Transformers: Age of Extinction
Sep. 1st, 2015 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroFive years after Dark of the Moon, the last Transformers on Earth are all in hiding and are being hunted down by a mysterious enemy. Tl;dr: Lots of things get blown up.
I readily admit that this movie was stupid. Probably at about the same level as the last three: They’ve got new squishy humans and still waste too much time on them; the racist-caricature transformer is Japanese this time; we have a new female lead (specifically noted to be 17) who exists to be in distress and provide fanservice. The juvenile humor is downplayed, but it’s still there. The science is terrible. The dialogue is often absurd.
But hey, a giant robot with a sword rides a giant robot dinosaur through downtown Hong Kong and smashes a whole bunch of other robots and then everything blows up. So, y’know.
It occurred to me that the real issue with these movies (versus most Transformers cartoons) is that the cybertronian characters are all caricatures at best and props at worst. They don’t get character development; most of them don’t have consistent characterization and/or aren’t even named on-screen. And a lot of that is because the real “characters” of the movies are the humans, and the plots always revolve around the human perspective of the giant robot wars. And while I won’t argue that isn’t a valid perspective to take, that’s not what Transformers should be. They’re the heroes, not the monsters; but the narrative never treats them as such.
(This is similar to Stan Lee’s argument of why we’ve never had a good Hulk movie: Because they always treat the Hulk as a plot device or a monster Bruce has to suppress, instead of a character with motivations of his own.)
There was a lot of wasted potential in things that (presumably) they’re planning to use for more sequels. Lockdown was shown stealing the still-living sparks of transformers he’d killed, for one: I fully expected Optimus to liberate those sparks and put them into Galvatron’s protoform army before the end of the movie. (He released the dinobots instead.) Also, Kelsey Grammar’s CIA director is clearly show to be (and acknowledges that he is) making deals with aliens to attack official US allies without the knowledge or permission of the President, and puts the President on hold when called on it. It’s irritating that the last third of the movie moved to China, because I wanted to see the US Army show up and arrest him for high treason—you don’t get a safe retirement when you invite a hostile third party to attack US allies and blow off the President, you get thrown in a dark hole and waterboarded.
Overall: My assessment of the original movie still stands: If you cut this down to 45 minutes of giant robots punching each other, it would be great. As it stands, it’s an overlong dumb summer action flick.
I readily admit that this movie was stupid. Probably at about the same level as the last three: They’ve got new squishy humans and still waste too much time on them; the racist-caricature transformer is Japanese this time; we have a new female lead (specifically noted to be 17) who exists to be in distress and provide fanservice. The juvenile humor is downplayed, but it’s still there. The science is terrible. The dialogue is often absurd.
But hey, a giant robot with a sword rides a giant robot dinosaur through downtown Hong Kong and smashes a whole bunch of other robots and then everything blows up. So, y’know.
It occurred to me that the real issue with these movies (versus most Transformers cartoons) is that the cybertronian characters are all caricatures at best and props at worst. They don’t get character development; most of them don’t have consistent characterization and/or aren’t even named on-screen. And a lot of that is because the real “characters” of the movies are the humans, and the plots always revolve around the human perspective of the giant robot wars. And while I won’t argue that isn’t a valid perspective to take, that’s not what Transformers should be. They’re the heroes, not the monsters; but the narrative never treats them as such.
(This is similar to Stan Lee’s argument of why we’ve never had a good Hulk movie: Because they always treat the Hulk as a plot device or a monster Bruce has to suppress, instead of a character with motivations of his own.)
There was a lot of wasted potential in things that (presumably) they’re planning to use for more sequels. Lockdown was shown stealing the still-living sparks of transformers he’d killed, for one: I fully expected Optimus to liberate those sparks and put them into Galvatron’s protoform army before the end of the movie. (He released the dinobots instead.) Also, Kelsey Grammar’s CIA director is clearly show to be (and acknowledges that he is) making deals with aliens to attack official US allies without the knowledge or permission of the President, and puts the President on hold when called on it. It’s irritating that the last third of the movie moved to China, because I wanted to see the US Army show up and arrest him for high treason—you don’t get a safe retirement when you invite a hostile third party to attack US allies and blow off the President, you get thrown in a dark hole and waterboarded.
Overall: My assessment of the original movie still stands: If you cut this down to 45 minutes of giant robots punching each other, it would be great. As it stands, it’s an overlong dumb summer action flick.
