by Cthulhunicron » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:44 am
Finally got around to seeing Age of Extinction. I have to say, though I'm not a huge fan of the overall style of the live-action films, this is definitely an improvement over the last two. The humor was definitely toned down, and I liked that there was a more compact set of characters. Every person in the movie felt like they had a reason for being there, and I liked that the whole family works together at the end to help defeat Lockdown. I also enjoyed Kelsey Grammar as Attinger.
I still wish they would get a better writer than Ehren Kruger. The guy doesn't seem to know how to make these movies connect and flow together. First it was the Allspark that created the Transformers and now it's these mysterious aliens? The Autobots seem to be pretty aware of the fact that they were made by aliens and that they had cyberformed Earth millions of years ago. So if they knew this the whole time, why were they saying that they were created by the Allspark in the first movie? And again, the incredible coincidences surrounding Earth are just annoying. Aliens cyberform Earth, then millions of years ago, the Fallen just happens to build the star harvester on Earth, then thousands of years later, the Allspark just happens to land on Earth, and then thousands of years later, Sentinel just happens to crash into Earth's moon. Sure is convenient.
Lockdown tells Prime that he wasn't born, he was built. I'm not really sure what he's getting at here... He could mean that all Transformers on their own, when in reality they are all manufactured by the Creators. This would contradict what Hound and Optimus say later when they speak candidly about their knowledge of aliens creating their race. It would also contradict the fact that the Decepticons were able to create hatchlings in Revenge of the Fallen. Or maybe he means the aliens created the first Transformers who then reproduced on their own for generations, but then the aliens built Optimus Prime to be some special Transformer. Or maybe he was just trying to tell Prime that aliens created the Cybertronian race and nothing more. But Optimus seems to already know this. Plus, if aliens created the Cybertronians and then later generations reproduced on their own, then Optimus would still have been born..not built.
So maybe that's what the Knights were? Special Transformers that were custom built by the creators and then reinserted into Cybertronian society with false memories so they wouldn't know of their true origins? Maybe that's what the Primes were? We don't know, because the movie is frustratingly vague about all this.
Speaking of vague, we don't know hardly anything about the Dinobots. From what I could gather, the Creators made them from dinosaurs when they cyberformed Earth...even though most of the other dinosaurs were just rendered down for their metal and made into normal Transformers. So maybe the Dinobots were some kind of experiment? Then somehow, they were told of in legends...it's not clear if they lived alongside the other Cybertronians, or what exactly happened to them between being created and being captured by Lockdown.
The idea of humans wanting to make their own Transformers is a neat idea, definitely one that's been around for a while in Transformers lore. Not a huge fan of the new, micro-cube style of transforming. Half the fun is watching all the pieces of the vehicle slide around, fold, and bend to reveal the robot form. I hope the old style of transformation returns in the next movie. I also wish they had done more classic Decepticons for this movie, or maybe had Double Dealer as one of Lockdown's henchmen.
The Autobot designs were definitely an improvement over abominations like Q and the twins. I kinda wish these Autobots would act a little more like heroes, though. Crosshairs openly talks about wishing he could kill all the others so he could be in charge. Hound kills a small animal on Lockdown's ship simply for spitting on him. It's hard for me to really sympathize with these characters when they're always screaming about killing everything in sight, hitting each other, calling everything a "bitch," etc. "I'm a fat ballerina who takes scalps and slits throats" has to be one of the worst lines of dialogue I've ever heard in a movie.
In closing, I think the movie was okay. Still not a huge fan of Michael Bay's style of directing, or Kruger's writing, but it's definitely better than the last two. Hopefully they keep improving.