Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Directed by Michael Bay
As humanity picks up the pieces after the battle of Chicago, 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 Cade Yeager, Optimus Prime and the Autobots rise to meet their most fearsome challenge yet.
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29 films that influenced Transformers: Age of Extinction
What critics say influenced Transformers: Age of Extinction
Even the action becomes tiresome after a while; that aforementioned car chase was certainly more than enough for one movie, but Bay throws in another long car chase (one that's far too reminiscent of a similar sequence within Jackie Chan's Police Story) which is admittedly well-executed but enough is enough.
Yes, the dinosaurs are extraordinary technological feats that make “Jurassic Park” look like like stop motion animation.
Set to be released in 2D, 3D and Imax 3D worldwide, the $165 million mega-production will reportedly kickstart a brand-new trilogy with a complete change of human cast (Mark Wahlberg steps in for Shia LaBeouf here) and the introduction of a new species, the Dinobots, which may have some crossover appeal for fans of another soon-to-be-rebooted franchise, “Jurassic Park.”
Cade’s barn laboratory feels like Tony Stark’s from Iron Man ; the enhanced ‘Transformium’ technology mutating and swirling like liquid is Terminator 2: Judgement Day ‘s T-1000 by way of J.J Abrams’ Super 8 alien ship; the alien bounty hunter and his revelations of creators in time before the existence of the Autobots and decpeticons is half way between Star Wars ‘ Boba Fett and Prometheus ‘ ‘creators,’; speaking of Boba, he also flies a ship that looks straight from the Alien -verse and the mind of H.R Giger; the opening of the film plays like the opening of Jurassic Park if someone strapped it to a table and injected Wolverine’s adamantium into it; Stanley Tucci’s tech company is called KSI, a short stretch to think that he’s riffing on the found of SKYNET (KSI – SKY) Miles Bennet Dyson from Terminator 2: Judgement Day ; also more references to Coen Brothers films including casting frequent collaborator John Goodman to voice Hound.
Sure, the sit-com subplot of Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) being an overprotective father to his 17-year-old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) stirs memories of Tony Danza in She's Out of Control (and who wants to be burdened with those memories?)…
His shoes are filled by Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, a can-do “garage inventor” with a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast, a somewhat creepy obsession with the virtue of his leggy teenage daughter (Nicola Peltz), and a passion for discarded machinery that leads him to rescue Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), noble leader of the Autobot race.
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Wahlberg, on the other hand, has been cast as a brilliant scientist, and perhaps not since Steve Guttenberg in the trite 80s flick Short Circuit has an actor labored so mightily — and failed so miserably — at convincing us that he understood what the hell he was talking about when discussing eggheaded science stuff.
When Cade stumbles across a broken Optimus Prime in a bankrupt movie theater – an image that practically dances on cinema’s grave – he fixes the Autobot leader and winds up on the run with the two young lovers because the government, led by CIA agent Kelsey Grammer, is hunting the Transformers down, good and bad alike, for reasons that will soon be revealed and will soon be conspicuously reminiscent of Terminator 2: Judgment Day .
Add in her 20 year-old boyfriend (Jack Reynor) who actually cites “Romeo and Juliet” laws as to the appropriateness of their relationship, and the film’s unnecessarily creepy love story becomes even less palatable.
What excited me in the mid-sixties, in such movies as “The Amazing Colossal Man” (which is still pretty amazing) and “Earth vs. the Spider,” was the stuff of ordinary life—a man, a bug, a hotel room, a rock song—transformed into something uncanny, monstrous, and dangerously extraordinary.
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Time to hand the Transformers toys over to one of those talented filmmakers who grew up in the 80s, many of whom are being swallowed up by the Star Wars locomotive.
Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf once played the token humans in these films, but Fox has gone on to establish herself as a credible screen performer (Passion Play, This Is 40), while LaBeouf has just gone nuts.