{"id":31557,"date":"2014-06-30T12:44:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T16:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=31557"},"modified":"2014-06-30T12:45:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T16:45:11","slug":"transformers-age-of-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/06\/transformers-age-of-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTransformers: Age of Extinction\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

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\n\u201cTransformers\u201d was the single worst movie of 2007. \u201cTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen\u201d was the single worst movie of 2009. \u201cTransformers: Dark of the Moon\u201d broke the pattern and was not the single worst movie of 2011 (thanks a lot, \u201cSanctum,\u201d \u201cThe Smurfs\u201d and \u201cPlaying for Keeps\u201d). Now comes \u201cTransformers: Age of Extinction,\u201d which gets the franchise right back on track, as it is now and is likely to remain the single worst movie of 2014.
\nWe\u2019re thankfully done with Shia LaBeouf as our main human character. In his place is a lowly Texas tinkerer played by Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg is charming enough that I didn\u2019t spend the whole movie hoping a Transformer would topple over and crush him, which is more than I can say for LaBeouf. The Wahlberg character has an assistant played by TJ Miller and a daughter played by Nicola Peltz. The daughter has a boyfriend played by Jack Reynor. The group is eventually joined by an industrialist played by Stanley Tucci. All these characters take turns being \u201cthe whiny one\u201d and I found myself wishing blunt metal fists on the lot of them.
\nWahlberg finds himself in the middle of a war between good-guy Autobots led by Optimus Prime and evil government agents. This turns out to just be a smoke screen for an attack by an evil Transformer called Lockdown. Lockdown gets help from some reincarnated Decepticons, the Autobots enlist the help of some long-thought-dead Dinobots and there\u2019s a big showdown in Hong Kong. Needless to say, the fate of humanity lies in the balance.
\nThe non-action scenes are garbage as always. The characters\u2019 decisions make no sense except as an excuse to set up action sequences or create conflict for the sake of conflict. The humans don\u2019t behave like relatable humans and the Transformers\u2019 bickering is unbecoming of giant alien robots. As for the dialogue, any attempts at tenderness or profundity are laughable and any attempts to get laughs are hopeless. The film once again makes the mistake of playing to teenagers who like PG-13 humor instead of the toy-buying kid audience that they\u2019re supposed to be targeting.
\nThen there are the action scenes. So much money was clearly spent on them, and somehow they still look cheap. The dinosaurs we see at the beginning of the film are composed of unconvincing CGI. Backgrounds and scenery are lifeless as the actors have negative chemistry with the green screens. The Transformers are supposed to be both robots and aliens. I say they\u2019re neither; they\u2019re just really bad cartoons. They thrash around without much gravity, landing with those infamous metallic whoosh sounds instead of proper crashing. On top of all this, the sequences are poorly edited. I saw a minor character running away from a danger zone in Hong Kong and I didn\u2019t even know she was in the country.
\nPerhaps the best word to describe the action scenes is \u201cnumbing.\u201d You like shooting? There\u2019s so much shooting you\u2019ll get bored with it. You like fighting? There\u2019s way too much of that as well. How about explosions? This is a Michael Bay film. There are going to be explosions. The film is 165 minutes. Without explosions, I don\u2019t think it would qualify as feature length. A few weeks ago, I complained about \u201cGodzilla\u201d not delivering on its potential for action. This movie has the opposite problem. It\u2019s hard to find the action scenes (especially these action scenes) interesting when they\u2019re all you\u2019ve been watching for what feels like forever.
\nI actually think that people who liked the other \u201cTransformers\u201d movies are going to like \u201cAge of Extinction.\u201d Whatever those movies did to get people to like them, there\u2019s more of it here. But for people like me who already despise the \u201cTransformers\u201d franchise, \u201cAge of Extinction\u201d is quite possibly the biggest piece of junk yet.<\/center>One Star out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransformers: Age of Extinction\u201d is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and brief innuendo. Its running time is 135 excruciating minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u201cTransformers\u201d was the single worst movie of 2007. \u201cTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen\u201d was the single worst movie of 2009. \u201cTransformers: Dark of the Moon\u201d broke the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}