Five years after the Decepticon invasion of Chicago in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), the Autobots were granted sanctuary on Earth. However, believing that they are a threat, they were secretly eliminated by an elite CIA unit with the help of a Transformer bounty hunter, Lockdown. Because of this, Optimus has since lost his faith in humanity after an ambush, which caused him serious injury and even considers leaving the planet until Cade Yeager, a mechanic, convinces him to reconsider his faith after helping him recover. Together with his family, they join the Autobots to exterminate the bounty hunter, the reincarnated Megatron (in the form of Galvatron), and the Cemetery Wind (the elite CIA unit tasked with killing Transformers). Age of Extinction is the 4th instalment in this movie franchise and in all honesty, I wasn't a great fan. I think this story should have ended with the last film making a decent enough trilogy to wrap things up but of course, that wasn't going to happen. So following the previous film where the Transformers helped save the world, they are now being executed by the CIA whilst misinforming the world that they are only destroying Decepticons because they want all Transformers gone from this world. How people couldn't tell them apart baffles me as the Autobots have been portrayed in these films with bright colours with more human-like features, unlike the completely grey and darker colours of the monstrous-looking Decepticons. I hated seeing Autobots being killed in the opening of the film. It felt like a betrayal to the previous movies to see these heroes being killed unjustly. We are introduced to the character of Lockdown, a Transformer bounty hunter who is a very cool concept being neither Autobot nor Decepticon but ultimately doesn't bring a great deal to the movie if anything just leaves us with more questions. I think the greatest dishonour of this film was the characteristics of Optimus Prime. Throughout each film, he has become progressively more violent in his battles and now shows a hatred for humans, especially in this film after his Autobots brothers are killed and scrapped. It doesn't feel like the Optimus Prime we know and love who is a great leader that leaves fighting as a last resort. The other Autobots follow a similar issue where they are constantly fighting among themselves and can't seem to get along. Their designs are very cool I will grant them that with some interesting choices and some cool action sequences in the final battle. However, our human protagonists are no better with the only exception being Cade who is pretty bearable since he actually does stuff like fighting back with alien guns. His daughter and her boyfriend are quite forgettable and left no impression on me. We also get to see Galvatron's introduction into live-action after his appearance in The Transformers: The Movie (1986) and I have to say like everything in this film, it is underwhelming. He is a human-made Transformer using the data from the head of Megatron, which causes his essence to take over it but the worst part about him and the other man-made robots is the transformation effects. They are practically nonexistent as we don't even get to see the intricate look of each piece change before our eyes but instead polygon particles that just dissolve and reappear again. It looks horrible and lazy in all honesty and I wasn't a fan. Besides that, the special effects continue to look amazing but the storytelling just doesn't hold together, which is a shame since the ideas are there but the execution is not. The dino bots also make their first appearance and are really cool but are in it for such a small amount of time and feel very underused. The introduction of the creators is also confusing and kind of de-canonized the first film with the Allspark as I thought that created the Transformers so I didn't like that it ruined that. Overall, I wasn't a fan of this fourth movie. It was too long and just didn't offer anything new and when it did, it caused too many problems. It ruined characters and felt boring. I would personally stick to the first 3 and leave it there but there is one more film in Transformers: The Last Knight (2017).
No comments:
Post a Comment