come down and want to destroy the Earth.  Big effing deal!  Yawn.  I have seen it all before.  And from the looks of the trailers that have aired, going into this one, I expected more of the same with just a different looking cast.  However, the curator of toys in me really couldn’t pass this press screening opportunity up to see if Michael Bay got any better in the storytelling department or not.  One thing for sure, Bay won’t let you down in the hot women department.  With 19-year old Nicola Peltz taking center stage, Transformers: Age of Extinction had at least that much going for it before the lights even dimmed Tuesday evening.

So as I already mentioned up above there are two things that are for sure givens here.  Love it or hate it, Michael Bay is back for another go around in the director’s chair and Megan Fox is out replaced by the underaged Nicola Peltz from TV’s Bates Motel.  Alright, I lied.  There are three things you should know fo sho before going in.  This is the first film to feature the…Dinobots!  In addition to the new human cast consisting of Nicola, Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer and more, this fourth outing also sees the return of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), Bumblebee, Ratchet (Robert Foxworth) and Brains (Reno Wilson).  Sadly, the screenplay remains in the “competent” hands of Ehren Kruger, who pathetically penned the last two adventures in this series.  I’m sure arming you with that last bit of knowledge doesn’t instill much faith and hope going into this feature, does it?

Like its predecessors, this one is pretty easy to set up in two sentences or less.  Here…let me give it an honest college try.  Transformers: Age of Extinction is set four years after the events in Dark of the Moon as a mechanic, Cade Yeager (Wahlberg), and his daughter, Tessa (Peltz), broke and desperate for a miracle in life, unintentionally discover Optimus Prime, badly damaged from an earlier scrap we never see and unable to change from his semi form until Marky Mark helps him.  There’s also this group of scientists, which Stanley Tucci’s character, Joshua Joyce, is a part of and they yearn to learn from the Transformers by building their very own from scraps of fallen comrades, a material they lovingly refer to as “transformium.”   Did I do pretty good?  Of course that’s not all.  That’s just your basic setup I crafted just for you in order to whet your appetite.  There’s also a couple new baddies such as a bounty hunter Transformer (think Predator-like), a big guy who’s name I won’t divulge and even the Dinobots.  That’s the real reason we are all here a fourth time, no?  So now that I have you salivating for more, let’s really get into the meat and potatoes of what all goes down here.

You know what?  Let’s hit the pause button momentarily.  I actually don’t know if I want to even waste the time providing a high level overlap of what all happens onscreen here.  What it truly all boils down to is the fact that this film is a big pile of steamy, smelly, hot poo.  It’s one of the worst films I have ever seen.  I even told this to a co-worker the day after the screening and she said what’s the matter with you?  Didn’t you learn your lesson with the previous ones?  My response was simply that I did not believe it could get any worse and that I seriously had high hopes for Bay that he would learn from his mistakes and pull out of his a$$ something remarkable this time around.  I’ve never been more wrong in my life.  An hour into the film’s two hour and forty-five minute runtime (yep you read that right) I just could not take it anymore.  I could not stand the horrific dialogue, the nonsensical violence and the complete lack of a cohesive story anymore.  I could not wait for it to be over.  I ate popcorn throughout and that’s something I never do.  Every time an Autobot spoke a little piece of me died.  I have more story in my little typing fingers than this film has in near three hours of  runtime.  Sad, but oh so effing true.  And while we’re on the subject of the F-word (my great segue) I couldn’t believe they employed that in here.  For a movie parents will probably be taking their kids to there are more racial slurs, nonsensical violence and swearing than you would hear in most rated-R films.  How this scored a PG-13, but a film such as The Conjuring got slapped with an R-rating is beyond my wildest imagination.  I was offended and insulted throughout the entire movie and I’m not even a minority or a parent.  What does that say about this film?

It really hurts me to say all these bad things.  I know Michael Bay can do much better.  I am the biggest fan of The Island.  What about Bad Boys?  Heck, he even struck high praise with me on Pain & Gain here.  So what the hell happened?  I want to point my fingers solely at Ehren Kruger, but I cannot.  You cannot tell me the blame solely resides on him.  After penning the last two features my first instinct would be why the hell bring him back?  Does he have something juicy on Bay?  However, the crux of the situation is that you would think Bay would have half a brain and say hey man this sucks.  Does Bay’s existence here solely reside on the fact that he can light up explosion after explosion?  Now don’t get me wrong, I fricking love explosions!  But these were just all here for the sake of having fireworks.  How else can you explain it?  The action sequences and resulting pyros served no other greater purpose.  And that brings me onto the subject of characters.  Is there a worthy onscreen character at all in this film?  If I had my vote, it would be for that of Stanley Tucci’s.  He’s the only reason I’m giving this film the score that I am.  Whenever he was onscreen he commandeered the show, but otherwise I just saw the same character Wahlberg plays in everything else and Bay seemed to really gravitate towards those barely legal, long legs of Nicola’s and even kind of provided us with a legal reason why it was okay to fixate on her.  I’m a red-hot blooded male and I’m offended by all of this.  What’s wrong with me?!  Hell, what’s wrong with using a girl of age?! The character development in this movie is basically non-existent.  I found Megan Fox’s character in the first two films more engaging and thought provoking than Marky Mark running all around with a He-Man sword that fires laser.  There was the usual Bay humor here, but it was lost amongst all the bad “die” dialogue and the incomprehensible storyline.

What I really want to know is how do you go from making such an iconic film the first time around that nobody had high hopes or even the wildest expectations for in the first place and three movies later make such a muck like this?  Those action sequences in that first film still replay and hold up today vividly in my mind (the sole reason why I bought an HD-DVD player back in 2007).  Can anyone really say the same about ANY scene in these past two films, not counting this one?  Checking out the curves on the girls don’t count.  And please tell me why the hell it’s legit that a robot has a beard, dresses like a samurai or smokes a mock cigar?  What the hell, Bay?!  Are you fricking serious?  Have you lost your mind?  Once again, I thought you would have learned from the previous two films.  Parents…I implore you DO NOT take your kids to see this one.  There’s nothing but bad lessons for them to take a away and learn from this one.  This is not the first Transformers film by any means.  This is not about a boy and his car.  This is about death, violence, rudeness and mostly stupidity and ignorance.  What the hell was theme of this movie anyway, of the last two for that matter too?  LOL.  And last but not least, wait until you see the end.  After waiting two hours to see the Dinobots finally (I feel like that’s the only reason this movie got made to include them somehow), I would love to hear your thoughts on how they’re handled here and where we leave them.  There’s also a scene at the end that involves Optimus Prime and what he does.  I wish all the Transformers would have followed suit and did the same.  The world’s a better place without them.  It’s very sad that this is being billed as “based on the Hasbro toys,” because it’s that very ingenious marketing that’s going to sadly pack the theaters this weekend.  People of this great planet…you’re in for a world of hurt should you choose to plop down your hard earned money on this.  You’d be better off giving me half of it and letting me tell you a bedtime story.  I cannot recommend this one any more than I can suggest slamming your head repeatedly in your car door jam.  If you value your time, sanity and money, you will adhere to all my warnings with the utmost of seriousness.  Thanks for reading!