Wow! Seriously, what is with critics nowadays!!?? First G.I. Joe: Retaliation, then The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and now this! I thought Transformers: Age of Extinction is like the BEST TRANSFORMERS MOVIE that I have ever seen! Finally a Michael Bay-directed TF movie sequel WORTH-WATCHING AGAIN AND AGAIN!! :D Much better than all 3 TF films combined! All right, so what if it's a REALLY LONG movie? I've seen plenty of more than 2½-3 hr long blockbuster movies (The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, King Kong, Watchmen, The Dark Knight Rises, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, etc)! And who cares if this movie will have some unintended human scenes? I knew this was gonna happen, only this time it isn't forced or over-the-top like in Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon! What matters to me is the mindless action scenes that will really grab our attention! And boy, was it really action-packed!
Mark Wahlberg, I think, is better than the overrated Shia LaBeouf! At least he doesn't constantly scream and whine about his life except doing what was necessary to protect his daughter from a bad situation the same way he lost his wife! He's like the most mature human ally next to Josh Duhamel's Lennox and Tyrese Gibson's Epps. I love his chemistry with Optimus Prime, the Autobot leader that he found as a busted-up cab truck (a nod to the G1 cartoon!)! His scene with Optimus on Lockdown's ship is just emotionally well-handled.
For the Autobots, I have to say how awful it is for those who made it out of Dark of the Moon. Now wanted fugitives. Left without a home planet, a huge major cost in saving Earth from enslavement. I can see why only Optimus and Bumblebee are confirmed to star in this latest chapter of the TF movie series. So they get brutally killed by humans just like that when they have like SAVED EARTH many times in all 3 films!? Poor Ratchet. :'( He may be my least favorite Autobot nor is he important in 2 and 3, but he's the only available medic who knows how to repair the injured/wounded Autobots since back on Cybertron. Other than Wrecker leader Leadfoot (the red Nascar one), I have to assume that Sideswipe, Dino/Mirage, Roadbuster, Topspin, and Wheelie were all KILLED sometime between DOTM and AOE since I doubt the movie crew will bother bringing them back in TF 5 and 6. Everyone should know why Optimus Prime, my favorite Autobot and Transformers character of all time, is acting all angry (ever since he killed Megatron and his own mentor Sentinel Prime in Chicago) and wanted to "kill the humans" after experiencing such a terrible moment with his beloved Autobot friends before Mark Wahlberg tried to comfort him about retaining his faith in humanity. I love that Optimus gets all of the development he deserves and that his actions were completely justified by other reasons when in dire need! Everybody should know better when to criticize how Optimus fights with his enemies in the live-action movies when they were not supposed to be viewed as kid-only TV shows. Again, that's like hating Superman for killing Zod in last summer's Man of Steel when there is like no other choice to be made if Zod refuses to stand down. The humans hunting down Autobots may be the most intriguing storyline in the TF franchise, but I still don't like how the Autobots are being treated in the movies when they were supposed to be considered by all humans of Earth as HEROES like in G1 and Animated! My video project and my Optimus Prime painting (with words "Freedom" and "Respect") proves that! I still believe in the Autobots, no matter what kind of action they take when it comes to WAR!
But for the newcomers: Drift (a blue Samurai Autobot-turned Decepticon), Crosshairs (a green parachutin grouchy bot), and Hound (a trigger-happy Ironhide/Bulkhead-esque military bot), oh I absolutely love every scene they're in! I am so happy that they, besides Optimus and Bumblebee, all have some wonderful extended scenes, with or without the humans, rather than be just background characters like they were "never around"! They absolutely STOLE THE SHOW! Just like the Minions did in Despicable Me 2! Much better than the way the robots appeared in the last 3! Their robot-only scenes were just BREATHTAKING and VISUALLY STUNNING (especially in 3-D/IMAX 3D)! Guess Michael Bay finally listened to us fans of how to make it a TRANSFORMERS movie!
I think bounty hunter Lockdown is a much better TF movie villain than Sentinel Prime! A robot villain who is not a rogue Autobot that made all Decepticons like Megatron all "obsolete" when they aren't supposed to be! Neutral or not, Lockdown sure looked like he could've been a Decepticon as the merchandising media have frequently promoted him as! This isn't the first time this happened (see Cartoon Network's TF Animated)! Loved how once he made his entrance in the highway, his face turns into a gun to fire at Optimus in the Galvatron fight as a sneak attack!
Now for the guys that sent Lockdown to fulfill his bounty, the "creators," who are they? It's as though the "Creators" are like the Engineers who "created" the humans in Prometheus yet tried to do a goal that involves ironically wiping out all life. So it wasn't just the AllSpark cube that "created" the Transformers as the first movie indicated? Were the ancient Primes, including The Fallen (the originator of the Decepticon faction), created NOT by the AllSpark as they were led to believe? Do the Creators and the AllSpark have any connection with each other? I hope that's true! If not, then this'll make it extremely confusing and contradicting since the very start of the live-action TF movies! To recap how everything led to Age of Extinction, the dinosaurs' extinction is actually the result of the Creators' deployment of the "Seeds" that will cyberformat all organic life but at the same time kill them in the process. And I learn that the ship Lockdown had "stolen" was once piloted by the "legendary knights" before they were captured and held prisoner for many years. I would love for IDW to make a TF AOE prequel comic book to properly explain the origins of the Dinobots (set years prior to the 1st 4 films), and how Lockdown came into contact with the corruptive Cemetery Wind organization before their alliance was formed (set 5 years between DOTM and AOE). I'm kinda ok with the Dinobots not having more screentime except in the final scenes, as that would be the reason why there is no other scene in commercials besides the Hong Kong part. But I hope that once Michael Bay and the production crew hear our popular demand for more Dinobots in the next films, oh the Dinobots had better return once again and have some stronger development! :) As G1 Grimlock would say, "Me Grimlock love challenge!"
So my last post about the Movie Megatron/Galvatron identity crisis is proven true... I knew that Galvatron here IS the Megatron from the past 3 films even after his anticlimactic death in DOTM! When I hear Frank Welker's voice from the reincarnated Decepticon leader, I get the chills! So exactly like his TF Prime/TF The Ride counterpart! A definitive suitable replacement voice actor than Hugo Weaving, who stated that he didn't actually "enjoy" his time voicing Megatron! And best of all, he is actually more dangerous and more powerful than his time as Megatron! He is no longer always a pushover in 2 and 3 and proved to be a more dangerous threat since Movie 1, despite being built by humans! At long last, a full redemption for the once mighty Decepticon leader! This ought to shut you guys up for dissing on the movie incarnation of Megatron! There's an old saying, "You can't keep a bad guy down!" (same goes for Shredder in the 2003 TMNT series!) Just as long as he gets to do some damage in the next 2 films, whether as the main villain or not! Don't mind him being turned into a lackey of Unicron, though!
I love how the Hong Kong battle in the climax was handled! This is what the Chicago battle in DOTM should have been like 3 years ago! You get to see the robots in action more, like Optimus riding on Grimlock and Bumblebee riding on Strafe, as opposed to the human soldiers stealing their spotlight in the 1st 3 like they can do it without them! You can feel all of the emotion coursing through your veins in moments like Hound taking on the Decepticon-turned human-made drones to the bitter end (he's still alive, though) and Optimus taking on Lockdown in a final combat with a mix of the Imagine Dragons' Battle Cry and the Steve Jablonsky epic music soundtrack playing! And wow! What a hardcore, yet brutal, way to kill Lockdown in ONE SLICE by Optimus and his "Sword of Judgment"! This is why he is Optimus PRIME! :D Optimus departing Earth solo to search for the "Creators" and sending them his message is a very emotional way to end this movie. Not as abrupt as the Egypt and Chicago battle aftermaths! It really sets up for TF5! And yes, Optimus. To the "Creators," "leave Earth alone, because I am coming… for you!" And, cue the LOUD AUDIENCE APPLAUSE! Take that, critics!
For once, Michael Bay did something right even if he's not really the "best director" in a good way. Guess his big break from the Transformers movies to work on Pain & Gain really paid off. Whether he's the director for Transformers 5 or not, I'm still in for more TF adventures. Because the director(s) that I believe will handle better than Bay with the same style as his are either Peter Berg (if he recovers from his other Hasbro blockbuster movie Battleship, a big financial flop), Justin Lin (nailed it in Fast & Furious 5 & 6!), and Doug Liman (has done The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow, both critically-acclaimed action films!). Let's just pray that they'll know how to make TF 5 & 6 more awesome than 4 without repeating the mistakes they've done in TF2! I can't tell how proud I am for this film to live up to my expectations and finally relieve me of the pain I had to endure with Revenge of the Fallen and/or Dark of the Moon. Once again, the Transformers movies are what got me into this franchise before viewing the other animated shows to better understand the concept and know which is better no matter how they were written in this gigantic TF multiverse. I hope that this movie will perform better at the box office and gross more, if not better, than Dark of the Moon's $1.1 billion worldwide record! Just as a reminder to the critics why they should NOT diss this awesome fourquel so much that it shouldn't be considered the "worst Transformers movie" next to Revenge of the Fallen (already the Razzie winner for Worst Picture of 2009) when it was starting to offer something EVEN BETTER than the predecessors! In the words of Optimus Prime, Autobots ROLL OUT!
