Transformers: Age of Extinction

Contrary to many users here and the rating of the film in general, I liked the fourth episode of Transformers more than its predecessor, which is also due to the recasting of Shia LaBeouf, who was very annoying in the third. While Mark Wahlberg is not to blame for the somewhat crappy script, he was nevertheless much more tolerable, which cannot be said for his daughter and her boyfriend, who were similarly annoying as Shia. The partner-family story line went completely over my head and the film could have done without it just fine. Stanley Tucci could have been given more space and Kelsey Grammer was fine, but his villain didn't have enough charisma. To accuse the film of an over-long running time, lack of emotion and a silly script would be like carrying firewood into the woods, as the franchise builds on this combination – and in this case it bothered me less than with the third part. As for the technical execution, it is again an audiovisual orgy, of which I liked the alien ship, the escape from it and the final battle in Hong Kong the most. Besides that, as a die-hard dinosaur fan, I liked the film incorporated these giant creatures into the plot, even though it might have looked excessive. In the end, it's a weaker three stars, but since I found Extinction better than its predecessor, I'll give it a boost to differentiate the two works qualitatively. If I’d seen the film in the cinema, however, it would be a clean three stars. (09/01/2019)

I wasn't expecting a quality intelligent film, but that was to be expected. The Transformers' transformations are still super cool, and I was most excited about the robot dinosaurs, which were just fantastic. However, it's still that same old Bay mess, consisting of lots of technology, slow-motion shots, and untalented actresses. Some of the dialogue is really poor... (10/14/2014)

Michael Bay didn't make me too happy this time. The new Transformers has the least interesting story of all the franchise, it's basically 2 1/2 hours of explosions and CGI with good but uninteresting characters – I really missed Shia LaBeouf here. The 3D is again unnecessary, the film is unnecessarily drawn out and even I, a lover of these popcorn blockbusters, wished it was over, but to be honest, if it wasn't for Bay, I would never see something like this in my life and for that I am grateful and indebted to him. The dinosaurs and a few moments here were truly breathtaking. Eye-candy, but no soul. 75%. (06/29/2014)

A dumb story is again plays a front for shifting the frontiers of special effects technology. Bay finds the most wonderful corners of our planet and uses them as the backdrop for impressive battle scenes. I still don’t understand how somebody can expect more from this than a visual feast and three hours of brain death. It’s just a shame that the female supporting role (she reminds me of the girl on YouTube with socks in her bra) is the weakest of the entire series. (09/20/2014)

In a world of thrifty ninety-minute movies, this could have been a blockbuster trying for the title of “best part of the saga", there’s certainly enough material for it. For some mysterious reason this spuriously swelled to the length of two regular feature films and so each great minute/scene/wisecrack is alternated by two to three minutes/scenes/wisecracks that are boring, irrelevant filler (at best) or brought ad absurdum to kitsch infantility in Bay’s inimitable style (at worst and unfortunately most frequently). (09/20/2014)