I saw the movie - my spoiler review
The problem I see is Michael Bay (MB) likes to prematurely shoot his wad. The movie starts off well, I was genuinely finding some of the jokes funny (Silicon Valley dude (Wahlberg’s best friend/partner/employee) is pretty much playing the same character he plays in the TV series, which I have no problem with because he is great). Then MB starts using his low shots, he over does it, to the point it feels cliched along with the slowmo and helicopters …it almost feels patented.
The first indication of the movie falling apart is as soon as the action starts, MB editing just sucks, there are too many time skips. Example house in the middle of nowhere, they are being chased by the blackops guys on the dirt track and crop fields, when suddenly they are in the middle of a freeway, like wtf just happened?! Meanwhile gigantic explosions have been going off. I was like, dude we are just 20 minutes into the movie and you’ve already had 5 explosions that take up the entire screen. There is no restraint, the action needs to be built up throughout the movie rather than feel like he is aiming for some sort of quota. We haven’t even got to LockDown’s grenade at this point …holyshit that was overkill but it looked awesome admittedly! :lol:
Next problem is the script, interaction between father and daughter’s (Aussie/Irish he can’t decide on an accent) boyfriend is just dreadful . eg. “I’m not here to save your daughter, I’m here to save my girlfriend.” I would have thrown him off that spaceship there and then.
Kermode was not joking about the ludicrous characterization of American government in the form of the Secretary of State compared to the Chinese, he is a fumbling buffoon, in no reality would someone like him have that job, he is just an absurd caricature that isn’t funny. Which brings me to my next issue, comedy relief. There are too many characters intended to bring comedic relief, most films will just have one character with the lead throwing in a couple of one liners, but since they killed off their comedian in the first half hour of the movie other characters need to fill role, the thing is, the movie doesn’t need it. So far the movie is at its best when it is taking itself seriously. The jokes in the script from here just get worse and worse, I’m wondering now if it simply down to delivery or the Silicon Valley actor wrote his own jokes.
Next noticeable problem is forcing humans into the scenario, Optimus Prime gets his shit pushed in by Lockdown, yet the daughter decides to climb into the vehicle which Optimus is laying on top of to give him a pep talk, only to get whisked away into Lockdown’s ship (which looked badass), and of course father and boyfriend have to go get her. I know teenagers are meant to be rebellious but FFS, daddy said run into the field, not run underneath the giant robot that just got it’s ass kicked and is now about to get curb stomped out of existence.
Product placement flips table not even worth talking about, I was just shaking and audibly sighing every time some product was shoved in my face.
The movie feels stretched as soon as they leave for Hong Kong, I think it was pretty much at this point during the battle in HongKong I got bored with the action, and Dinobots appearance didn’t even perk me up. The final battle felt very rushed, and I felt Lockdown deserved a better death but it did make more sense Optimus Prime needing assistants to defeat him. Saying that, the premise for the next movie sounds interesting.
Overall, best Transformers movie out of all the them by a long way. Kinda had similar pacing flaws that I saw in the Raid 2 in that the story starts out well enough, then you have this loud high intensity action sequence then it suddenly puts the handbrake on before then going into another long and loud high intensity action sequence. This movie despite it’s many flaws is tolerable as a mindless action movie, kids will probably really enjoy it, and some parents will be thankful they get their kids to shut up for almost 3hrs. Michael Bay is moving in the right direction, but needs to work more on his scripts and editing, and where to dial up the action.
D+
Forgot to mention, the soundtrack wasn’t bad, two tracks that stood out, AutoBot Reunite and LockDown
