Cinema Report #27 - Transformers: Age of Extinction
Hm, I don’t know. I used to like Optimus Prime and the Autobots a lot when I was a kid. I was literally devastated when Optimus died back then. The films themselves are a nice spectacle and I know I’m not kid any more, but nevertheless I find myself caring little if a Transformer lives or dies and many of them actually annoy me with their odd and apparently pointless remarks and actions.
I didn’t mind the fresh start and the new set of human protagonists and antagonists. However, I didn’t quite get why there were so many enemy-fronts needed. If there had been a proper story behind it all, it would almost have been as complicated as Game of Thrones.
First, there were the humans - who either were afraid of Transformers or wanted to exploit their technology. Both made kind of sense and yet it didn’t. Sure, there was a lot of collateral damage from the previous battles (and it was a nice touch that the movie used that), but the fact remains that some of those aliens had once been allies to the humans. To fear even the Autobots like the devil himself and attack them in such a cruel manner lets me wonder if they were all blind, deaf and dumb. It’s also just natural to try and learn from previous enemies and superior allies alike, but why should humans be less afraid of man-made robots (based on alien technology) than of alien robots? Besides, in the end it seemed like the whole “let’s build our own Transformers” idea was implanted by the apparently never-dying Decepticon boss Magatron, and not originated by the humans at all.
This is the second enemy: the Decepticon still isn’t dead, but somehow for some unknown reasons and with only medium success he manipulates humans to build him a new body and army. This gets hinted at somewhere in the middle, then there is a battle (which doesn’t differ much from all the other battles that happen in that film) and after that he gets forgotten and stays in the background until he shows up again at the very end of the movie. I suppose this was meant to show us what the next part will be about, but I honestly could care less about his schemes.
Thirdly, we get introduced to some other kind of Transformers. I didn’t get them at all. At first it sounded like they were sent by the creators of Optimus & Co. to bring them home - but wasn’t their home destroyed or something like that? Then it sounded like they were headhunters - or just hunters for the fun of it. They certainly were rather stupid and didn’t even notice when their treasure chamber separated from their space ship. They also seemed to be stronger and superior to the Transformers, and yet they were defeated in the end.
All in all, while the effects were nice as ever and the actors did try to deliver a good performance, there were a lot of logic errors and pointless actions. I don’t expect a clever story from an action movie, but it’s just distracting when you constantly have to wonder “why did they do that?”.