TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   165 minutes

Released         |   27 June 2014

cast

Mark Wahlberg ... Cade Yeager
Stanley Tucci ... Joshua Joyce
Kelsey Grammer ... Harold Attinger
Nicola Peltz ... Tessa Yeager
Jack Reynor ... Shane Dyson
Titus Welliver ... James Savoy
​T.J. Miller ... Lucas Flannery

director

​Michael Bay

writer

Ehren Kruger ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Amir Mokri ... director of photography

music

​​Steve Jablonsky ... (music by)

film editor

​Roger Barton ... (edited by)
William Goldenberg ... (edited by)
Paul Rubell ... (edited by)

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​1,104,054,072

Australia                 $​​​​24,862,352

North America       $​​​858,614,996

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movie minutiae

The was the first Transformers movie not to receive any Academy Award nominations. The previous installments all had nominations in the technical categories.
(Wow! What a surprise; no award nominations...)

First live-action Transformers film not to feature Shia LaBeouf or any story line about the Witwicky family. This was due to LaBeouf declining the role, and during filming he had to go to jail for federal problems.

​T.J. Miller reportedly did not get along well with director Michael Bay during the course of filming. Miller compared it to a "very bipolar experience" working with Bay, who once told Miller on set, "Nothing that you've said is funny, T.J.! Not one thing all day! We hired you to be funny! There's three hundred people here! None of them are laughing at you! Say something funny! I can still cut you out of the movie!"

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related movies

TRANSFORMERS (2007)

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After an epic battle, a great city lies in ruins, but the Earth itself is saved. As humanity begins to pick up the pieces, a shadowy group emerges to try to take control of history. Meanwhile, an ancient and powerful new menace sets its sights on Earth. A new group of humans, led by Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), helps Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the Autobots rise up to meet their most fearsome challenge yet: a worldwide war of good versus evil.

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 26 June 2014

​​Pop Movee Rating

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION is NOT a great film; it’s not even a good film. Quite simply: it’s terrible. The great shame is that $165 million was given to Michael Bay and he has produced something so bad that there’s no certainty that even loyal fans of the previous three films will find it in their hearts to pay hard-earned money to see AGE OF EXTINCTION. If they do, they will come away feeling the same way they did after the last film in the series, DARK OF THE MOON, which itself was a very mediocre affair. On the upside for the film’s financiers, there will be millions of teenagers on summer vacation in the Northern Hemisphere who, with nothing better to do, will flock to their local cinema complexes in search of some mind-numbing entertainment that will outlast their investment in the jumbo popcorn that they paid too much for at the Candy Counter. AGE OF EXTINCTION is tailor-made for that purpose.

There’s no doubting the success of the TRANSFORMER franchise. Michael Bay has hit on a formula that has been very successful and he may be one of film-making’s great unheralded geniuses because his first three TRANSFORMER films generated a combined $2.6 billion in box office receipts between 2007 and 2011. Sadly, the fact that Bay’s films have been successful has more to do with the intent with which these films are conceived and represents the great conundrum that faces movie-makers of the 21st Century.

AGE OF EXTINCTION is a by-product of this problem and Bay is the poster-boy.

Entertainment produced for the lowest common denominator has the best chance at appealing to the broadest possible audience. Without sounding like a film snob, this type of film is manufactured for an audience that does not regard film as a culturally significant communication medium. Rather, the enjoyment comes from how well the viewer’s visual and auditory senses are stimulated in comparison to the latest game, app or social media outlet.

​The biggest disappointment about this film, as well as the previous three, is Steven Spielberg’s association with the TRANSFORMERS franchise. In 2013, Spielberg and George Lucas publicly bemoaned the spiralling budgets of blockbusters like AGE OF EXTINCTION, yet, less than a year later, Spielberg has his name attached to the very type of film he declared was killing diversity in movies. From an individual who has contributed so much to movies as an art form, it is frustrating to see his name emboldened alongside Michael Bay’s on a TRANSFORMER film.  

The other big problem with this new film is that, not only does it set low expectations; it is in and of itself a poor piece of film-making. All films start with their story, followed closely by the screenplay, and AGE OF EXTINCTION fails on both fronts with a poorly constructed narrative and a screenplay that is so directionless at times that it becomes quite obvious that sequences have been stitched together in the editing suite in an effort to deliver a story that makes some kind of sense...

The architect of all of this Ehren Kruger, who, even after the mess that was DARK OF THE MOON, gets another shot at the franchise and, once again, hamstrings the whole project with a screenplay that is devoid of logic, good dialogue and any real character arc for either humans or robots!

The story and screenplay, however, are but one of the problems with AGE OF EXTINCTION. The cinematography is worthy of mention because of how varied the results are from one sequence to the next. Cinematographer Amir Mokri continues his association with the franchise and provides some genuinely inspired shots mixed with some truly horrible efforts. Mokri has become a specialist in this sort of big budget film, having worked on 2013’s MAN OF STEEL, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, FAST & FURIOUS and NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS. The film’s final act, set in Hong Kong, is the film’s most visually interesting section and Mokri and Bay do a nice job at capturing images that portray the cityscape in a favourable light. Viewing the IMAX version of the film is especially unforgiving of the film’s mixed photography, as the non-IMAX footage looks grainy and almost out-of-focus in parts.

The actors’ performances continue the uneven tone of the film, as the Autobot vocal performances are completely at odds with the live-action work. Mark Wahlberg has been drafted into this fourth film, in place of the fast-falling Shia LeBouf, and tries valiantly to drag something out of his dialogue to make his character more than just an adjunct to the computer animation that dominates the film.

One incredibly grating issue with the live-action performances is the use of post-recorded dialogue into scenes that call for an injection of humanity that would be otherwise dominated by the conflict between the various robots featured throughout the film.

Of all the performances, the only actor who comes out of this with any shred of credibility is Stanley Tucci, who plays the billionaire owner of a company who is complicit in a plan to weaponise the Transformer technology for the American Army. Tucci clearly worked out during the shoot that this film was not going to be one for the ages and chews the scenery, at first, with the megalomaniac air of a Bond villain and, then, as a likeable rogue who sees the error of his ways and injects some much needed humour into a story that is taking itself much too seriously. As for the rest of the cast, there’s not much to say. Peter Cullen returns for his fourth feature as the voice of ‘Optimus Prime’, this time joined by John Goodman and Ken Watanabe as fellow Autobots ‘Hound’ and ‘Drift’, while Kelsey Grammer is entirely forgettable as CIA operative Harold Attinger. 

There is not a great deal to recommend about this film...

At 165 minutes, it’s far too long. The screenplay lacks structure and jumps from set-piece to set-piece with no real thought. There’s the unending product placements, many of which have been positioned to appeal to the massive Chinese audience the film is banking on to provide a large slice of its box office receipts. These become so obvious by the end of the film that no longer is it a question of whether they will or won’t appear, it becomes a game of how many you can count throughout the duration of the movie.

here are two things that are disturbing about TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION.

One, there will be a TRANSFORMERS 5. Paramount have already announced it before they’ve even seen how this film fares. That’s confidence! Second, despite everything that is wrong with this film, it will be hugely successful. That seems wrong.

In a movie season where a well-made, original science fiction film like EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014) will be judged a failure because it makes $350 million at the worldwide box office, AGE OF EXTINCTION will do more than double that despite the fact that it is  bloated, ill-conceived and poorly-executed… Despite an inability to speak at public gatherings; privately, Michael Bay is laughing, but it may not be “with” us.

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) USEFUL LINKS

Transformers: Age of Extinction - Wikipedia
​Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) - IMDb
​​Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) - Rotten Tomatoes

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