My Thoughts on "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Foreword:
This was originally written on Sunday August 6, 2023. I've got one more Transformers review to go after this one, my review for Transformers: The Last Knight. I actually wrote this one the same day I wrote my review for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which you can go read right here. That was very surprising to me when I went to check the date on when I wrote this. I guess I did those re-edits the same day, and then after I did them, I decided to re-edit those explosion compilation 💥 videos for the other Michael Bay Transformers movies, as well as other Michael Bay movies that aren't Transformers such as Armageddon ☄️, Pearl Harbor, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, 6 Underground, and Bad Boys II. But, the Transformers movies and Armageddon ☄️ are the only Michael Bay movies that I saved the description for on those re-edited compilation videos, and turned into full reviews. The other ones I felt weren't long enough to make into full reviews. I guess you could say that those were the ones I didn't go off on a tangent on.
Speaking of which, I do intend on going off on some tangents in this foreword, but before I do that, I should probably discuss my current thoughts on this movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction. It's been a long time since I've seen this movie in full. I don't remember the last time I saw it. I did see the movie in theaters as I mention in this review or in my review for The Last Knight, and then I purchased it on iTunes, where it is currently sitting in my Apple TV library since Apple moved all of their movies and TV shows to the Apple TV app since they launched their Apple TV+ streaming service. So, if you have an Apple computer 🖥️💻 or an iPhone 📱 or an iPad, any movies or TV shows you watch will be through the Apple TV app.
I didn't buy the Blu-Ray 💿 for this movie for whatever reason. I don't remember exactly why I didn't buy Age of Extinction on Blu-Ray 💿. Maybe it was just the convenience of having it on my computer 🖥️ that I felt that I didn't need to buy the Blu-Ray 💿, or maybe I just felt that it wasn't good enough to buy on Blu-Ray 💿, I don't remember. But, whatever the reason, I didn't own it on Blu-Ray 💿 and only have the digital copy on Apple TV.
I kind of have a love/hate relationship with this movie. When I first saw it when it came out, in 2014, I did actually like it. I thought that it was a good movie and just as good as the other Transformers movies that Michael Bay had directed up until that point. And I did still like it when I rewatched it on digital, and rewatched it a few times after that. But more recently, after watching some reviews of it, particular PointlessHub's review of it, and after rewatching clips from it, my opinions on the movie have soured significantly.
I do still think it has some good ideas. Like, the idea of the humanity turning on the Autobots, and the Autobots being on the run from the US government 🇺🇸 is a decent one, and would make for a good movie if it had a better script and perhaps some better actors to perform it. But, more than the basically premise of the Autobots being outlawed and being fugitives on the run, the idea from this movie that I probably like the most is the idea of man-made Transformers. That idea is the one that probably intrigues me the most from this movie because that is something that humans would try to do. If alien robots that could transform into vehicles and aircraft, and other machinery came down to Earth 🌎, I imagine that a tech company like KSI somewhere would try to replicate that technology, to try to create Transformers of their own.
It's kind of just how humans operate. They see something foreign that seems like it could be useful or advantageous to them, and then they try to replicate it to the best of their ability. You see this a lot in warfare and even outside of warfare during peacetime, where a country sees another country with a certain military capability that they don't have, and then they try to replicate it and develop that same capability for their own military. That's how you get arms races. Sometimes, they just steal these technologies from the other side, whether it's hacking their computer system, and stealing the classified blueprints and schematics, or whether it's them commandeering their technology directly, and then trying to reverse engineer it.
So if aliens 👽 did come down to Earth 🌎, we would try to replicate their technology to the best of our ability, so that we could do some of the things that they can do. And with aliens like the Transformers, you bet a government somewhere would try to figure out how their biology works, what their source of their transforming abilities so that they could use that knowledge to create their Transformer army. If not the US government 🇺🇸, then probably the Russian government 🇷🇺, or the Chinese government 🇨🇳, or the North Korean government 🇰🇵, or maybe even the Iranian government 🇮🇷. Maybe the UK government 🇬🇧 and even some of the governments in the EU 🇪🇺 like the French government 🇫🇷 would try to replicate that technology and create their own Transformers. Maybe, the Israeli government 🇮🇱 would try to get in on the action and create their own Transformers too.
I liked Lockdown, I thought he was a cool character, and I liked the concept of him. The idea of a Transformer bounty hunter that's neutral and isn't tied to the Autobots or the Decepticons, and just sees them as kids fighting in a playground. And of course, I liked the Dinobots, I thought the Dinobots looked really cool, especially Grimlock. Even if the Dinobots really aren't that important to the story, and show up at the last minute towards the end of the movie. They were one of the main things that the movie was marketed on, and they're probably the main thing people remember about the movie, even if they didn't like it.
Which brings me to the things that I didn't about this movie, and the reason why I tend to rank this one lower as one of the "bad ones." This movie has a lot of flaws. As Cody (PointlessHub) kind of said in his review (I'm paraphrasing here), just because a movie has good ideas, that doesn't necessarily mean that those ideas will be executed well. Good ideas mean nothing if they aren't executed well. And this movie has a lot of good ideas as I've laid out, but many of them are not executed as well as they could have been or aren't executed to their full potential.
This movie is full of wasted potential, and I feel like part of the reason why some of that potential was squandered was because of the writer, Ehren Kruger and the director, Michael Bay. Ehren Kruger was just not up to the task to write this movie. His writing just isn't that great, and I feel like a different screenwriter should have been hired to write the script. Someone who could take these ideas and do something truly interesting and exciting with them. As for Michael Bay, it is clearly that he just didn't have it in him this time. The passion just wasn't there, and it wasn't there because Michael Bay really didn't want to come back to do another Transformers movie after Transformers: Dark of the Moon. He closed that trilogy off, and was ready to move onto other things. He wanted to make movies like Pain & Gain and 13 Hours. That was where his passion lied.
But, Paramount enticed him to come back to make a fourth one, mainly with money 💵, and that's how we got this movie that sees a bit passionless by comparison to the the previous three movies. Even with this movie, he said that this would be the last Transformers movie that he would direct, and he would pass the torch to someone else. But then this movie made over a billion dollars 💵 at the worldwide box office, $1.104 billion 💵 to be exact, so Paramount brought him back again to direct a fifth movie.
Had Michael Bay chosen not to direct this movie, and move on with his career like he had originally planned, and they did bring someone else in take his place, I do think that this movie could have potentially turned out better. Sure, they'd still have a terrible script, but there are ways a director can work around a bad script. But if it were up to me, I'd have a new writer and a new director on this movie, if there really had to be a fourth Transformers movie.
The biggest flaws that this movie has are definitely the runtime, the writing, the dialogue, some of the acting, some of the CGI, and the heavy amounts of product placement and Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳. The infamous Romeo & Juliet law scene is one scene that I did talk about in length in my review because it is such a weird scene that is so out of place in a movie like this (or any movie really), and kind of just raises a lot of eyebrows 🤨 as to why it was even included in the first place. The movie is over 165 minutes long, which is 2 hours and 45 minutes. To this day, it is still the longest Transformers movie, and in my opinion, it's way too long. All of the Transformers movies except the first movie are all a bit too long, and could all be way shorter than they were.
After watching movies like The Meg, Meg 2: The Trench, The Beekeeper 🐝, Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭, and the MonsterVerse movies, I feel like you could easily have made Transformers were an hour long. Like, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire most recently was a crisp 115 minutes long, or 1 hour and 55 minutes. That was long for the movie to tell its story and be a worthwhile experience, while also not overstaying its welcome. Most of the MonsterVerse movies so far have been an hour long. The only ones that weren't were Godzilla (2014), which was 123 minutes long, or 2 hours and 1 minute, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), which was 132 minutes long, or 2 hours and 12 minutes.
That makes it the longest MonsterVerse movie so far, though it isn't crazy long. Certainly not as long as this movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction or any of the Michael Bay Transformers movies. It's still shorter than the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film, which was 139 minutes long, or 2 hours and 19 minutes. So, Godzilla (1998) is still the longest Godzilla movie overall, with King of the Monsters (2019) coming in at a close second. I don't think I'm alone in feeling this as there has been a bit of a backlash amongst moviegoers and film reviewers against movies that are over 2 hours long.
Although Avatar: The Way of Water 💦 did gross $2 billion 💵 at the worldwide box office, a lot of people complained about the movie's 3 hour runtime. The same thing happened with Babylon, a movie that was released around the same time as The Way of Water 💦. People had a lot more complaints about Babylon, but one of the main complaints was its 3 hour runtime. Surprisingly, people didn't levy such a complaint against Killers of the Flower Moon 🌼🌕 even though that movie also had a 3 hour runtime.
So now people are going back to 1 hour movies. It seems like it's becoming the standard for blockbusters once again. Or maybe it isn't, and it's just the movies that I've seen this year so far. I think from here on out, filmmakers need to ask themselves when they're making these big budget blockbuster movies and making them over 2 and half hours long, "Does this really need to be that long? Does the story we're telling really warrant such a lengthy runtime? Can it be shortened without losing its essence?" Like, does a movie about transforming alien robots really need to be 2 hours and 45 minutes long? Does a James Bond movie need to be 2 hours and 43 minutes long? Yes, I am referring to No Time to Die, that movie was 163 minutes long, which is 2 hours and 43 minutes. And does a movie about street racers turned DVD thieves 📀 turned bank robbers turned secret agents need to be 2 hours and 21 minutes? Fast X, the most recent Fast & Furious movie was 141 minutes long, which is 2 hours and 21 minutes.
Then of course, there's the big elephant in the room 🐘, perhaps even bigger or just as big as the Romeo & Juliet law scene, the blatant Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳. It's not simply that they included a Chinese actor 🇨🇳 here and there, or that they set significant portions of the movie in China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰, it's how the movie portrays both the government in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and in Mainland China 🇨🇳. The movie goes out of its way to show an effective government response to the Transformer crisis happening in Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and to show the Hong Kong government 🇭🇰 and the mainland government 🇨🇳 working together hand-in-hand with each other. Like, a truly coordinated response. That's kind of when the movie veers off into propaganda territory. Not just that they're pandering to a specific demographic, but that they're doing propaganda for a foreign government, a foreign government is now an adversary of sorts of the United States 🇺🇸.
The movie really goes out of its way to paint the Chinese government 🇨🇳 in as positive of a light as it possibly can. Now, to be completely clear, Michael Bay does portray the US military 🇺🇸 in much the same way. Not the US government 🇺🇸, but the US military 🇺🇸. It is clear from watching his films that he really doesn't respect government bureaucrats or even government institutions overall, as they're almost always portrayed in a negative light. So, government bureaucrats, and specific government agencies like NASA, the FBI, and the CIA, they're fair game for Michael Bay, but not the military.
His respect lies with the military, and specifically, the actual soldiers on the ground that put their lives on the line to defend this country. He always portrays soldiers and marines in his movies as superheroes. But, even beyond the ground-level soldier, he usually tends to portray the military as being 100% effective, or at the very least, 80% effective. That's why the DOD (Department of Defense) likes working with Michael Bay, and why they often give him unprecedented access to things that most other civilians would never be allowed to film let alone see. He makes the military look good.
And I'm sure that's why the Chinese companies 🇨🇳 that worked on this film, Jiaflix Enterprises and China Movie Channel 🇨🇳 wanted to work with him also. They knew that he'd make the Chinese government 🇨🇳 look good. Despite the fact that he did talk negatively about China 🇨🇳 in the past during the DVD commentary 📀 for The Island. He talked about how the Chinese government 🇨🇳 harvested the organs of political prisoners, and how that policy influenced some of the things that happen in that movie. Guess they were willing to look past that for the sake of money 💵.
But, it was this movie, and other movies that did similar things to appease the Chinese 🇨🇳 that made people skeptical and critical of this practice of working with Chinese companies 🇨🇳 and letting them influence Hollywood movie productions to the degree that a lot of them did, by pushing Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳 onto western audiences. To try to influence how westerners viewed the Chinese government 🇨🇳. It didn't work because a lot of people recognized that this was propaganda, and the Chinese government 🇨🇳 is full of shit, and that it's a horrible authoritarian government (a one party dictatorship) that doesn't deserve to be respected, praised, or admired.
Luckily, since this movie came out, this sort of practice of Chinese companies 🇨🇳 working with Hollywood and trying to influence Hollywood has sort of died down a bit. While there is still China pandering 🇨🇳 from time-to-time, like in Meg 2: The Trench, it isn't egregious as it was during the 2010s when this movie came out. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that the relations between the United States 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳 have worsened in recent years, and Chinese film companies 🇨🇳 in turn have slowly started to distance themselves from Hollywood, and Hollywood seems to be fine with that.
I would like to make it clear that I'm not inherently against the idea of setting a movie in China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰. Those seem like great places to set a movie in. China 🇨🇳 is a beautiful place, and so is Hong Kong 🇭🇰. Hong Kong 🇭🇰 seems like it has a lot of great people, and a lot of those great people were the ones who were fighting democracy back in 2019 and 2020, and who's voices were silenced by the draconian Hong Kong police 🇭🇰. Some of those people fled Hong Kong 🇭🇰 after the national security law was passed, and after the government successfully put down the protests 🪧.
Some of them fled to the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, some to Japan 🇯🇵, some to the United States 🇺🇸, and even some to Taiwan 🇹🇼, even if there is a bit of resentment and xenophobia amongst certain Taiwanese 🇹🇼 towards Hong Kong refugees 🇭🇰. Hong Kong refugees 🇭🇰 living in Taiwan 🇹🇼 aren't exactly treated as well by the locals as they should be, considering that Taiwan 🇹🇼 could very well be next. It could be the next target of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ☭. But luckily, not all Taiwanese 🇹🇼 are hating on Hong Kong refugees 🇭🇰, and some are actually accommodating, even if not everyone in Taiwan 🇹🇼 is.
Others who couldn't leave, just keep their heads down to avoid persecution under the new national security law which the Hong Kong and mainland governments 🇨🇳🇭🇰 are using as a pretense to suppress any and all political dissent within the city. Meaning that there are still good people left in the city and the entire territory as a whole, even if they can't express themselves the way they want to without being arrested. It's just that I wish that movies set in either of those two places didn't have to be propaganda for their awful governments, or government since Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is pretty much in the control of the mainland now.
The Hong Kong government 🇭🇰 pretty much answers directly to the mainland government 🇨🇳. There is no more autonomy for Hong Kong 🇭🇰, if it had any at all under Chinese rule 🇨🇳. Perhaps Hong Kong 🇭🇰's special status as a "Special Administrative Region" (SAR) was all just an illusion meant to lure the people of Hong Kong 🇭🇰 into a false sense of security. Which I suppose is ironic since the Chinese government 🇨🇳 has used a national security law to crack down on political dissent in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and strip the territory of its freedoms.
Maybe if China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰 were under different governments, more democratic and liberal ones, then maybe I would be a little bit more comfortable with movies being set in those places and not feel as if they were ignoring or supporting an autocracy. Maybe, in an alternate timeline in-which the Kuomintang (KMT) won the Chinese Civil War 🇹🇼🇨🇳, and got to stay on the mainland, then maybe it'd be okay, especially if China 🇹🇼 had moved towards democracy under their rule. If they peacefully stepped aside, and allowed other political parties to form, and agreed to have free and fair elections 🗳️.
That's kind of the same way I feel about visiting China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰 as a tourist. Maybe, if there was a different government, and it wasn't communist ☭ and it wasn't authoritarian, then maybe I'd seriously consider visiting those places because then I would feel more safe and comfortable and not feel as if I'm supporting an autocracy. Like, I feel at this point that Hong Kong 🇭🇰 should become independent, just like Singapore 🇸🇬. It'll be another city-state in Asia, along with Singapore 🇸🇬, even if Singapore 🇸🇬's government isn't perfect and is kind of authoritarian in its own right.
But, until that happens, until there's a change in government in China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and they become truly democratic, then I'll just stick with Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, and Taiwan 🇹🇼. And those are the only countries in East Asia that I would support movies being set in as oppose to China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰, because filming movies in either of those two places comes with strings attached, and I'm not willing to put up with that.
In addition to the weird Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳 in the film, there's also Chinese product placement 🇨🇳. I do mention that there is Chinese product placement 🇨🇳 in the review itself, but I don't actually get into any specifics. The most obvious example of course is the Chinese milk product 🇨🇳🥛 that we see Stanley Tucci's character, Joshua drinking at one point during the Hong Kong battle 🇭🇰 called Shuhua milk 🥛. It comes in a box sort of like a juice box you'd see for Hi-C.
This product was actually first featured in Dark of the Moon. Ken Jeong's character in that movie, Jerry Wang (AKA Deep Wang) was drinking it on the elevator while he was standing next to Sam, and was being accosted by his white co-worker who was mad at him for knocking down his binders while he was spying on Sam. They weren't trying to appeal to China 🇨🇳 in that movie since it was made before Hollywood really started sucking up to China 🇨🇳. But, the movie was a huge hit in China 🇨🇳, making up a huge chunk of the movie's worldwide gross 💵, so of course they wanted to feature that milk 🥛 again since now they were trying to appeal the Chinese market 🇨🇳 and sell products that Chinese people 🇨🇳 would recognize.
There's also a scene earlier on in Age of Extinction that features a Chinese ATM 🇨🇳🏧 like all the text on the screen is in Chinese, probably Simplified Chinese since that's the standard character set used in Mainland China 🇨🇳. Mao and the communists ☭ created Simplified Chinese and forced the entire mainland population to use it after they took power. It isn't even in English, enough that scene with that ATM 🏧 is supposed to take place in Texas. I actually didn't notice that one until Cody mentioned it in his review of the movie, and talked about Chinese message board users 🇨🇳 found it funny that Chinese products 🇨🇳 include a Chinese ATM 🇨🇳🏧 just happened to be in rural Texas 😂.
Before I come this foreword out, and let you get on with the review, I'd like to mention a couple of trailers for movies that I saw in the past couple of days. The first one that I'd like to discuss is Venom: The Last Dance, the third and possibly final Venom film featuring Tom Hardy in the dual role as Eddie Brock and Venom. Yes, he does play both characters. Between this, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, these Venom sequels sure do have weird and funky titles. Definitely unconventional, which I do appreciate.
I like it when movie sequels have unconventional sequel titles such the second Alien movie being called Aliens, the third Alien movie being called Alien³, or the second Fast & Furious movie being called 2 Fast 2 Furious. In fact all of the Fast & Furious sequels have unique titles, except for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious (2009), and Fast & Furious 6. Fast Five, Furious 7, Fate of the Furious, F9: The Fast Saga, and now Fast X. I'm sure that last one really made Elon Musk happy because he's just obsessed with the letter "x" for some reason. It's his favorite letter in the alphabet. That's why named his space company, SpaceX, why he named his own son, X Æ A-XII, and why he renamed Twitter 🐦, X. Asshole 🙄👎. They've pretty much done every title combination you can think of with the words "fast" and "furious." It's really impressive.
Then of course, there's An Extremely Goofy Movie, the sequel to A Goofy Movie, Shrek the Third, the third Shrek movie. That likely influenced the title of Saints Row the Third, the third Saints Row game, too. Shrek Forever After, the fourth and so far final Shrek movie. The Mummy Returns, the second Mummy movie. Piranha 3DD (pronounced 3 Double-D), the sequel to Piranha 3D. Then of course there's Predators, the third Predator movie, and more recently, Twisters 🌪️, the sequel to Twister 🌪️. Both of which were very obviously inspired by the title of Aliens, the original plural sequel title with the letter "s" at the end. This is why I hope that the second Super Mario Bros. movie is titled The Second Super Mario Bros. Movie because it is a unique sequel title.
The title, Let There Be Carnage obviously derives from the fact that Carnage was the main antagonist of the second movie. And also because Carnage himself says that at one point during the climatic battle. I wouldn't be surprised if that was in the script before they even decided on a title for the movie, and when they wrote that line, they decided to make it the title. And going by the trailer of this movie, the title, The Last Dance seems to be mainly derived from the fact that Venom has a dance with Mrs. Chen (played by Peggy Lu), who is a minor side character who has appeared in all three films, at some point in this film. And given the fact that this might be the last movie of this trilogy, and Venom/Eddie Brock might die by the end, this is very much the last dance of these characters. Kind of like The Last Supper. That's my theory anyway.
I can't believe that Mrs. Chen is the only other character besides Eddie and Venom that has been in all three movies. She went from being a nothing background character, a bystander basically, to being a recurring side character that people got excited to see. A lot of people in the comments of the trailer on YouTube noted that she has had quite the character arc over the course of these movies, from being afraid of Venom at the beginning to being his friend and being willing to dance with him.
Now, I do actually like the Venom movies. I know not everybody does, but I do. I thought they were both really enjoyable. They're both really funny movies. Which might be weird to say about a superhero movie about an antihero character who used to be a villain of Spider-Man, and is known for literally biting people's heads off. You would think these would be more action type movies, and they are, they do have action in them. But, the action really isn't the main draw of these Venom movies, the comedy is. And The Last Dance seems to be keeping up with that tradition by emphasizing the comedy, although in this movie, the drama and stakes seem to be a lot higher than they were in the first two since Venom and Eddie are on the run from both the government and other symbiotes that have come down to Earth 🌎 to try to take it over again after Riot failed to do so in the first movie.
Truth be told, I didn't know that this movie was even coming out until I saw the trailer yesterday. But, it looks pretty good. I just found a movie to be excited for in the fall season this year since it comes out in October just like the previous two movies did. I do like that they used the David Bowie song, "Space Oddity," the same song that was used in the opening sequence of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The only scene that people actually remember and like from that movie.
It was quite an interesting song choice for this trailer since the movie has nothing to do with space or space travel, except for the fact that more symbiotes come down to Earth 🌎 to try kill Venom. But, it works pretty well, it works so much better than you might expect when you read me say that they used "Space Oddity" in the trailer. It really does kind of set the tone for the movie, telling that it's going to be fun just like the previous two, and that Eddie and Venom are going to go on a journey in this movie since they're fugitives on the run, while there being a bit of an air of tragedy to it, that this is their one last ride, their one last dance just as the title says, and that one of them or both of them may die. Hence the tagline of the movie, "'Til death do they part." I wrote a comment in the comment section beneath the trailer saying that I'd like to think of The Last Dance as Sony's way of making it up to us for Madame Web since everyone hated Madame Web. Or at the very least, laughed at it and made fun of it for how lazy and incompetent it was.
The Venom movies are probably the only movies in the so-called Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) that have actually worked. They're the only ones that people actually like, that actually have genuine fans not just ones out of pure irony and mockery like with Morbius, and that have been successful. Every other movie in the SSU has been a bust. Morbius? No. Madame Web? No. Kraven the Hunter hasn't come out yet, but I'm not exactly holding out hope for that one. So, all they have left is Venom and its sequels, and it might coming to an end with this movie, The Last Dance. I am excited to see Chiwetel Ejiofor in this movie, he's one of my favorite actors, I always like seeing him whenever he shows up in a movie. He's playing one of the villains, one of the human villains that's chasing after Eddie Brock and Venom, which will be cool to see.
And the Venom horse 🐎, I don't think I can talk about the trailer to Venom: The Last Dance without mentioning the Venom horse 🐎. It's a really crazy and cool idea that I cannot believe no one's ever thought of before. I can't wait to see it in the movie itself since I'm sure it'll make for a really cool-looking and funny sequence. So, let's keep track of this, we'd had a Venom Anne Weying (Michelle William's character in the first two movies), Venom Mrs. Chen, and now a Venom horse 🐎, and possibly Venom dogs 🐕, maybe? Quite a progression and escalation.
There's an artist on DeviantART who I'm a fan of named Matt Frank, he went under the name, Kaijusamurai on the platform. I think he still does, unless he officially changed his username to just Matt Frank. I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Anyway, as that username suggests, he's an artist that specializes in kaiju artwork, particular Godzilla artwork. A while back, he posted a picture that he drew of a Venom Godzilla. Like, it was Godzilla being under the control of Venom or some other symbiote. That's what the Venom horse 🐎 in this trailer and by extension, this movie brought back memories of. All it did was make me wish that someone (like Matt Frank) would draw fan art of a Venom Kong, like have the MonsterVerse version of Kong but Venomized. I think it would look really cool.
I should also probably address the Spider-Man of it all. Like I said, I genuinely had no idea that this movie existed or that was even coming out until I saw the trailer that just dropped, but apparently, people were expecting to see Spider-Man in this movie. Like, I guess Sony might've teased that idea that Spider-Man would be in the next Venom movie, and that placed an expectation in certain people's heads that Spider-Man would be in Venom: The Last Dance in some way or another. And those people were disappointed that he wasn't in the trailer and that he probably isn't in the movie at all. They feel Sony lied to them.
My feeling is, did you really expect Spider-Man to be in this movie? I didn't. I know what to expect by now. They've made two of these by now, and besides the mid credit or after credits scene at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Spider-Man hasn't shown up once. So now that we're getting a third movie, I highly doubt that Spider-Man will actually appear. I think people were kidding themselves when bought into all the rumors, and started genuinely believing that Spider-Man would appear in the third (and possibly final) installment of the Venom trilogy.
Besides, even if Spider-Man is in the movie, I highly doubt that they would show him in the trailer, especially not the first trailer they put out. I mean, Marvel didn't put the Toby Maguire Spider-Man or the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man into any of the trailers for Spider-Man: No Way Home because they wanted to keep that a secret and keep it close to the chest until the movie actually came out. So, if Spider-Man is in Venom: The Last Dance, then I suspect that Sony would probably do the same thing by hiding him and keeping him a secret until the movie actually comes out. But, still I really don't think Spider-Man will be in the movie, and I'm okay with that. But, we don't know, and we won't know until the movie comes out on October 25, 2024.
The next trailer I saw yesterday was the first official trailer for Despicable Me 4, the fourth film in the Despicable Me series. I saw the IMAX version of the trailer, which is pretty much the same as the regular trailer, only it's louder, maybe? I don't know what the actual difference is if there even is any. But, the IMAX trailer was what I saw. I honestly don't know if I'll actually watch this movie or not, in theaters or on streaming/digital. I liked the first Despicable Me movie. It's really the only one that I've seen. But, I don't know if this one will be on my list of movies to see this year. Not that I actually wrote a list. I've written a list of movies that I have seen this year, but not a list of movies that I plan on seeing this year.
What struck out to me while watching that trailer was how much the Minions have been pushed to the forefront, while Gru and the other human characters from the previous Despicable Me movies have been pushed to the sidelines. I know a lot of people have said before that the Minions have taken over this franchise and that they're overexposed and overplayed, and I always felt people were exaggerating with that, but it was really with this trailer that I really did see that. It was really then that I understood what people meant when they said the Minions took over the franchise. The Minions seem to be the main characters in this movie. Almost of all the scenes they show in the trailer feature the Minions in some way. Only like two or three of the scenes in the trailer actually feature Gru and the other human characters associated with him.
Keep in mind, the Minions have their own series of spin-offs, Minions and Minions: The Rise of Gru. So, they had their chance to the main characters for once, but now, they're stealing the spotlight from Gru, the character that these movies are supposed to focus on. Like, remember when these movies used to be about supervillains and not about a bunch of yellow guys that wear overalls and speak gibberish? It seems that Illumination has lost the plot a little bit. It's like they looked at people's reaction to the first two movies, and were like, "Man, people really do like the Minions, let's make them the main characters from now on." The Minions just straight up have superpowers now, like there's a Minion that has the same powers as the Thing from The Fantastic Four, another one that has laser vision like Superman or Cyclops from X-Men, and another one that can fly also like Superman. Gru, it seems, really has become a side character in his own franchise.
Well, at least he got off easier than Rayman. Rayman used to be the star of his own video game series, until Ubisoft replaced him with the Rabbids. At first, they started off as antagonists, but then eventually became supporting characters aside Rayman, and then became the main characters. The Rabbids got their own series, while the Rayman series just stagnated and stopped, with the last mainline installment, Rayman Legends being released 11 years ago in 2013. It was as if Ubisoft just forgot about Rayman, or just stopped caring about him.
The Rabbids got to be in two crossover games with Mario called Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope, which saw the Rabbids get transformed into some of the characters from the Mario franchise. Like there's a Rabbid version of Mario, a Rabbid version of Princess Peach, a Rabbid version of Luigi, and a Rabbid version of Rosalina. It's a lot like how the Minions are given superpowers in Despicable Me 4 actually. Rayman only got to be in one of the three DLC expansions for Sparks of Hope, in the very last one. He didn't even get to meet Mario in that expansion pack. Well at least Rayman recently got to have a memorable role in Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix that went viral.
—
These are my thoughts on the 2014 sci-fi action film, Transformers: Age of Extinction, directed by Michael Bay, written by Ehren Kruger, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, Titus Welliver, and TJ Miller. This is the fourth film in the Michael Bay Transformers series (known collectively as “Bayformers” or the “Bayverse”), and it is kind of a soft reboot meant to take the series in a new direction. Gone are Sam, Lennox, Epps, Simmons, Carly, and Sam’s parents, Ron and Judy. Now we have Cade Yeager, his daughter, Tessa, his friend/employee/assistant, Lucas, and Tessa’s boyfriend, Shane.
And both Optimus Prime and Bumblebee 🐝 were significantly redesigned from their last appearances. Optimus’s redesign was more drastic compared to Bumblebee 🐝’s as he now looked way more humanoid than he did before, and now resembled a medieval knight complete with shoulder pads and a sword that looked more like European-style sword than the one he had in the previous movies. He also got a completely different vehicle mode than the one had in the previous movies. Going from a custom nose conventional Peterbilt 379 semi-truck to a custom Western Star 5700 Concept semi-truck; but only after having a broken down cabover Marmon truck as an alternate mode. I actually liked Optimus’s new design, even if his transformation from vehicle to robot mode and vis versa doesn’t make much sense. I don’t even think we see him transform back into his vehicle mode, we just see him transform from his vehicle mode into his robot mode.
I thought it looked cool, and it fit with him being a Prime. Primes were kind of like knights in their own way, they were these elite and noble warriors; kind of like how Jedi are often to referred to as knights in Star Wars. So, I thought it worked. But then, The Last Knight came along, and went a completely different direction with that. It’s not that Primes are the equivalent of knights on Cybertron, no, it’s that there’s a completely separate order of Transformers that are just medieval knights and aren’t Primes at all (they have no connection to the Prime Dynasty), and Optimus is both a Prime and a knight. Anyway, back to the review.
After the events of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, NEST was disbanded, and the US government 🇺🇸 created a CIA Black Ops unit called Cemetery Wind with the intended purpose to wipe out the last remaining Decepticons on Earth 🌎. But, in actuality, Cemetery Wind went about killing the Autobots instead, and selling their bodies to a tech company called KSI. KSI has harvested the metal from the corpses of these dead Autobots that Cemetery Wind supplied them, and has found a way to manipulate the metal, turning it into programmable matter, and use it to create Transformers of their own, which they then hope to sell to the US military 🇺🇸 as part of a defense contract.
But, Cemetery Wind, as it turns out, isn’t working alone. Their leader, Harold Attinger has formed a secret pact or secret alliance with a seemingly neutral Transformer bounty hunter called Lockdown to help them kill the Autobots, in exchange of an explosive device 💥 called a “Seed” which can create more of the Transformer metal patented by KSI as “Transformium,” to use to make more Transformers. But, Lockdown has a secret agenda of his own. He wants to find Optimus Prime, so that he can capture him alive, and take him back to his Creators for…some reason.
This is the flag of Texas, the state where Cade Yeager and his daughter are supposedly from, despite Mark Wahlberg’s strong Bostonian accent slipping through while playing this role.)
And as it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait for very long, as failed Texan inventor with an inexplicable Boston accent, Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) has found him in his vehicle form. He took the form of a broken down cabover semi truck in order to hide from Cemetery Wind. But, the truck was so broken down I guess that it ended up putting him in a dormant state until Cade revived him. But, by doing so, Cade has now made himself and his daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz) fugitives from the law, as Cemetery Wind and Lockdown come hunting them all down, and they must flee and go into hiding.
They meet up with the other last remaining Autobots that survived the attacks by Cemetery Wind. All of the Autobots from the previous movies are dead. We even see Ratchet (the Autobots’ medical officer ⛑️) get destroyed in the first real action scene of the movie. He just gets blown apart by Cemetery Wind, and then gets his spark ripped out by Lockdown. Sparks, in case you didn’t know, are essentially the hearts 🫀 of Transformers, they’re the main power source of their bodies. Once they lose their sparks, they’re dead, just how if we humans lose our hearts 🫀, we’re dead also. The only ones left besides Optimus are Bumblebee 🐝, Hound, Drift, and Crosshairs.
If that all wasn’t enough, KSI’s crown jewel, Galvatron is seemingly “malfunctioning,” and not obeying the commands that KSI gives him. He was meant to be an Optimus Prime replacement, but just turned out looking and acting like Megatron. As it turned out, Megatron had hijacked KSI’s database, and he manipulated the company, and used them to build him a new body, and build him a new army that he could then use to steal the Seed that they acquired from Cemetery Wind that they acquired from Lockdown, and then detonate that Seed in the city of Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and using all of the resulting metal to make a Transformer army that he can then use to conquer the Earth 🌏 and wipe out humanity.
But, if he is still just Megatron underneath, why would he still refer to himself as Galvatron? Why would he use the name that the humans gave him? Megatron was shown to have a strong disdain for humans, and man-made machines. That’s why when he was thawed out in the 2007 movie, his first words were “I am Megatron,” because he was aware of the humans around him, and aware that they kept calling him NBE-1, and wanted to affirm what his true name was.
That’s also why he chose to only transform into Cybertronian forms instead of man-made vehicles or aircraft or machines, and why he thought it was a humiliation to have transform into a man-made truck in Dark of the Moon. So, if Galvatron really just Megatron the whole time, why would he still call himself Galvatron? Why not call himself Megatron since he’s in full control of the body? Or is it really that he was reborn or reincarnated as something else, and he isn’t fully the same Megatron from the previous movies, and thus only identifies and knows himself as Galvatron? These are questions that were never answered, since they retconned all of this, and just had him be fully Megatron again in the next movie, completely forgetting or ignoring that he was Galvatron in this movie.
Honestly, this should’ve just been Nemesis Prime, an actual evil Optimus Prime clone, instead of Galvatron. I know, they tried to do the whole Nemesis Prime thing in The Last Knight by having him be brainwashed into being evil by Quintessa, but that doesn’t count. Not only because it was the actual Optimus Prime, and not a clone like Nemesis Prime usually is, but also because Optimus only stays evil for a brief moment. He gets turns good right away after hearing Bumblebee 🐝’s real voice.
So, Cade, Tessa, and her boyfriend Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor), and the Autobots must come out of hiding to save Hong Kong 🇭🇰 from being destroyed by Galvatron and the KSI Bots, which ends up bringing in Cemetery Wind and Lockdown back into the mix. And also, the Dinobots show up. They were imprisoned in Lockdown’s ship, and Optimus frees them to use them in the fight against Galvatron and the KSI Bots, and turn the tide of the battle in the Autobots’ favor.
So, yeah, this one is kind of a letdown. It is a major step down from Dark of the Moon, and it took the series down a path of destruction for lack of a better word. The series’s decline in quality truly began here, and it laid the groundwork for Transformers: The Last Knight to come in, and plunge the series into rock bottom. The characters are worse, the story is worse, the humor is worse, the action is worse, and even the CGI is worse.
The CGI on the KSI Bots, and the little Transformium ball that Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) demonstrates to Darcy Tyril (Sophia Myles) absolutely sucks. The KSI Bots and the Transformium ball don’t transform the same way normal Transformers do. The way that the KSI Bots and that Transformium ball transform is that they break down into tiny little cubes, and then morph into whatever they want. There’s none of the awesome mechanical shifting around like in a normal transformation.
It’s not even transforming anymore, it’s morphing, the very thing the concept artists and VFX artists were trying to avoid in the first movie from 2007. It doesn’t look at all convincing, like it always looks digital, and never looks tangible in the live action environment. It’s hard to believe that same people who did the amazing CGI effects in the first three Michael Bay Transformers movies did this. Transformium was probably the worst thing to ever be brought into the franchise, which is probably why it’s never brought up again in The Last Knight.
This movie does have some cool ideas and concepts like the idea of a Transformer bounty hunter that’s neutral, and doesn’t care about the Autobots or Decepticons, the idea of man-made Transformers, and even the idea of the Autobots being outlawed and being on the run from the government. But, just like Revenge of the Fallen, all of those good ideas were poorly executed, and never reached their full potential; not even close.
And despite how long this movie is, it has a much smaller cast than the previous Transformers movies, and even has less action and less explosions 💥 than the previous movies. Despite being over 165 minutes (2 hours and 45 minutes) long, having a larger budget ($210 million 💵), it never at all feels as epic in scope as Dark of the Moon; Dark of the Moon BTW had a $195 million budget 💵 and a runtime of 154 minutes (2 hours and 34 minutes) in case you were wondering. It feels incredibly scaled down. Normally, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, there’s nothing wrong with scaling things down, especially when this is supposed to be a soft reboot of sorts. But, the movie keeps throwing so much stuff at you and adding new things to the plot that it feels like too much. So, it creates a unique issue where the movie feels both incredibly scaled down, but also too much at the same time.
And that’s not even getting into the characters, who are no where nearly as entertaining or likable as any of the characters in the previous three movies. This even extends to the Autobots, who are all assholes you don’t even want to root for, including Optimus, who comes across a bitter asshole who hates humans now and doesn’t want to protect them anymore. In the first movie, he said that they don’t harm humans, and yet, he spends most of this film wanting to harm a human and kill him to avenge the deaths of his Autobot comrades. That is probably the least Optimus thing ever.
There’s also the whole Romeo & Juliet law scene where it’s revealed that Shane is 20 years old and he’s been dating Tessa, despite her being under the age of 18; she’s 17 years old. But, he claims it’s fine because there’s this law called the Romeo & Juliet law that allows people over the age of 18 to date people who are under the age of 18. So, his relationship with Tessa is not statutory rape, according to him.
But, that’s not even what the Romeo & Juliet law is about. It’s actually a law meant to protect an older person from being accused of sex assault by someone who is a minor. Like, if two people start dating with a two year age difference, and the older person turns 18 before their partner, the law is meant to protect them from being accused of sexual assault by the young person or something along those lines. It’s kind of a complicated law that I don’t fully understand, everything I know about it is from PointlessHub’s video on this movie.
All I know that movie got the law completely wrong. It’s not some special loophole out of the sex offender registry. It’s a very specific law for a very specific situation. The movie just presents it in a very inaccurate way. So, no matter how you slice it, Shane and Tessa’s relationship is illegal, and Shane can be arrested and charged with a second degree felony, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. It’s just a really weird and uncomfortable scene, and I don’t know what it’s doing in a Transformers movie. They should’ve just made them both 18, or if Shane really had to be 20, then Tessa should’ve at least be 18 or 19. The actress who played her, Nicola Peltz was not even underage when she filmed this movie. She was 18 years old at the time, so they could’ve easily made her character 18 as well.
Oh, and this isn’t only questionable thing involving Tessa in this movie. There’s a scene earlier on in the movie where Lucas (TJ Miller) comments on Tessa’s appearance, saying that she “looks hot.” Lucas is obviously way older than her, and when Cade heard this he got understandably upset and was like, “What did you say?” And Lucas tries to cover his ass by saying “Like a hot teen-ager,” and then Cade’s like “Oh, the ‘teen-ager,’ that makes it better, thank you.” And it never comes again. I’m not a father, but if I was one, and I had a teenage daughter who was 17, and my friend or employee (whatever his relation to Cade is) said he thought she was hot, I would stop being friends with him. In fact, I’d probably call the cops on him.
Why would they have the comic relief character of the movie creep on the main character’s daughter like that? Were they trying to make us hate him right away so that we wouldn’t feel sorry for him when he dies? Because he does die in the movie, about an hour in or close to an hour in, just as the plot barely starts getting going. He gets killed by one of Lockdown’s grenades, which are essentially mini versions of the Seeds. They turn anything in their blast radius into Transformer metal (known as Transformium), which is exactly what happens to Lucas. He gets turned into metal by the blast of the grenade.
So, was this so that his death would be justified? Like, he commented on an underage girl’s ♀︎ appearance and said that he thought she was hot, therefore he deserves to die and get turned into metal? The fact that this scene exists arguably makes the Romeo & Juliet law scene even worse. Why make her underage? Why not make her 18 or 19? It’s not that hard. This scene’s also ironic considering the fact the actor who played Lucas in the film, TJ Miller also has sexual assault allegations against him.
There’s also the extensive and excessive use of product placement. The Michael Bay Transformers movies have always had product placement in them, I mean, they’re literally based on a Hasbro toy line after all. They exist, in part, to sell toys. And sell cars too since they’re robots that can turn into cars, and the ones that do turn into cars turn into ones belonging to famous car brands like Chevrolet, GMC, Ford, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, Bugatti, Pagani, and Ferrari, oh, and even some famous truck brands like Peterbilt, Mack, Marmon, Western Star, and Freightliner. But, this movie takes it to a whole other level. To the point that it’s even sort of part of the story. There’s the scene where Joshua shows off the Transformium and what it can do to the blonde lady ♀︎, Darcy Tyril, and what’s the first thing that he decides to morph it into? A Beats Pill of course. He even says, “Do you like music? The Pill,” while he’s holding the Beats Pill in his hand and showing it to her.
There’s the Bud Light scene, where Cade and the gang crash into a Bud Light truck while escaping from Lockdown’s ship, and Cade chastises this one guy ♂︎ for complaining about his car being wrecked by the crash before taking a swig of Bud Light all aggressively, and dropping it on the ground in front of the guy ♂︎ as if he were doing a mic drop 🎤. Then, there’s the moment in the final battle where Bumblebee 🐝 and Swoop (the Dinobot that turns into a two-headed Pterodactyl) defeat Stinger (one of the KSI Bots), and throw him into a double-decker bus that has a Victoria’s Secret advertisement on the side; Michael Bay sure loves his Victoria’s Secret 😍. Then there’s Oreo Bot, who’s one of the KSI Bots, only he can turn into an Oreo vending machine (are those even a thing?), and who actually became more beloved any of the Autobots in this movie. And then there’s all the Chinese product placement 🇨🇳, which I’ll get to later.
In a lot of ways, this movie feels like an inferior remake of the first Transformers movie from 2007. I know that the sequels have always been criticized for being rehashes of the first movie, but this movie really is a remake of the 2007 movie. It’s a story about a group of humans meeting the Autobots for the first time, and needing to help them find the device responsible for creating the Transformers in the first place, and stop the villain(s) from using that device to create a Transformer army large enough to wipe out the human race and conquer Earth 🌎.
In the first movie, that device was the Allspark (AKA the Cube). The Allspark was the thing that created all of the Transformers, and it was capable of creating new Transformers, even out of man-made machines. The Decepticons’ evil plan in the first movie was to use the Allspark to create a Transformer army out of man-made machines, and then use that army to wipe out humanity. In this movie, Age of Extinction, it’s basically the same, only swap out the Allspark with the Seed, swap out Megatron and the Decepticons with Galvatron and the KSI Bots, and swap out Mission City with Hong Kong 🇭🇰.
Yes, this movie did retcon the first movie’s explanation of how the Transformers were created. They weren’t created by a mystical, yet technological cube with infinite amounts of Energon, but by biomechanical aliens who may or may not be the Quintessons, who used these special bombs (literally shaped like seeds) that turn anything in their blast radius into metal, the very metal that’s necessary for creating Transformers, and allows them to transform in the first place. And they used those bombs to kill the dinosaurs. As Optimus says, “Our creators destroyed your world to make us.”
But, even the stuff with Galvatron is just a repeat of the stuff with Megatron in the first movie. Megatron is dormant in somehow, and then gets revived somehow, and then attacks a city along with an army of Transformers by his side. Even the scene where Joshua is showing off that ball of Transformium to Darcy, and has it turn into familiar products is a rip-off of the scene in the first movie where Simmons and that other Sector 7 guy ♂︎ show off the power of the Allspark to Sam and the others. They zap a Nokia cellphone with its energy, and turn it into a little Transformer gremlin that then tries to break out of the containment box; at least until Simmons zaps it again and kills it with a burst of electricity ⚡️.
I know that they wanted the movie to be a soft reboot, but come on, you could’ve gone with a more unique story than that. This is like the Star Wars: The Force Awakens or the Jurassic World of Transformers movies; which is ironic because Transformers: The Last Knight actually copies Star Wars. The most unique part of the story is the whole thing about the Autobots being outlawed, and being on the run from the government. But then they drop that halfway through, and the movie just becomes a poor remake of the first movie. If this movie just stuck with the story of the Autobots being fugitives on the run, and was a lot shorter, and didn’t diverge into a story about Galvatron and the KSI Bots attacking Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and threatening to blow it up with the Seed, it probably would’ve been a lot better.
The Galvatron and KSI Bot story could’ve been its own movie, and probably should have. Probably would’ve been a more interesting sequel than whatever the hell we got in The Last Knight. King Arthur, Merlin, and Transformer knights, who thought those were a good idea? I guess, they didn’t think that Cade, Shane, and the Autobots sneaking onto Lockdown’s ship, and rescuing Optimus and Tessa was a good enough climax for the movie, so they had to extend the movie even further, and have the climax be a giant CGI battle in the middle of Hong Kong 🇭🇰.
It really seemed like Michael Bay’s heart wasn’t in it this time. He really didn’t want to make any more of these after Dark of the Moon. He wanted to move onto other projects like Pain & Gain, which also coincidentally starred Mark Wahlberg. But, he was kind of forced into making another one by Paramount, and he only agreed to make the movie if they agreed to fund Pain & Gain, and if they agreed to let him make Pain & Gain first before jumping onto Transformers 4. That might explain why Mark Wahlberg was cast as the main lead in this movie.
Bay must’ve figured that it would be easier and simpler to just transfer Marky Mark over from one production to another (since these movies were practically made back-to-back), instead of going through the trouble of auditioning, and trying to cast someone else to be the lead. He already worked with him before, and knew him pretty well, so what would be the harm? Except that everyone ended up making fun of his performance in this movie. Especially the part where he says, “I’m an inventor! This could be a game changer for me! If I can apply that kind of technology to my inventions, we won’t have to worry about money 💵 again!”
This was supposed to be Michael Bay’s last Transformers movie. He wanted to set up certain things, plant some seeds (no pun intended), and then just leave, and let someone else follow up on what he set up in this movie; just like what JJ Abrams intended to do with The Force Awakens, until he was brought back to do Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But, after Age of Extinction grossed over $1.104 billion 💵 🤑, Paramount brought Michael Bay back again to make a fifth Transformers movie, only this time, he would be given the arduous task of trying to launch an entire cinematic universe in this fifth movie. It went about as well you would think 🙄.
I think the one of the reasons why this movie made as money 💵 as it did—despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and negative reaction from audiences 👎—was because people generally had high expectations from seeing Dark of the Moon, and were intrigued to see what would come next. Plus, the Dinobots were a main selling point of the movie, and were what a lot of people went to the movie to see. Even though the Dinobots weren’t given much screen time, and don’t have much character outside of them being robot dinosaurs.
Like, they have cool designs, especially Grimlock, Grimlock’s design looks badass, but they don’t have any actual personalities. They’re big dumb animals. They roar and snarl, and that’s it. They don’t seem like “legendary warriors” that Optimus described them as. On top of that, they’re completely irrelevant to the story. You could remove the Dinobots entirely, and the movie would literally be no different. It would just lose its main selling point, and people would’ve been a lot less interested in seeing it.
The other reason why the movie made as money 💵 as it did, was that it pandered to China 🇨🇳. You see, Dark of the Moon was a major hit in China 🇨🇳. It was the main factor in why that movie was able to reach a billion 💵 in the first place. So, for this movie, they wanted to make sure that they had access to the Chinese market 🇨🇳 in order to maximize the amount of ticket sales this movie would receive, and reach that coveted 1 billion dollar mark 💵 🤑. And they did this by appeasing the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 and pandering to the Chinese audience 🇨🇳 as much as possible.
Why do you think that the second half of the movie takes place entirely in China 🇨🇳 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰? It’s not that Michael Bay had some special love for that country or that city, and wanted to include them in the movie. Why do you think the movie has a Chinese actress 🇨🇳? It’s not that Michael Bay thought that having a Chinese actress 🇨🇳 in the movie was the best thing for his movie, and really want her in there. Why do you think this movie has so much Chinese product placement 🇨🇳? The Bayformers movies have always had product placement, but never specifically product placement from one specific country. The previous films were always equal opportunity when it came to product placement, but not this one.
In fact, the movie pandered to the Chinese 🇨🇳 so much that it ended up becoming Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳. The fact that there were Chinese investors 🇨🇳 on this movie no doubt played a hand in that. Now, this wasn’t the only movie that did this, a lot of movies in the 2010s sucked up to China 🇨🇳 in hopes of maximizing their box office gross 🤑. A lot of them even had Chinese production companies 🇨🇳 or Chinese investors 🇨🇳. It’s just that Age of Extinction did it more egregiously than any other movie during that decade.
They even have a scene where the Hong Kong leadership 🇭🇰 decides to call up the government on the Mainland, and ask for their assistance in dealing with the Transformer threat. The only other movie from this decade that had more egregious China pandering 🇨🇳 than this was Iron Man 3, which filmed an entire new scene (or new set of scenes rather) specifically for the Chinese release 🇨🇳, focusing on a Chinese doctor 🇨🇳🩺, and him being the one who removes the shrapnel from Tony Stark’s heart 🫀; another reason why that movie was hot garbage 👎. I’m so glad that we’re past this era in Hollywood history, now that relations between the US 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳 are becoming worse.
—
Note (Sunday August 6, 2023):
🇨🇳🇭🇰
Something I didn’t mention in the original description is that after the events in Chicago, where the Autobots storm the KSI headquarters, wreck up the place, and then get chased by Galvatron and Stinger (a KSI Bot designed to look like Bumblebee 🐝), Galvatron “malfunctions” and stops obeying commands, showing full autonomy and sentience, and then Optimus Prime gets captured by Lockdown, and the Autobots have to break him out, and then a panicked KSI moves their operations to their Chinese location 🇨🇳, they go to Beijing. The KSI Chinese location 🇨🇳 is in Beijing, not Hong Kong 🇭🇰. To make things more confusing, when Drift pinpoints the location of KSI in China 🇨🇳, he says that they moved to Guangdong province, which is no where near Beijing; it’s in the southern part of the country, next to Hong Kong 🇭🇰, like the province literally shares a border with Hong Kong 🇭🇰.
But, if the Chinese KSI base/factory 🇨🇳 was in Beijing, why didn’t Galvatron and the KSI Bots just attack there? Why did they run all the way down to Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and launch their attack there? I mean, obviously I know the actual reason why. It’s because Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is the only city that the filmmakers were allowed to show destruction of. The Chinese government 🇨🇳 doesn’t allow any film productions to show destruction of mainland Chinese cities 🇨🇳, and instead only allow them to show destruction of Hong Kong 🇭🇰 or Macau 🇲🇴, two Chinese cities 🇨🇳 that have special status within China 🇨🇳; special status that the government has been stripping away for the past few years, but that’s besides the point. That basically means that they aren’t considered full parts of China 🇨🇳, at least not yet.
When Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was released in China 🇨🇳, it was censored because the opening action scene took place in Shanghai, which is a mainland city, and the Chinese government 🇨🇳 didn’t want to show weakness like that 😄. Yes, I know, that sounds ridiculous, but this is how the Chinese government 🇨🇳 thinks, and how they treat foreign film productions, especially those from the United States 🇺🇸.
This is probably the reason why Godzilla vs. Kong had its final fight in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 as well, and that movie was made during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests 🇭🇰🪧, and it was released after the controversial national security law was put in place. And also so that movie would appeal to the Chinese market 🇨🇳 which is mission numero uno for any Hollywood studio. I mean, China 🇨🇳 is where the MonsterVerse makes the majority of its money 💵. It wouldn’t have gotten this far without it. Plus, Legendary Pictures, the production company that makes the MonsterVerse films, is partially owned by a Chinese company 🇨🇳, Wanda Group. That’s probably part of it too.
The only in-universe or in-story explanation that I can think of for why Galvatron and the KSI Bots move to Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is that Joshua and Su Yueming (Li Bingbing) fled into Hong Kong 🇭🇰 to get the Seed as far away from Galvatron and the KSI Bots as possible, and to keep them from getting their hands on it. But, they could’ve easily have just fled into Shanghai or Nanjing, two cities that are pretty far away from Beijing. Why not Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province? Or even Shenzhen, a city that’s also in Guangdong province? That would fit in with Drift’s dialogue.
In fact, it would make more sense for it be in Shenzhen since Shenzhen is the technology center of China 🇨🇳. It’s where the tech innovations are happening, and where you can go to find any kind of tech, no matter how gimmicky or impractical. What a better place to set a location for a tech company that builds transforming robots? But, no, they decided to have the Chinese KSI factory 🇨🇳 be in Beijing, and then have the characters are converge on Hong Kong 🇭🇰 for the final battle.
And if the point of going to Hong Kong 🇭🇰 was to keep Galvatron and the KSI Bots from getting the Seed, why didn’t they try to airlift the Seed out of there? Why didn’t they call up a helicopter 🚁 or a plane 🛩️ to fly them out of there with the Seed? Joshua’s a rich man 🤑, he has the resources and means to do something like that. And if not any of that? Why not board a civilian passenger airliner ✈️ to escape from the city? Of course, we all know why they didn’t do any of this.
It’s because the writer, Ehren Kruger, the director, Michael Bay, and the Chinese investors 🇨🇳 partially financing this production 💵 wanted to have a big final battle scene in a Chinese city 🇨🇳, and the only one they were allowed to use without censorship was Hong Kong 🇭🇰. That’s the only reason. And also to throw in some Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳 about how efficient the Chinese government and military response 🇨🇳 is, and how loyal the Hong Kong government and people 🇭🇰 are to the mainland government 🇨🇳, and to show that Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is a place that “needs to be protected” 🤨.
.jpg)
.jpg)
It should be noted that this movie came out in 2014 (June 27, 2014 to be exact), the same year as the Yellow Umbrella Movement, and 5 years before the 2019-2020 protests 🪧 happened, and questions about Hong Kong 🇭🇰’s autonomy and sovereignty (or lack thereof) were really kicked into high gear. So, this movie was released during a time when things in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 were starting to become more turbulent, and when the people living there were opposing to the government’s new laws and reforms, and thinly veiled attempts to strip away the city’s autonomy, and were trying to preserve its democracy.
So, this movie probably reaffirmed what a lot of Hongkongers 🇭🇰 didn’t like about the current arrangement with the mainland government 🇨🇳, and they were probably just as upset by all the Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳 in the film as western audiences were. I mean, these are the same people who completely turned against Jackie Chan when he supported the Hong Kong police 🇭🇰 during the 2019-2020 protests 🪧, and did propaganda for the mainland government 🇨🇳 on multiple occasions.
They see him a traitor who turned against his home city, the city where he came from and grew up in, and gained most of his fame and fortune 🤩🤑 in; being a movie star ⭐️ in Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and then internationally, becoming a millionaire 🤑 and a pop culture icon equal to that of Bruce Lee because of his movie star status ⭐️. Jackie Chan is definitely a supporter of the governments of both Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and mainland China 🇨🇳, and against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong 🇭🇰; something that made me lose a lot of respect for him. But, anyway, that was something I just remembered about the movie that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but also makes a lot of sense if you know anything about Chinese censors 🇨🇳, and how they deal with Hollywood film productions.
Oh, and despite the fact that the Dinobots are in this movie, they have nothing to do with opening prologue, the one that shows the Transformers’ creators killing off the dinosaurs to make Transformium. They don’t at all explain how or why the Dinobots turn into dinosaurs. You’re just supposed to accept right away that these things can turn into dinosaurs, and that they prefer to stay in their dinosaur modes most of the time.
There were also Dinobots that were designed, but didn’t make it into the final film. There was one that turns into a Velociraptor called Slash, one that turns into an Apatosaurus 🦕 called Slog, and one that turns into a Stegosaurus called Snarl. None of them are in the movie, not that it would have made much of a difference. Although, it would’ve been see a robot Velociraptor running around. Slash should’ve made the cut.
(These are promotional images showing Slash, Slog, and Snarl, the three Dinobots who were designed, had toys made out of them, but didn’t actually appear in the movie itself.)
And why is the movie even called Transformers: Age of Extinction anyway? All of the other titles for the other Michael Bay Transformers movies made sense, even Transformers: The Last Knight. But, Age of Extinction? What does that even mean? The only connection the title has to the movie is that it opens with the extinction of the dinosaurs being caused by the Creators who turned them into metal to make Transformers. And also, that one line that Brains says about how humanity brought extinction to themselves by creating Galvatron and the KSI Bots, and getting the Seed from Lockdown and the Creators.
Those seem like pretty flimsy reasons to call the movie Age of Extinction. Probably would’ve been better off just calling it Transformers 4 rather than adding a nonsensical subtitle. I mean, that’s what most people call it anyway. If you really had to add a subtitle, why not, The Rise of Galvatron, or Outlaws of Earth, or Retaliation of the Autobots, or Counterattack of the Autobots? You know? Something that actually pertains to the plot of the movie.
And speaking of Brains, can you believe that he’s the only other returning Autobot in this movie besides Optimus Prime, Bumblebee 🐝, and Ratchet? What happened to Wheelie, his best friend? Does that mean that Wheelie died in the crash of that Decepticon ship, while Brains survived? Or did Wheelie also survive the crash, but was killed by Cemetery Wind or by KSI?
Either way, Brains definitely got the short end of the stick out of any of the Autobots in the movie, besides maybe Ratchet. He lost his best friend, and then was captured and held captive by KSI, who then tortured him, and used him to get information about Transformer biology and anatomy to create the KSI Bots. No wonder he just fucks off after he’s freed, and tells Cade and the gang that Galvatron is just Megatron underneath, and he plans to blow up a city with the Seed to create a Transformer army.
BTW, in case you’re confused on who Wheelie is, he’s the little Decepticon that turned into a RC truck that was introduced in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. He switched sides to the Autobots thanks to the influence of Mikaela. Then, in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Brains (who can turn into a laptop 💻) was introduced as a best friend for Wheelie, and he’s way more pervy than Wheelie, and always sounded high. Like, we see Brains doing drugs in Dark of the Moon, whatever kind of drugs that Transformers use. These two were like the replacement for Skids and Mudflap as the main comic relief of the movie, since Skids and Mudflap were so controversial for being racist caricatures of black Americans 🇺🇸 (or African Americans 🇺🇸 if you prefer the term), and were purposefully excluded from Dark of the Moon for that reason.
Comments
Post a Comment