There’s a particular brand of film and action that belongs to Michael Bay, perhaps the most successful TV commercial helmer turned movie director – or at least the one gifted the largest budgets. Typically his features are big, they blow things up with frequency, and there’s little care given to cohesion, cleverness or consequences. Whether charting an asteroid hurtling towards earth in Armageddon, recreating World War II’s famous battle in Pearl Harbour, or making a film franchise out of a toy line and corresponding TV series in Transformers and its sequels, his work – rarely for better, mostly for worse – is about the spectacle.
The overlong fourth offering in the latter saga, Transformers: Age of Extinction, bears these hallmarks as well as the same outcome. Contrary to the wishes of many, this isn’t the killer blow to end the mechanical invaders’ stranglehold over cinemas – but nor is it the changed direction that Bay, screenwriter Ehren Kruger and intellectual property owner Hasbro hope for. Instead, a strange amalgam eventuates, both familiar in its faults and trying to evoke difference. Recurrent concerns remain, including dismal dialogue, little character depth and illogical plot developments, all as pronounced as ever. Efforts to address past ills are also evident, seen in a focus on family over romance, scaling back some combat to one-on-one displays, and adding other elements – most notably Dinobots, chases through Beijing and a culmination in Hong Kong – into the mix.
In everything but causality, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is forgotten in favour of a new story populated by new human protagonists. That feature’s climatic Chicago clash is now a cautionary tale to keep the populace wary of the robots in disguise, and to give cause to CIA black ops chief Harold Attinger’s (Kelsey Grammer, TV’s Boss) war against everything alien, good or bad. Texan inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg, Lone Survivor) stumbles into the mess when he salvages a broken-down truck that happens to be an incognito Optimus Prime (voiced by veteran Peter Cullen). Government attention rushes to his farm, forcing him on the run with his offsider Lucas (T.J. Miller, Silicon Valley), teenage daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz, Bates Motel), her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor, Delivery Man), and the protective Autobot leader.
Aping another brash box office triumph, the Fast and Furious franchise, in its obvious pastiche of a plethora of other recent blockbusters, Transformers: Age of Extinction makes ample mention of loyalty. Manufactured in its initial small-town setting and golden shots of sprawling property, the film attempts to cast a homespun, steadfast glow over content more often rendered as clinical chaos. The intention succeeds more than execution that shoehorns in product placement whenever it can, and can’t shake the tendency to make its female lead a damsel in distress. Yet, in a bloated first half that falls victim to exposition overload due to the slash-and-burn approach to the continuing narrative – until the action ramps up, at least – the human drama benefits from softness around and space from the metallic mayhem, as enhanced by the fine fit of a few fresh players.
Likeability isn’t a necessity in any movie, but Wahlberg’s charms aren’t unneeded as the key representative of everything Optimus and his ilk has risked their existence for, nor does his relatable nature go astray. His earnestness is also an antidote to the smugness of his forbear, the absent Shia LaBeouf, matching the overall switch to a more serious, less goofy tone. That’s not to say that humour is absent, just that when it is not errantly filtered through just a smattering of knowing references, it is sensibly channelled into a Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)-sized package as the head of a company set to profit from the Transformers’ eradication. Set against the film’s true focus, the titular entities complete with their own newcomers, they hold their own.
Of course, it is expected that Bay’s films value their onslaught of special effects, an area Transformers: Age of Extinction dwells in by necessity and with the benefit of less busy visuals. The imagery and robotic aliens go hand-in-hand, intertwined even as neither ventures far past the already established, aesthetically impressive, inessentially 3D standard. It is here that the film’s routine most clearly rears its head; even when it excels in its bombast of energy and technique, the over-the-top tendencies and over-use of low angles to elicit awe ensure the end result is always more of the same. To brand this feature better than the last two instalments is perhaps too great a compliment; however there’s noticeable improvement in the latest lengthy serving of Bay’s trademarks of excess.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Transformers: Age of Extinction
Director: Michael Bay
USA, 2014, 112 mins
Release date: June 25
Distributor: Paramount
Rated: TBC
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