Time: 165 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence and offensive language
Cast:
Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager
Kelsey Grammer as Harold Attinger
Nicola Peltz as Tessa Yeager
Jack Reynor as Shane Dyson
Stanley Tucci as Joshua Joyce
Director: Michael Bay

Recently I had been rewatching the first three Michael Bay directed Transformers movies, partially because I wanted to get around to finally watching the fourth and fifth movies too. Having liked those first three movies, I was open to seeing how they were, despite their negative receptions. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed the fourth film, Age of Extinction, quite a lot.

Age of Extinction continues the story from Dark of the Moon but changes things up. For one, instead of following previous protagonist Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), it focuses on a new character played by Mark Wahlberg, and is about all Transformers now being hunted. I am largely okay with this shift, though Witwicky’s absence is rather strange considering. The human story isn’t that compelling, but it was fine enough. Unlike the first movie, Age of Extinction gets to showing the transformers much faster, and you do get to see a lot of them in this movie. The story is fine enough, if very typical for a Transformers story, though it was actually refreshing and interesting seeing human characters as clear cut villains in this movie. As said previously, it is great that the transformers have a lot of screentime throughout the movie, and I also really liked the villains, especially Lockdown. The humour could be hit or miss, sometimes the jokes worked, sometimes they didn’t (the infamous Romeo and Juliet law scene was certainly a bit too distracting and out of place). Age of Extinction is very long at 2 hours and 45 minutes, and while I was always on board with the movie from beginning to end, by the end it definitely felt exhausting, with how much was going on, especially with the major set pieces.

Mark Wahlberg plays the new protagonist of the remaining Bayformers movies and as the lead, he works fine enough. Stanley Tucci is very entertaining and wonderfully plays up his role, and especially works well with Bay’s humour. Kelsey Grammer is surprisingly good as the main human villain, alongside Titus Welliver. The voice actors are great, which includes the additions of actors like John Goodman and Ken Watanabe.

Michael Bay returns to deliver the usual Bayhem you’d expect from him. The over the top action sequences are incredible, feeling big and epic, captured well with amazing cinematography, and with some great visual effects and sound design. There is so much senseless destruction that is enthralling to watch. The only thing I will say is that the movie does go on for so long that at a point, the action gets a little tiring. Steve Jablonsky’s score is amazing as always, making the movie feel even more epic.

While perhaps a bit too long, Transformers: Age of Extinction is very entertaining, stylish and well directed, with giant and epic action set pieces. However, you weren’t on board with the previous three movies in the series, you probably aren’t going to enjoy this one either.