Transformers: Age of Extinction. Spoilers... it sucked. · 9:27pm Jan 10th, 2015
Well, for Christmas, my father bought me Age of Extinction. He didn't know I wasn't planning on watching it or what my opinion was of it. So I figured, I've got it, I'll watch it.
Spoilers... it sucked. It really, really did.
Okay, lemme do a quick run though the live-action movies and my views on them.
Transformers 2007: Honestly underrated. It's got some problems with too much humans, but I can forgive that since it was a somewhat risky venture. And yes, way too much shaky-cam. I loved the characters of Eps, Lennox, Mikaela, John Keller... heck, all of them. the fact that the bad guys in the government were part of a fictional agency was actually refreshing, and they turned around by the end. Heck, Banachek overall was a nice guy. I even got enough sense of the characters to feel sad when Jazz died. The Decepticons actually used deception, subterfuge and infiltration. Overall I really like it.
Revenge of the Fallen: Ho, boy. There were 'some' good things. I liked Jetfire, Mikaela again... but the plot was all over and had a lot of holes. The twins were pretty damned offensive. I loathe Galloway. I mean seriously, we couldn't keep a reasonable figure in the government like Keller in the last movie?! Although Optimus killing the Fallen was pretty badass and awesome.
Dark of the Moon: Ho, boy. *Headdesk* I loathe Carly with all my heart and soul. Seriously, from badass Mikaela to that load?! Sentinel turning evil and killing Ironhide pissed me off. The 'Sam goes on a job interview' montage was a waste of celluloid. Only really good thing was Optimus finally killing Megatron.
And yes, that was a good thing. Megatron's 'offer' was bullshit. He just showed his word meant nothing when he shot Sentinel in the back and the tone of his voice was basically, "I'm lying through my proverbial teeth." All he wanted to be as back in charge. You know, like before when he ignited the war the brought their species to the brink of extinction. Optimus had no reason to believe him and if he did, he would've been an idiot.
So, Age of... false advertising? Seriously! Most of the advertising was about the Dinobots... who didn't show up until the final twenty minutes of the movie. A Three-hour movie!There was only four of them and I could barely tell them apart!
As for the other Autobots... Drift was almost as bad as the Twins in offensiveness. Crosshairs was a jerkass. Understandable, but still. Bumblebee was a non-entity, practically. Hound... I liked him. He was actually pretty cool.
The plot's bullshit. It's the standard, "Humans turn on their defenders." I hated it and by the end of the movie I was actually angry. Ratchet's demise was the start and it just kept building. The human 'allies' were just... dumb. I'm not sure how much more I can describe them. I will admit I liked the corporate executive having a conscience. Nice subversion, there. And I had no problem with Optimus killing the evil human.
Man, this series suffered some massive sequelitis, overall. So... that's about it. If there's a fifth, even if I get the DVD, I'll be passing.
Much the same thoughts here, but an additional complaint for the last movie: the second half is an hour long action sequence. There's no room to slow down and breathe and what little characterization is given is almost never expanded on. Just fighting and moving to the next location for another fight.
I gave up on the film series with Revenge of the Fallen. Devastator's wrecking balls were just simply too much.
And in other news, the sky is blue, but much better for your sanity.
Warning, Wave Blaster is about to ramble, again.
You know what, even if the cinematic series have some high points, I think that Michale Bay did something that nobody managed to do. He killed a franchise.
Look, before him, it was Joel Schumager, trying to kill the idea of Batman, but you see, the comic survived long enough to bring us Batman Begins.
Brian Singer almost screws it up with Superman Returns, but again, people got over it and we got Man of Steel.
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 sucked all the way to hell and back. We got The Amazing Spider-Man.
My point here is that every time that an adaptation suck, it dies in oblivion. Except for this one.
Then, there's this guy, who I used to like before to be honest, and he does one good movie and three 'things' that basically go agains everything Transformers is about. Optimus is a borderline psychopath, Megatron has no problems in taking orders, Starscream is not 'the Starscream', Bumblebee is R2D2, Soundwave was demoted to extra, Devastator was a letdown, Galvatron was a letdown, Grimlock was a letdown.
And it. Is not. Dying.
What is worse, it effectively displaced the EPIC! 80's movie. Let's try to say that out loud. This:
Got eclipsed by this:
I used to have this dream, that after TF:DotM, people would notice Bay's bulls*t and the series would reset. Now I know there'll be a TF5, it will suck even more, it will establish a new level of bullsh*t and one of the franchises I love will never really see the theaters.
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I liked many of Michael Bay's earlier movies, too. Many were dumb, but not offensive.
And it's not JUST Michael Bay that makes these movies. It's his whole production company, Platinum Dunes. He hires the same writers, the same special effects artists, the same set designers, and the same story boarders. They are all responsible in their own way for making these movies.
However, and here's the key, Michael Bay gets current mainstream America. Say what you will about him and his production team, but it's us, the masses, that go see these movies in droves. We show up for the midnight screenings, we buy the DVD's, we also keep saying how bad these movies are which is just advertising in the long run. Our core American film goers love this stuff.
If there's one thing that I can say that the Transformers movies have done to the entertainment business, it's that it has allowed Hasbro to take some chances. Particularly, My Little Pony, The Littlest Petshop, Pound Puppies, more Transformers shows, etc. With the influx of money from Transformers, Hasbro has dipped into its IP's and brought us some remarkable products. We may not be here, talking on this very website, if it weren't for Michael Bay's Transformers franchise.
Just some thoughts.
You know truth be told I jumped ship after Fallen, I didn't even see the third one in theaters.
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You know, thinking that Bayformers is the reason we got MLP:FiM makes me want to take a long shower.
I miss the Michael Bay that brought us Bad Boys, now THAT is an enjoyable movie. Also, The Island is friggin' AWESOME! What the flying fragg happened to that Michael Bay?
I wonder if people will ever get that Michael Bay's production team sells bulls*t, stop treating him as the new Spielberg and start treating him as the new M. Night Shyamalan.
In fact, even Shyamalan has a higher moral standard than Bay.
I haven't seen any of them after "Fallen", and finding out about the betrayal part I decided that I really don't want to. I really get tired of the series that make humanity being a bunch of back stabbing jackasses... yes I know we have them but God we aren't all like that
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To give it to Bay, he apparently did not want to do this movie (when asked before the movie about the Dinobots, he actually went into a rant about how he despised them and would never use them). But he was told that if he did not do this movie, then he would not be able to do a movie he was pitching. Basically, he was actually trying to kill the franchise so that they would not ask him to do another Transformers movie.
Of course, now that Hasbro is taking risks on their various IPs, we're getting stuff like the Battleship movie, which wasn't that bad considering that it was based on a boardgame with no story behind it. I especially liked how they tied in the grids from the actual game in the form of the sonar buoys. Now, whether the Monopoly movie coming out which is to be directed by Ridley Scott will be any good is something else entirely... Especially as he has stated that the whole movie is about "Greed"...
Right there with you Striker. Aside from Dash's cameo in this film, I had very little about it that I liked. Ken Watanabe must have been facepalming every line he had to read. Drift may have had a pretty damned offensive look and lines, but in a fight, he was decent at least.
Optimus got a bit of character development, however fucked up and weird it might be, so that's a plus.
Megatron came back as Galvatron, which is almost as common a thing as Optimus getting killed off and coming back, so at least that tradition was retained.
Honestly, the Dark of The Moon novelization has a MUCH better ending and all the characters got decent time, Optimus was given far more depth in it, Carly was decent, and hell, Megatron was even given a happy fucking ending, if you can believe it. If they'd gone with the ending in the novel, they might have actually had to work to figure out a real and logical story for this one, cause in the book, at the end of Dark of the Moon, Megatron declares a fucking truce with Optimus and heads off to rebuild Cybertron. So the war was effectively ended with a more or less peaceful ending in the novel.
There is supposed to be a fifth film, or so I keep hearing. But if Bay honestly tried to kill off the franchise just so he could do his own movie, then I think I wanna slap him. Anyone know what movie he was trying to pitch for?
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So, Bay is actually trying to do the right thing?
Weird, isn't it? I mean, he's actually trying to get rid of this and start his own project, if that's true then I could root for him again, as long as TF gets killed for good.
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Well, it was never directly stated which movie he wanted to do, but one has to remember that he worked on The Purge: Anarchy, Ninja Turtles, and at the same time as well as a number of TV series, so it could have been one of those. I suspect though that the movie he had wanted to do was actually Ouija which makes sense as that's another Hasbro IP and they could hold him doing TF4 over his head in exchange for it. Just the same, he's stated that he isn't interested in doing TF5, thankfully.
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I wonder if The Island will ever happen again or if it was just a happy accident.
Well there goes my impetus to watch the movie. After the poor showing the last one gave us I was set to give up on the series till I learned that the new one had the Dinobots. Never got around to actually seeing it for various reasons, but now? Nope.
Regarding Drift, is it offensive if he's voiced by an actual Japanese actor (Ken Watanabe)?
Just curious, have you ever seen Transformers: Prime, the former Hub's Transfomers animated series? Even though it does take a number of cues from the Michael Bay films, I think it's quite a phenomenal animated series. I've only made like less than halfway through Season 2, though.
I enjoyed all the live-action "Transformers" films in spite of their nonsensicality, including "Age of Extinction."