The Sam Witwicky Trilogy had run its course. Everyone was ready to move on. Steven Spielberg begged Michael Bay to leave well enough alone. Unfortunately, Dark of the Moon made a billion dollars. Transformers was officially a license to print money, and there was no way we weren’t getting another. As a condition of securing the budget for Pain & Gain, Michael Bay signed a two-picture deal with Paramount. That second picture? You guessed it: Age of Extinction. But Shia LeBeouf was done with all this. Megan Fox certainly wasn’t coming back. So what to do? For part four, Bay and returning screenwriter Ehren Kruger had to retool the franchise. We needed a new main character, and a new focus for the series going forward.
In retrospect, it’s kind of obscene how quickly Bay was able crank out another Transformers movie so soon after Pain & Gain. I guess the effects team had plenty of time to render more giant robots and fight scenes while Bay was off in Miami getting swole with Mark Wahlberg. But then when you look at the final product, the fourth film in the Transformers saga doesn’t even attempt to make a lick of sense. This deep into the series, things like ‘sense’ and ‘logic’ are officially out the window. We’re through the looking glass at this point, and Bay rightly assumes that anyone on-board with a fourth Transformers movie is ready for things to get silly.
This is the first Michael Bay film that I actually reviewed upon release, and looking back at that review, my opinion of it really hasn’t changed. The movie has gaps in logic so wide you could drive two Transformers through them side-by-side. It’s still distressingly grim in a way that really betrays this series being based on a line of children’s toys. But at the same time, You can tell Michael Bay is only getting better at knowing what to do with all these moving parts. It’s not the best Transformers movie, but it’s interesting in its own way.
It’s been three years since the events of Dark of the Moon. The Battle of Chicago, as it’s come to be known, is that world’s version of 9/11. Billboards dot the landscape reminding good, God-fearing Americans1 to “Remember Chicago”. In the meantime, the US Government has severed all ties with the Autobots, leading CIA director Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) to hunt down and exterminate all remaining Transformers, with the help of a Cybertronian assassin named Lockdown. He executes series stalwart Ratchet, and nearly kills Bumblebee, who manages to escape.
Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the unfortunately named Cade Yeager (Pain & Gain‘s Mark Wahlberg), an inventor who specializes in building his own janky, malfunctioning robots. He’s a kindred spirit to the Autobots, and part of the film’s running theme of humans trying to play god with their machines. Cade discovers an old semi truck trapped inside a derelict movie house, bringing it home to tinker with and most likely break down for scrap (like someone else we’ll meet later on). He soon discovers this is none other than Optimus Prime, who went into hiding after the exterminations began2. Soon the feds are on Cade’s doorstep, forcing him to go on the lam with his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz-Beckham), assistant Lucas (T.J. Miller), and Tessa’s boyfriend Shane (Jack Raynor). We learn that the military has new drone technology reverse engineered from Cybertronian parts, which is how the feds are tracking Cade’s every move.
Meanwhile, Tech Mogul Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci!) shows up to introduce a new wrinkle into the story: He’s responsible for providing the military with all this new tech. And they’ve been reverse-engineering it from Megatron’s corpse! Not only that, but they’ve used that reverse-engineered nanotech to reconstruct a new, bespoke Transformer named Galvatron. Galvatron is supposed to be completely remote-controlled, but quickly goes rogue and reveals that he is, in fact, Megatron, who’s used Joyce’s tech to bring himself back to life and try to take over the world again.
At this point, we’re deep into Saturday Morning Cartoon territory. There’s a thing called The Seed that terraforms planets into Cybertronian metal, and Stanley Tucci wants it so he can make more robots to sell, but Megatron plans to steal it and just kill a bunch of people. The motivations get really simplistic in the back half of this film. Thank god for that, because Age of Extinction is nearly three hours long with all the fight scenes crammed into it, and we have precious little time for things like plot or exposition. This movie has places to be, and doesn’t wait around to explain a fucking thing. This is the third time I’ve seen Age of Extinction, and only now do I feel like I actually understand what the movie’s trying to do.
Most of the human characters make practically zero impression, but we get dozens of Transformers, several of which are oddly memorable. Hound (voiced by John Goodman) is a tubby, cigar-chomping weapons expert, and absolutely the best character in the movie. Drift (voiced by Ken Watanabe) is a samurai stereotype that inexplicably transforms into a helicopter. And then there’s Crosshairs (Bender himself, John DiMaggio), who transforms into a Corvette, but for some reason wears the paneling around his torso like a huge green duster jacket. It’s like they got all the names and specialties mixed up in pre-production and just decided to roll with it. Because why isn’t the character named Crosshairs the weapons expert? Why doesn’t the character named Drift transform into a car? Who knows? Why am I even asking?
I said it before, and it bears repeating: Michael Bay is actually getting good at all the giant robot stuff. The character designs are cleaner and more expressive than they’ve ever been. The introduction of the Dinobots provides the movie with something distinct in between all the alien gunfights and car chases. And Lockdown’s sudden mention of Creators and Knights gives nerdy turds like me something interesting to mull over while Cade threatens Shane’s life for the tenth time. Lockdown’s entire plan is to work with the government, murdering Transformers so that he can claim his actual prize: Optimus Prime. “Your creators want you back,” he tells Prime. “We all work for someone.” It almost feels like they’re setting the stage for a brand new trilogy of films with an actual story to be unfolded at a later date. Unfortunately, this will never happen.
Age of Extinction talks a lot about the Creators, as it happens. The idea that the Autobots and Decepticons weren’t born, but instead engineered for some larger purpose hangs over the back half of the story, and then dangled out of reach at the end as a tease for the next film. But then as Optimus Prime confronts Joyce and his engineers, Joyce says something interesting. “Don’t you get it?” he shouts at Prime. “We can make you now. We don’t need you anymore.” Joyce’s lab is all in on building their own Transformers to do his bidding, just like the Creators built Prime for their own needs. Both revelations completely incense Prime, who takes off at the very end of the film and flies into space like Superman, announcing his intent to find his creators and have his revenge.
The subtext of all this is that Michael Bay is needling the studio for daring to suggest that they might replace him3. “Now that you’ve given us the blueprints, we don’t need you anymore!” It’s exactly what Joyce says to Optimus Prime. But Bay is getting so good4 at this that he’s also telling us he can crank these out as long as he wants or needs to. And the production of this film kinda bears that out. Despite its bloated runtime, Age of Extinction feels very streamlined, like he knew he was able to crank this out in record time, and wanted to gloat a little bit. Look at Optimus Prime’s new design. Hell, look at Galvatron. Or the way the KSI robots swirl around in streams of nanocubes. It’s all so… clean. The Transformers are starting to have the sleek, aerodynamic look of the JJ Abrams Star Trek films.
It really feels like Bay has taken all the criticisms of his earlier films to heart and is trying to deliver the coolest-looking Transformers yet. In that regard, he absolutely succeeded. It still doesn’t excuse the majority of the film feeling like it’s just actors spinning their wheels for a paycheck. Mark Wahlberg is trying so hard to give a shit, but the tired, ‘over it’ look on his face says it all. The only human actor who’s clearly having a good time here is Stanley Tucci, who never met a role that he couldn’t have at least a little bit of fun with. The way he screams about Galvatron not doing what he wants, and just petulantly slaps his computers around with impotent rage is very funny to me. I’d watch another Transformers movie featuring this guy. He’s great.
I’m so conflicted on this movie. On the one hand, yeah, I actually think the Transformers designs are getting better. I can honestly say there are characters I like in this movie, which is frankly not something I can say for any of the first three. The plot feels almost willfully obtuse, like all this alien war shit is just a goof, but then the human stories—whether it’s Kelsey Grammer hunting down robots for the thrill of the hunt, or Stanley Tucci just wanting to make cool robots and get rich quick, or Mark Wahlberg threatening to punch Jack Raynor for daring to flash a “Romeo & Juliet Law” card in his face5—have absolutely nothing to do with one another. There’s good stuff here, stuff that honestly makes this one more memorable than some of the others, but it’s also the longest, most pointless movie in the entire series. I actively dreaded watching it again, and now that I have, I can honestly say I don’t need to ever again.
Age of Extinction wound up grossing $1.1 billion. Three-quarters of that total came from outside the US, a large chunk of that from China. This was briefly the highest-grossing film in Chinese history, which isn’t that surprising, as the entire third act takes place in Beijing. It also features Chinese actress Li Bingbing in a substantial role as Stanley Tucci’s business partner, Su. The film was co-financed by Chinese film companies, which explains the shift in location during the third act. There’s a great bit of lampshading this fact when Cade asks the Autobots how long it’ll take to fly to Beijing from Texas. Drift says “It’s a spaceship, so not long.” Smash cut to Beijing. Perfect, no notes.
All of this is only worth pointing out because the tide is starting to shift in the blockbuster film market. Hollywood studios need the international markets, and as such they also need international money to finance these things. With all of this in mind, it’s really no surprise that Age of Extinction made a billion dollars. These movies are a business like any other, and while folks are definitely buying what Michael Bay is selling, that can’t last forever. We’ll see Optimus Prime again, but when we do, it’ll be Michael Bay’s last rodeo.
NEXT TIME: Unfortunately, another true story.
- Once again, I’ve written about the jingoism of this movie before here.
↩︎ - When Prime wakes up, his first words are “I’LL KILL YOU!” Half of his dialogue in this movie is Optimus Prime screaming his intent to murder people. Understandably so, in this case.
↩︎ - Before Bay agreed to come back for part 4, Paramount offered the gig to a dozen different directors, including Bay’s onetime nemesis, Roland Emmerich.
↩︎ - Good, here, meaning “capable of farting out a Transformers movie on time and under budget”.
↩︎ - I nearly forgot about this. There’s a scene where Cade does the math on his daughter’s relationship and realizes her boyfriend is legally an adult, so the guy literally pulls a card out of his wallet explaining how his relationship with a minor is completely legal in the state of Texas. Michael Bay put this in his movie on purpose. ↩︎
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