By Pat French
Have you ever had that Truman Show Paranoia? You know the one, where you just can’t shake the feeling that your life feels a little scripted. Things just fall into place with whatever you’re working on. Your day ends in a perfect resolution. You and your friends all freeze-frame in a heartwarming pose as the credit roll begins. I started writing the Sequel Files as a way to express the weird appreciation I have for bad film-making because -let’s face it- bad sequels are the best kind of bad film-making. This weekend I set myself to the task of watching Transformers 4: Age of Extinction expecting to come back here and write a one page article about bantha poo-doo. At no point did I think that this would be a flick that I would have something particularly interesting to write about. I figured: see it, get a couple jokes in, move along. To my surprise (and Jim Carey-induced paranoia) I think this movie was made just for me. Like… to the extent that I’m nervous that Michael Bay reads my articles and might throw an air conditioner at me.
Full disclosure: I was that irritating kid who frakking loved the 1986 animated TF movie. I cried when Optimus died. I was obsessed with that flick for an embarrassingly long period of my adolescence (and adulthood if I’m being honest). When it was announced that Michael Bay was making a live action film back in ’06, I figured I would eventually have to capitulate and admit that the new version was better. I was clearly wrong. The first film was –at best- tolerable. Tolerable in the way that The Phantom Menace is tolerable (which is to say, unlike Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3, TPM is at least a FILM). I wouldn’t call Transformers ’07 better than Transformers ’86, but they’re at least comparable. Transformers ’07 suffered from lackluster performances, a pretty bad script, and action scenes that didn’t always focus enough on the GIANT EFFING ROBOTS. Apologies for the caps-lock-rage there, but I cannot emphasize enough how irritating it was to watch that movie. You wait for an hour for a robot battle, and then the camera focuses on Shia LeBouf running away from it. Goddamn pointless, you ask me. Anyway, aside from all that, the movie had some charm and a pretty excellent final battle. So, like I said: tolerable.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an unmitigated disaster deserving of it’s own article. Suffice to say, everything wrong with the first one is even worse in the second. It’s one of those sequels. Dark of the Moon is even worse. So much so that I couldn’t even finish it. I guess some day I’ll have to try. That will be the hardest Sequel File ever. I’m doing it all for you dear readers. It’s all for you…
And that brings us to Age of Extinction, starring Marky Mark. And somehow, despite all odds, this movie is actually kind of excellent. It’s not quite what I would call a good movie, but it’s an amazingly entertaining bad movie. Unlike the second and third installments, I didn’t find myself wishing it were over every five minutes (the end stretches out for a bit, but not so bad as one would expect). Bay’s manic, full-throttle style is almost masterful as he unapologetically punches his way through the 2½-hour story. The film experience is like taking a 12-year-old to an amusement park just as he’s met the height requirements for every ride: you don’t stop and you barely breathe. It’s as though Bay had a list of beats, dumb jokes, and action set-pieces he wanted to include, and he was damn sure not going to let something like connective tissue get in the way of that.
Connective tissue is the main thing that this movie is lacking. Bay wants to show you the car crashing and rolling, then the characters running away from it. He has no time for shots of people getting out of the car and making sure they’re ok. This is a literal example from the movie, but it’s also a metaphor for his entire style. The film moves so fast that you don’t get many chances to think about how nonsensical the transition is from one scene to the next. Some people would call that bad film-making. I would agree, but I would point out that it is on purpose, and therefore: stylistic.
Despite the lack of cohesion from scene to scene, this film has easily the tightest story of the entire series. I lamented at the beginning, as I counted 5 separate plot threads within 5 minutes. “Dear God,” I thought. “They’re doing it again. This shit is going to be all over the place, just like the last two…” Oddly enough, the film does a decent job of balancing and reintroducing these threads organically. Dark of the Moon hit a point in the second act where it was practically a different movie every 10 minutes. Compared to that turkey, this film has a very solid structure and sets up its ending in a satisfying and thoroughly watchable way. I expected Age of Extinction to be this year’s Star Trek Into Darkness. To have a disparate mess of a plot built around studio demands and crappy attempts at fan-service. Somehow, we got a franchise tentpole with story structure. I guess if you throw enough shit at the wall…
Age of Extinction’s acting is serviceable, even when it’s bad. Kelsey Grammer and Mark Wahlberg are consummate pros that balance each other as the human elements of the story. Stanley Tucci, as the bumbling, not-quite-so-evil, scientist character, is a huge step up from the tittering mess that was John Turturro. Tucci positively nails the Michael Bay freak-out scenes (I laughed for like 2 solid minutes at a part where he slams a wall and shouts “MATH!”). There are plenty of forgettable performances –as you would expect- but none of them are so particularly awful that you want to break things. They’re simply forgettable, and that is forgivable. Bay also cast some celebrity voices into the Autobots: John Goodman and Ken Watanabe. Watanabe is pretty much a one-joke wonder, but we get a little mileage out of Goodman’s garbage-truck Autobot.
The action is a huge step in the right direction. As I mentioned before, Bay has no time for connective shots, so some of the battles seem a little disjointed. On the plus side though, there are very few shots of humans running away as transformers fight in the back and to the side of the shot. This movie is all about the battles being front and center, and we even get to see Marky Mark jump into the action to help the Autobots. It’s this kind of little guy/giant space robot dichotomy that makes this feel like a classic film. There’s almost a poetry to it. It’s angry slam poetry, but it’s there.
At times I felt that the film was suffering from an overabundance of villains. By the end however, it is revealed (not quite masterfully, but at least quickly) that one of them is a set-up for Transformers 5, and that restores balance.
The biggest double-edged sword in this film is the music by Imagine Dragons. Imagine Dragons (for those of you as lame and out of touch as I) are the group behind that overbearing “Radioactive” song. I kind of like it, but overall it’s not my favorite kind of music. It is, however, what’s hip with the kids these days, so of course it permeates a Michael Bay movie. What’s hilarious about it is that it brings me back to the animated film, whose soundtrack likewise had very dated 80’s power ballads by Vince DiCola (of Rocky 4 fame). So, while nothing Imagine Dragons does for this film is even close to as exciting as DiCola’s seminal classic “The Touch,” there is a neat sort of symmetry to the music being so of the present. I’ll watch this movie again in five years or so and this music will make me laugh my brains out (assuming I have any brains left).
Overall, Age of Extinction’s greatest asset is that it realizes what it is and doesn’t attempt to be something else. This is a dumb action sequel to some of the dumbest action movies of all time. Unlike -and superior to- the prior entries, the plot doesn’t get any more complicated than is necessary. The characters are very black and white and the story moves in a straight line. The thing necessary to call this type of film a success is action that is fun to watch, and on that aspect it delivers. Where the movie is crap, it is at least fun crap, and is not at all excruciating. This film was made for action junkies that don’t give a damn, and people like me who love a little schlock. Rifftrax would have a ball with this flick, and Dave from Homestuck would love it ironically.
It’s still not better than Transformers ’86, but it’s come the closest. I will probably actually watch this one again some time.
