Transformers: Age Of Extinction

Transformers: Age of Extinction is the fourth film in director Michael Bay’s global blockbuster franchise. Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Li Bingbing, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles, T. J. Miller, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor and Titus Welliver star. The film begins after an epic battle that left a great city torn, but with the world saved. As humanity picks up the pieces, a shadowy group reveals itself in an attempt to control the direction of history… while an ancient, powerful new menace sets Earth in its crosshairs. With help from a new cast of humans, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) and the Autobots rise to meet their most fearsome challenge yet. In an incredible adventure, they are swept up in a war of good and evil, ultimately leading to a climactic battle across the world. 

I will try to be positive about this movie first.  The action was great.  It was actually better than the last two because it wasn't so over the top with so much going on that you couldn't really tell what was happening at times.  The effects continue to evolve and are top notch.  There is a new way that the man made Transformers morph back and forth in this particle spray thing that was pretty bad ass.  Mark Wahlberg was definitely a better lead than Shia LeBeouf was in the last two and Stanley Tucci was probably the best part of the movie in human form.   And the Transformers story in this one wasn't as far out there as it was in the last two.  Bottom line - it was definitely the best of the three sequels to the original which is still one of my favorite movies ever.  I really didn't like 2 and 3 at all.  Now for the negative . . . . . all the other actors outside of Wahlberg and Tucci were god awful.  I mean seriously.  The daughter and boyfriend thing made me look like the Undertaker with how far my eyes would roll back in my head during every one of their scenes.  They made Megan Fox and whatever the girl's name from the third one look awesome.  I was actually rooting for them to get killed for most of the movie.  I understand that they needed to get away from the first three entries characters to move the franchise in a different direction but that meant a whole lot of blah blah character development.  If you are going to take an hour of my life for that then at least make it be characters that I could remotely care about.  Then there is the run time.  Why in the blue hell does this movie have to be almost three hours long!?!  How can you be on part 4 of a franchise and still have that kind of a running time?  There was so much that could have been edited out of this.  It's like nobody showed Michael Bay where the editing room was.  It felt like forever and could have easily been a 1 hour and 45 minute movie.

I would somewhat recommend people checking this out.  Again - I think its the best entry since the original but still light years behind it.  While I do appreciate Bay making it better than the totally overdone 2 and 3, that running time was insane.