2 out of 5

Directed by: Michael Bay

After trying to be more serious with the previous entry, Michael Bay had achieved his franchise goals across three films of manic Shia Lebouf and explosions and declared ‘no more’ in regards to additional flicks, until the almighty dollars lured him back. I can’t / don’t blame him for that, and, if anything, that blend of the director’s brand of professionalism – which at the very least produces movies consistently of a particular type – and that pay-to-play mentality makes the fourth, Mark Wahlberg starring entry the most watchable ‘Formers since the first one.

Which is admittedly a bit of shade on a low bar, but I’ve allowed that I’ve entered into this multi-movie viewing contract with anti-Bay bias, and I think I’ve done my best to set it aside. What emerged, though, was a struggle between on-screen intentions and what was on the page, with now lead writer Ehren Kruger erring towards cartoonish bombast in the dialogue, and Bay delivering on his machismo-saturated heft; a continual revving up of the sweaty grunt of celluloid he’s been developing since Bad Boys… a description which is again heavily coded with bias, though I hope I’m making it clear enough that I accept this as a purposeful approach. You know what you are getting with a blockbuster-sized Bay movie.

Age of Extinction does take some further steps forward on the page, getting partially out of the shadow of Megatron and better establishing an in-universe logicalness to what would’ve likely happened in this scenario: the government has done their best to both ostracize the Transformers (good and bad ones), and also to, y’know, put ’em to work for Uncle Sam. Not as the friendly-ish associates of films two and three, with guest star celebrities playing the bumbling suits who don’t understand what’s going on, but graciously accept their help when Decepticons find some planet-destroying MacGuffin; rather, we get an interesting blending of vibes that led to a pre-Trump (round 1) American, with Kelsey Grammer playing a heartless CIA agent who’s pulling the strings, Titus Welliver as his lackey, Stanley Tucci as a tech-bro who’s working for Grammer’s character for power-hungry reasons, and then on the protagonist side, Wahlberg as the dad-scientist guy representing a pre-Sheridanverse America (nods to Trump, again) of values and rah-rah and don’t-touch-my-daughter. While these characters all land with empty, soundalike snarky thuds on screen, these are better archetypes to play with than those in the preceding entries, where Shia Lebouf’s role never made much sense, the government’s role never made much sense, and the Autobot’s reasons for hanging around never made much sense. At least in Extinction, there’s a willingness to embrace the shallowness of it all – everyone kind of hates one another – and that does work with Bay’s whiplash style. Furthermore, we start to get into some moderately intriguing ‘Formers lore… which I won’t spoil except to say that it doesn’t much go anywhere, but points for adding something new to the mix.

In Age of Extinction, American Farm Daddy Wahlberg finds a broken down Optimus Prime in some wreckage, and does some autorepair to fix ‘im up, which alerts the black ops Grammer team to come hunting for their tech, needing Prime’s magical materials to fuel the secret scary government-run Transformers army being built by Tucci’s tech bro.

Visually, Bay has avoided trying to make the ‘Formers and humans interact as much as they did in film 3 – which always looked janky – but there’s some pretty poorly done green screen at points, with very odd fill-ins for characters walking across a background that seems digital when it’s unclear why practical wouldn’t have sufficed. Additionally while the design team has landed on a better blend of human and mechanical features to give our primaries personalities, the new “nano”-technology ‘bots aren’t as intriguing as the more grounded robots-in-disguise of yore, with nonsense bits of metal floating together like a Windows screensaver. That said, these three hour movies are like 99% CGI, so understood this was a lot of work, my takes are subjective, and probably better to let some green screen moments in versus botching hero shots.

…Not that you have much time to appreciate her shots, as the m.o. here seems to be to establish some plot threads that could likely suffice for a main focus – like Wahlberg and Prime breaking into a ship to rescue some folks – but such and such will get wrapped up in ten minutes, and then we’re on to the next this-could-be-a-whole-movie sequence, boiled down to a flash. Due to the aforementioned removal of any sense of making a flick that’s more than flashing lights and boom-booms, this is “tolerable” in the sense that it washes over you easily enough. Wahlberg’s quips are less grating than Shia’s.

There’s surely more to say, but I’ve also surely said enough, and that statement feels like a good a summary as any of the movie overall.