Transformers: Age of Extinction

Ah, Michael Bay. How we salute you. Champion of circling helicopter shots, wind machines in faces, hot female extras, low camera angles when bad guys are getting out of cars et al. In fact see this to clock what I’m referencing, not that you really need reminding. But it’s timely to see just how naff most of Bay’s films really are, in particular his Transformers trilogy, when you strip them down to their component parts. I love a good blockbuster, but Jesus… at least SOME sense of narrative thrust is requisite to get you hooked, and keep you hooked (see Edge of Tomorrow for a recent example of how big silly filmmaking should be done). Unfortunately, poor Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci (as Stanley Tucci) can’t hold up what is a crumbling, deafening, metallic mess of a movie (though the explosions do sound awesome, thanks to Leeds Everyman and their beautiful sound setup that left my bones shaken and bum rattled).

It’s not for lack of trying that Age of Extinction fails. But in the great pantheon of films that have had ample money thrown at the screen only for much of it not to stick – Emmerich’s Godzilla, Raimi's Spider-Man 3, even the recent The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (what is it with Spider-Man and his cinematic failures?), Age of Extinction has now waded into the fray and staked its place. It’s not even as if I hate Bay; I don’t. The Island, whilst hardly original is great fun, while his last offering Pain & Gain is – in Bay terms – a modest indie comedy that's far funnier than you might dare admit in polite Guardian-reading company. Maybe it’s because both of these films have been relative failures at the box office that he and his studio backers felt inclined to stick to what works, at least in terms of revenue recoup (audience taste be damned). And so we end up with this trundling, energy-sapping onslaught of robots fighting people, robots fighting robots, robots fighting dino-robots, robots robots robots... and on and on it goes, for over two-and-a-half life-draining hours.

It’s not even worth expanding on the plot, save to say Wahlberg – an ‘inventor’, likely inventing synthetic steroids for his bulging bi's and tri’s as well as his labour-saving robots – stumbles across Optimus Prime in an abandoned cinema (of course he does). He tries to hide him on his farm because America doesn’t like robots anymore. And to be fair, who can blame them? After supposedly ‘saving’ mankind in their fight against the Decepticons, the Autobots went and wrecked half the West Coast in the process, and no doubt sizeable sections of other countries too. A bit like Superman did to Metropolis in Man of Steel. But he’s an all-American hero. So the US approve of aliens destroying their city, but not alien robots? That’s just racist.

I remember going to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in IMAX, and likened it to being hit over the head by a giant frying pan for two and a half hours. Age of Extinction starts out somewhat less aggressively, but by the midway point Bay’s giant frying pan of doom is in full swing. And as noted, this would all be fine if there was something semi-decent going on by way of the script, or at the very least a coherent plot (by the time we’re in Japan and the Dinobots show up, we’re left wondering why we were shown a Dinobot in the Arctic in the opening sequence, and not in Japan – call me old-fashioned, but it’s the little things that matter). But as Bay has so often displayed, fripperies such as script and plot fall by the wayside when you’ve got cars, robots and buildings to blow up. And if any film had more than its fair share of wanton explosions, it’s this one; pyromaniacs may find themselves suppressing a proverbial wetty by the time it reaches its orgasmic, explodey climax.

I offered an olive branch to Need for Speed in my last review, suggesting that if you’re after anything in the way of plot or a decent script, you’re watching the wrong film. But I may have been too hasty in my assessment after having endured this throbbing slice of Full Metal Bay. It can’t be too much to ask for when watching a film, any film, no matter how low brow it may be perceived to be, that it cover the basics. Some of the most silly explosion-fuelled movies imaginable have taken on the mantle of modern classic, simply because they offered up characters to give a shit about: Die Hard. Predator. Speed. Okay I confess, Speed is a personal guilty pleasure with some admittedly shocking scriptwriting, but anyone who doesn’t care when Jeff Daniels pops it at the hands of Dennis Hopper’s home-rigged explosive device is flat-out lying. Hell, even Top Gun had memorable lines and characters you could empathise with, and that’s practically Bay’s Bible. It’s as if all the camp fun and burning 80s machismo that made the Die Hards and Predators of this world so much fun has been sucked out of Bay’s fourth take on the Transformers mythos, replaced by stock grunts, simpering leads and clanging racial stereotypes, the sum of their parts having less humour than an American border patrol guard (I’ve seen their faces. They don’t smile. Ever).

The only reason I can think of to like this film is that it will make a lot of money. Money that will go towards smaller films that otherwise might not have been made, had it not been for the box office takings that a Bay film unceremoniously generates. Think of it as giving to charity – helping out those films less fortunate. In fact go crazy. Buy the Blu-Ray. Buy the limited edition box set in the shape of a Dinobot scrotum. Anything you can spare will be greatly appreciated by films actually worth your while.

Please, give generously.

Thank you.