Transformers: Age Of Extinction

What I am about to write, and what you are about to read may prove controversial. In fact many of you will undoubtedly disagree but I feel that it has to be said. There was a constant implication of this but we all dismissed it, thinking that it would be impossible for the fourth Transformers film to actually do this. But here it goes, Age Of Extinction is WORSE THAN Revenge Of The Fallen.

Where on earth do I start with this film, normally I aim for roughly five hundred words to write. But here I may exceed that with the problems that this film has hidden away behind a horrible mix of flashing images and loud noises. To start with there’s the cast. As I stated in my review of the franchise, I quite liked Shia LaBeouf in this series. He had a part that went quite well with the (admittedly small) talents he has as an actor. His character was definitely rubbing everyone the wrong way by the third film, but in my opinion this is more due to Michael Bay neglecting to make us care about him at all. But anyway, Bay has now hired a completely new set of actors, without any reference to the old cast at all. Firstly this means we have to waste time with a human backstory that is identical to that of the first film. Secondly Bay still fails at making us connect with these characters, and lastly it highlights his paper-thin commitment to his own story, having spent nearly ten years to at least try and develop a character.

As well as this there is the underlying problem of the fact that we are no longer so impressed with the special effects that they disguise the weak story. As the film drones on it becomes less and less interesting, to such a point where I found myself wishing that the film would end in a climactic battle more than ever because that would serve as a much better memory of an emotionless film. The story is as dull as the effects are exciting.

The worst thing is that the amount of fun and flashy nature of the series has now been sacrificed to try and make room for a story. This would be a nice step forward if the plot and character development was decent, but it isn’t. As a result there is even less to distract you from it, so anything that made the other films remotely enjoyable has now been sucked out and replaced with something much worse.

Also I am knit picking here, but what does the title Age Of Extinction actually refer to? Cleary it’s not the Dinobots because they’re not wiped out at the start. It’s not the Decepticons because, surprise surprise, they’re back again. And it doesn’t refer to the Autobots because although we are initially made to believe that Optimus might be the only one left for some reason – oh, no don’t worry they’re back, nothing has changed that would require another lengthy film to describe it to us. Humanity, no. True there is some amount of death in the film, but nowhere near extinction level. In fact the attack is less damaging than the one we witnessed in Dark Of The Moon. So what this really means is that as well as having an irrelevant title, the fourth Transformer film fails to take the franchise to any new levels.

The dialogue is cringe worthy and the battle sequences have lost all originality. As well as this they have still failed to address the problem of knowing who everyone is, it is genuinely difficult to distinguish between Autobots and Decepticons. So we have no clue as to whether anything that we witness in these scenes is significant to the plot at all.

In short then, this is by a long way the worst film of the series. But annoyingly it is not long enough. Face it, this franchise had been stretched to its maximum after the first film. I have lost all faith in any hope of saving the series now, as you can imagine I am ‘thrilled’ that a fifth and sixth instalment is in development. Let’s hope that it won’t come out for a long time.

Result: 1/10