If you've been living under a rock for 30-odd years, then you should know that The Touch was used on the 1980s Transformers movie... You know, the one where Optimus Prime dies.
So, Bayformers 4: Age of Extinction the Review.
No, I will not make a play-by-play review, since it involves watching and pausing and a nearly 3 hour endeavor would become a six-to-eight hour marathon. Also, sitting down with a notepad and transcribing a 3 hour movie play by play will be doubly painful. It involves rewatching the movie in order to understand what referential clip I might use for a scene. It's easier on a 94 minute movie than on a two hours and forty something minutes movie.
Before I start, I must point some things out: I've not watched Bayformers 3. So, I may be a bit lost if they reference that movie in 4. I blame LaBeouf and Bay for me not watching it. (Then there's the whole Revenge of the Fallen and Enemy Scrotum thing that made me swear off Transformers.)
The only reason I am willing to watch a movie that I KNOW I will hate is:
Grimlock
So here's the deal:
Aliens (possibly the Quintessons or Unicron) killed the Dinosaurs.
Mark Whalberg is a junk tinkerer and gets to buy a G1 Prime looking truck... It's actually Prime... It took them four movies to get Prime looking somewhat right.
Marky Mark's daughter is the "eye candy" in the movie. Actress was barely legal around the time of filming, but her character was 17, yet almost every male was lusting after her... It's a bit too creepy, especially since this is a Michael Bay movie, where women are eye candy.
The girl in question? a more grown up White Katara.
Kelsey Grammer is the bad guy... Reminiscent of Brian Cox's character from X2.
Something something CIA is hunting down Autobots. Marky Mark gets involved because he has Prime. A Company is manufacturing Transformers, we're in China, Grimlock gets the Yoshi Treatment, the end.
That's the plot in a nutshell. Then again, expecting something deep out of a Michael Bay movie is like Expecting something Intentionally good from Tommy Wiseau.
So, let's compare the good vs the bad:
The good:
-No more Nonononononono
-This gun is 20% Cooler.
-Frank Welker voicing Galvatron!
-BENDER!! OK, it's John Di Maggio, who voices Bender, Jake the Dog, and my favorite Stoner Bigot: Wakka. voices Crosshairs here. (His voice reminded me of Bender's crossed with Jake. I added one and one when he said meatbags.)
-John Goodman seems to be channeling a bit of Walter Sobchak in Hound.
-No more Shaky cam.
The Bad:
-White Katara was useless as Eye Candy, since the whole "You're a creepy Pedo if you find her hot" vibe that the movie was giving, while at the same time having her parade in short shorts and trying to cater to as many fetishes as possible. The tentacle scene was not purely coincidental!
-BLATANT PRODUCT PLACEMENT. Seriously, almost every scene had some advertisement on it.
Here's the two biggest Offenders.
-Pandering to China. Nuff said! The wnole moving the action to China served no real purpose than the producers trying to pander to China to rake in a few more bucks.
-Painting America as the villains. Having American Villains in itself is not a bad thing, but with the Pandering to China, this element seems to be a bit more problematic than I'd like.
-Galvatron was pretty much a glorified cameo. The real villain was Lockdown.
-Too damn long. I would have cut half of the scenes with Lucky Charms, KSI guy and any other humans.
-Dinobots were another glorified cameo.
-While more streamlined, some characters were hard to appreciate. Lockdown comes to mind.
So, if I add up the pluses and compare them against the minuses, I get an overall score of minus one.
Which puts it leaning towards the Bad side. Roughly a 4 in my standard scale of 1 to 10.
It's SLIGHTLY Better than Revenge of the Fallen, but it's far from being a good movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment