Yes, we know Transformers movies aren't great, but even as someone who can appreciate 1 and 2, this number 4 is just horrible. You'd think Bay would listen a bit to what people have to say about the first 3 movies and take that into account but no. Or maybe he did and somehow managed to enhance everything that was wrong with the previous movies and crank it into one movie. The most generic actors you can get (yes, even you poor Mark, Texan overprotective father), the CGI isn't as good as it used to be, probably because they're trying too hard to make original looking stuff. And remember Sam's parents being embarrassing for 5 minutes? Well, in this movie, the Mark manages to be embarrassing through the entire movie. You want to see a father tell his super hot 17 years old daughter she can't have a boyfriend, in the middle of a fight for their lives? Yep, that's how low it sinks. Do yourself a favor and skip this, and if you really need to watch robots punch each other, go watch Transformers 1 or Pacific Rim.

Movie Review: "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014)When the Transformers movie series seems at its ultra-heights with "Dark of the Moon" (2011) witnessing a sky-jumping science-fiction-action sequence in Mid-Town Chicago lasting up to consecutive 50 minutes with a thrilling hyper-computer-generated fight scene supervised by Lucasfilm Ltd. affiliate Industrial, Light and Magic (ILM) between Optimus and double-crossing Sentinel Prime plus a classy Megatron interference to build a full triangle on south bridge, comes along "Age of Extinction" continuesly directed by Michael Bay pushing Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg as newly-introduced father-of-one inventor to become a full throttle event movie ride of an exceptional 155-Minute-Editorial additional fixed by Academy-Award-winning editor William Goldenberg, when despite brutal-rating-drops on the U.S. domestic market in Summer 2014, executive producer Steven Spielberg and director-vision-ensuring as on-set-patroling producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura have a prevailing stand-alone Transformer hit movie, especially on the ongoing home entertaining VOD market that delivers not only a throughout joy-loving supporting cast, including further-introductions, daughter-playing Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci as the scene-stealing super-entrepreneur Joshua Joyce ruling a whole facility of metal transforming alien-genes before shifts from Texas, USA to the exotic location of Shanghai, China fulfills the promise of eagerly-awaited awakenings of the dinobots in a fierce battle of clinking metals, earth-mud splashes as mechanic liquids spoiling proportions.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Mark Wahlberg is a definite upgrade on Shia LaBeouf, if what you're looking for is a tough, heroic presence... I also like the 'Americana' vibe of the beginning (sunsets over rolling green hills, etc). There are echoes of Ruby Ridge in a Transformers movie, and I'm impressed... but it ultimately comes to nothing. It progressively gets noisier and more cluttered, and my engagement ebbs away.The plot is pretty simple; there's some element ("Transformium" - very creative!) that the C.I.A want to use to build new tech, and the Decepticons want control of to build an infinite robot army... so when everybody is in place, it's just one giant chase scene to decide whose hands it rests in. Fair enough. ... but why in Einstein's name must it take so long??! Two and three quarter HOURS for a Transformers movie?? That's bordering on a war crime, surely! It's like each movie is in competition with the last over how much unnecessary destruction it can wreak, and how bloated it can be.I'm in a small minority of people who like the movies more, the less robot fights they have in them... All that clanking of metal upon metal? Let's just say that I'd hate to work in a foundry! Robots beating each other up just isn't my bag. I like the alliances, the talk of honour, and the backstory... I just could do without the junkyard scraps!... but then, in the end, the sun sets as the swell of the music rises up... and I think to myself: "Damnit Bay; you almost had me!" He knows how to make an epic; it's just a shame that - like an eight year old boy - his idea of substance amounts to banging things together, over and over again!

I'm going to be perfectly upfront in admitting that I actually really enjoyed Michael Bay's first entry in the "Transformers" saga upon initial release in 2007, and I still maintain that it's a solid and entertaining work. It's not a great film by any means, but it's got a certain charm to its humor and it's wildly thrilling thanks to Bay's trademark kinetic visuals and ferocious editing. It's a perfect Summer popcorn film, full of eye-popping effects that still hold up and some charming performances from the cast.Then there were the sequels. Oh, boy. I will with some shame cop to the fact that I was one of the few defenders of the second entry in the series ("Revenge of the Fallen"), though in retrospect I've come to realize the movie to be nothing more than a woefully pale imitation of what came before- only bigger, louder and a great deal dumber. This was further compounded by the third go- around ("Dark of the Moon") which thankfully cut back on the stupidity of that second film... but still wasn't able to stand on its own thanks to its own plethora of issues with the troublesome cast (replacing series co-star Megan Fox with a vapid Victoria's Secret model being particularly mind-numbing) and an over-bloated run-time. Needless to say, by the time the credits rolled on that third movie, I was pretty much done. And I ended up deciding that I was content with merely revisiting the first movie while ignoring everything that came after.But unfortunately for me, curiosity reared its ugly head, and I ended up popping on the fourth movie, "Transformers: Age of Extinction", about a year back for laughs. I figured with a few beers in me and a couple friends to joke around with, it might be worth checking out once. But, yeah... it's a complete and utter mess. A confused, bloated, boring and shockingly hard-to-follow dumpster fire of a film. And it sadly signals the biggest step-down in quality of the franchise thus-far. Trading in those belly-laughs and genuine gasps of excitement that the 2007 film specialized in... and instead delivering consistent groans of disbelief and annoyance.The film has no coherent plot to speak up, and instead is comprised of a writhing mass of tenuously connected "story-lines" that don't really mesh together all that well. I watched the film... I really did. And I can't remember a darned thing about it outside of the brain- destroying action and obnoxiously loud sound effects. It's something about how the Transformers are all being hunted down, and Optimus Prime ends up becoming entangled with a single father played by Mark Whalberg? And at the same time, some weird tech-genius CEO is "cloning" Transformers for military application? And there's this weird Transformer Bounty Hunter who is somehow in league with the military despite the military supposedly hunting down the Transformers? And somewhere in there, there's Dino-Bots and a random Doomsday- Weapon peppered in? And the opening implies that the Transformers have been around even longer than previously thought? And about a million other things are going on as well? You'd need enough Ritalin to kill a horse in order to understand what's going on in this movie.But maybe you don't care about the plot or the characters, and you're just interesting in explosive action and crazy visual effects. After all, that's what these movies are all about, right? Well, even on that front, this film feels bizarrely underwhelming, and it's just kind of dull and monotonous. Not only have the computer-generated effects not improved since the third film- they look like they've taken a step back, and objectively look even worse than they did in the first movie somehow. The Transformers have that weird plastic-y look to them that comes with bad rendering, and the animation is way too smooth, making them look more akin to Looney Tunes than real-life robots in disguise. I was half expecting Optimus to dig himself to Albuquerque by the time the film ended... And the action is so overdone that it loses all impact. The first film was so clever in how it built up to its explosive climax. This one just basically throws everything at the lens possible as often as it can, and it completely desensitizes the audience. You can't go so excessive so often, or else it loses meaning.And don't even get me started on the downright creepy and unsettling "Romeo and Juliet Law" subplot the film likes to throw in your face constantly. Yeah, the film has several scenes dedicated to the fact that the protagonist's 17-year-old daughter is dating a 20-year-old after they met in High School. OK, whatever, it happens I guess. But the movie doesn't just let it go... it reminds us of this fact way too often and goes into long-winded spiels about how it's "totally legal", and it becomes really unsettling really quickly. It feels less like the movie trying to set up conflict... and more like Michael Bay trying to explain why he thinks it's OK to objectify young women. It's really gross how much the film is obsessed with this minute plot- point.If there's one thing I can say to the film's credit, it's that Whalberg is a very likable and charismatic actor, and he's a good replacement for previous star Shia LaBeouf. And yeah, you do still care about the returning Autobots, simply because we've come to enjoy them after three previous films. But that's really all the film has going for it... The rest of the film is just a messy re-skin of what came before, but made way more convoluted and pointless by the needlessly excessive carnage, ridiculous script and creepy subtext. And for that, I give it a very poor 3 out of 10. Just stick with the first movie, folks. That's the only one that matters.