Transformers: Age of Extinction

I give the fourth Transformers one more star than the previous ones, because it is the second best installment of the series. The special effects are perfect, of course, but the good thing is that besides the robot fights, I was also interested in the humans this time, and the character of Stanley Tucci was especially good. I liked the ending with the Dinobots very much, I was pleased that Michael Bay finally filmed the action clearly (he had practiced the long shots last time) and that there were not as many Autobots as before and they were more likeable - especially the bearded, cigar-wielding, John Goodman-voiced Hound. (27/06/2014)

Undiscerning lovers of robots big and small will be satisfied, I’m sure. But what about the rest of the unfortunate audience? This reboot confirms that the cast of the first trilogy was far from bad. Installment number four lacks the human element of Shia LaBeouf, not to mention the comical element provided by excellent actors such as Frances McDormand and John Turturro. The fourth Transformers contains exactly one funny line of dialogue (“The movies nowadays, that’s the trouble - sequels and remakes, bunch of crap”) and it comes in the very beginning. The following two uninteresting hours leading to the Hong Kong climax contain just two short relatively good sequences (Tessa’s kidnapping and the steel cables in Chicago), the first one being the only moment in the movie capable of evoking some emotion and the other the only original idea we haven’t seen done before. The Chinese metropolis setting is pleasantly refreshing, but I wonder how many viewers are able to follow the plot line through the scuffle in the city streets, after the previous two hours of staring at the screen in bafflement. There’s nothing to talk about regarding the characters and their relationships (like in the first episode), and the climax loses in epicness to the militaristic sequence in Transformers 3. The marines, by the way, are also missing here. They had their place in the Transformers universe. Watching this to the end took a lot of effort on my part. (25/06/2014)

Relative brain loss / the fun is worse than part two and three. Something keeps getting moved from place to place under a flimsy pretext, takes a position, destroys everything within reach and travels further for another flimsy reason. The 165 minutes and the lobotomized story sometimes made it difficult for me to understand why, because it all seems so sparse, a bit like an advertisement for (mostly American) cars accompanied by pyrotechnic effects. At the end, the film plays to the Chinese audience, everyone hugs and the story returns roughly to where it was at the beginning of part one, and only the appearance of the actors and their casting changes a little. If you're able to spend two and three-quarters of an hour to see the capabilities of 3D IMAX detail, you're ok, but while Edwards recalled the magic of the perspective in Godzilla, this sounds like a fucking waste of time and money to me. For fans of the series, the good news is that Transformers can continue to run in an endless loop, because "we all have a boss" and even the highest boss has a higher boss. [40%] (25/06/2014)

In a world of thrifty ninety-minute movies, this could have been a blockbuster trying for the title of “best part of the saga", there’s certainly enough material for it. For some mysterious reason this spuriously swelled to the length of two regular feature films and so each great minute/scene/wisecrack is alternated by two to three minutes/scenes/wisecracks that are boring, irrelevant filler (at best) or brought ad absurdum to kitsch infantility in Bay’s inimitable style (at worst and unfortunately most frequently). (20/09/2014)

Alright, Mr. Bay, here’s $210 million, and do the same thing you did in the third installment because it raked in a billion dollars. Oh, and by the way, since Shia has become a total jerk and we don't want to waste money on the rest of the crew either, choose a completely new cast of actors, said the guys at Paramount. As unbelievable as it sounds, Bay followed these instructions to the letter. It would get hard for me to remember which movie was which after a while, so Mikey didn't let me down and made a couple of changes...for the worse. The story takes place in Chicago again (miraculously rebuilt in just 4 years!), the old favorite crew has been replaced by a wishy-washy new one without the marines to help them. Jablonsky is still great, but compared to the first installment, the music isn’t as good (plus, for reasons that escape me, the creators replaced the awesome Linkin Park with Imagine Dragons, who are okay, but compared to Linkin Park a disappointment). In addition to the old Autobots and Decepticons, you get new Transformers, most of whose names you have no chance to remember. But what you expect to get out of this movie is simply mindless entertainment, which won’t allow you to use your brain for even a second, with a disgustingly exaggerated runtime. If you accept that, you are in for the biggest ride of this year full of plagiarized but visually stunning effects. PS: Never in my life have I seen a movie so jam-packed with product placement. PSS: Michael Bay should really pass it on and finally make something new. (20/09/2014)