Transformers: Age of Extinction

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)

Relative brain loss / the fun is worse than part two and three. Something keeps getting moved from place to place under a flimsy pretext, takes a position, destroys everything within reach and travels further for another flimsy reason. The 165 minutes and the lobotomized story sometimes made it difficult for me to understand why, because it all seems so sparse, a bit like an advertisement for (mostly American) cars accompanied by pyrotechnic effects. At the end, the film plays to the Chinese audience, everyone hugs and the story returns roughly to where it was at the beginning of part one, and only the appearance of the actors and their casting changes a little. If you're able to spend two and three-quarters of an hour to see the capabilities of 3D IMAX detail, you're ok, but while Edwards recalled the magic of the perspective in Godzilla, this sounds like a fucking waste of time and money to me. For fans of the series, the good news is that Transformers can continue to run in an endless loop, because "we all have a boss" and even the highest boss has a higher boss. [40%] (06/25/2014)

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)

I give the fourth Transformers one more star than the previous ones, because it is the second best installment of the series. The special effects are perfect, of course, but the good thing is that besides the robot fights, I was also interested in the humans this time, and the character of Stanley Tucci was especially good. I liked the ending with the Dinobots very much, I was pleased that Michael Bay finally filmed the action clearly (he had practiced the long shots last time) and that there were not as many Autobots as before and they were more likeable - especially the bearded, cigar-wielding, John Goodman-voiced Hound. (06/27/2014)