AOE, while not my favorite, did a lot of things right. Ratchet's death was good and it's even more impressive considering he was a minor character. The focus on the Autobots was really good. Lockdown and Attinger were good and unconventional main antagonists. Savoy was mostly one note but he was just so vile and psychotic I was delighted to see him die. The Autobots themselves were great and I've grown to love them. The mystery of what's going on in the universe, while at the time they were just making it up as they went along, was still spooky and intriguing, largely thanks to Lockdown. Cade was... not super likable but I was okay with him enough.

The bad? Too much padding. The run time isn't that much longer than the other films but there's just so much padding that it makes it feel ten times longer. It was the first TF film I was actually exhausted by. We didn't need Su's chase and fight scene. We didn't need the magnet scene. We didn't need the Romeo and Juliet scene. We didn't need that dumbass chief of staff (he still burns me because he came right after Ratchet's death in an attempt to provide comic relief, ugh).

I mean the dialogue could still get kinda bad in some parts. "My face is my warrant" is so bad, it's good, though. Hound's "I'm a wicked warrior robot" was pretty terrible. "We don't have a home dad... it blew up." What the fuck?

I usually tune out the product placement so it didn't bother me, but I can see why people were criticizing it. The China stuff.. meh. I was so exhausted by then I was pretty irritated by their minor scenes of glorifying the Hong Kong military and government and stuff. Shane was also terrible, I didn't like Tessa despite kinda understanding where she was coming from.

There's so much to talk about with AOE. It did a lot of things right but it did a lot of things wrong. I still can't get myself to sit through the entire thing. It's really middle of the road I guess. It's not as offensively bad as ROTF, but it's not as polished as I felt DOTM was, or as earnest as TF1. Nor is it as just half assed as TLK was.

 

The Messy Goodness of Transformers: Age of Extinction

While unlike the author I do really like Dark of the Moon and Revenge of the Fallen, as silly as many aspects of it may be, I agreed with many things in the article above. Some of the following in particular are great points:

"Perhaps the best decision of this film was to transform Optimus Prime and the Autobots from Earth’s heroes into “we don’t need you anymore” refugees. Hunted down like filthy Decepticons, the Autobots fare much better as plucky underdogs than government-sponsored, self-appointed guardians of humanity. Optimus especially undergoes a convincing change from sacrificial leader to disenchanted rebel. He has helped the humans with nothing in return one time too many. His team of Autobots are dysfunctional, trigger-happy, and tired of their mistreatment at the hands of thankless humans. I’m not arguing that all heroes need to be weary and jaded, but it seems like this shake up is exactly what this series needed."

"The story of Extinction is one deeply rooted in the context of the previous film’s events. Like the Marvel universe with its post-Avengers New York, this film centers around the fear of another Transformer-filled battle like Chicago. In this respect, an Autobot-murdering CIA bureaucrat like Kelsey Grammar’s Harold Attinger makes perfect sense. So does Stanley Tucci’s rich technocrat Joshua Joyce, who is building his own Transformer army to make sure humans never have to face such a threat again. This sense of continuity and logic provides an important narrative backbone to a franchise usually guilty of jumping off the rails simply in order to justify more robot battles."

"This movie took real risks. It killed off the comic relief character before things had barely got started. It balanced several antagonists. It gave us an all new human cast. It gave us new Autobots. It respected all the Transformery stuff that had come before. It gave us set pieces featuring an ancient spaceship full of weird creatures, the besieged city of Hong Kong, and fairly awesome robot dinosaurs. But most of all, this movie decided to exist when by all accounts it probably wasn’t necessary, good, or proper to exist in the first place."

Some of the main reasons I love this movie in a nutshell.

 

  These are the sole reasons AOE is my favorite, and I expected a continuation of this type of storytelling in TLK.

So nice to see a review sharing my own thoughts that praise the film in the way it least deserves to be.

 

Well Ratchet never actually hit any of the humans and Optimus only shot one guy.

 

debatable...to me, ratchet kills at least one human...i still say prime kills some at the farm & during the chase when he shoulder tackles that suv

cannon strength can vary but as we saw with sam in rotf..an indirect blast can still kill

 

Its so good to hear all these good things about Aoe that it almost makes me forget all the bad.  

We need to get a few people together to work on this and edit it. Edit out all the unneeded parts, get voice actors or impressionists to change some of the dialogue, and someone fairly good with cgi or animating to change things here and there. The underlying story is so good, but there's a lot of bad on top that tries to hide all the good.

One of the biggest mistakes that I notice every single time is when Crosshairs first sees the humans, he rolls up and points his gun right at them and they don't jump or even react. Like not even a little bit. Maybe we could find some similar looking people to reshoot that scene but with reactions, and we can hide their faces with clever camera work so its not too obvious that they're not the actual actors.

 

I like your critics and some of your points are justified. But do you see something perfect in your life? It's impossible to have a totally perfect Film, because it's produced for a very big audience. The points you don't like, may be enjoyable for the others (I know people, who enjoyed toilet jokes in ROTF, and, damn, this people are my friends!) For me every time there is a moment, when one cup of the weigher become heavier and it decides everything. I adore and admire all 4 original Movies, because the good half weights MUCH more! I just forgive tiny mistakes and roughness! Not for TLK, though. The bad half overfilled there, because of many causes. Briefly, this Movie just almost haven't anything I love and appreciate and enjoy in TF Movie! But I expected much from it, because of TF4 goodness and SUPER exciting finale!

 

Nothing is perfect, nor is there anything wrong with liking something that someone else criticized. Nor does the fact that nothing is perfect mean that you can't criticize something.

 

I feel as if people take criticisms of the films way too personal sometimes. Like 'attacks' on the film are somehow 'attacks' on their person almost.

 

You son of a bitch! How dare you feel that!!

 

This is an excellent point, I don't know why I forgive these movies but I do, I watch at least part of one once a week or more. If I can't sleep, bayformers goes in the player, if I am doing paperwork for my job bayformers goes on, if I am bored and should be cleaning the house bayformers goes on! My wife really hates the last reason!

Sad you didn't enjoy TLK at all. I really really did. It's a sin the crap they goofed on but I was able to get over that!

 

Well no one wants to see movies they like be bashed on certain levels because of how they feel. It's really just human nature to be defensive sometimes.

 

As an optimistic centre-hater (  ) I wish there were more movie fans like tbh. I can criticise the movies without you taking offence, and I can talk about the movies positive elements without you sounding off like you've won some battle! 

 

But you periodically appear in my ignore list. Just a fact.

I didn't say that you shouldn't criticize. Your critics is sane (I only can't agree ROTF blaming I adore ROTF!), comparing the Bay-haters senseless blaming ("Michael Bay is a stupid moron blah blah blah"). But I PERSONALLY enjoy TF1-4 and, as I already said, forgive tiny mistakes. They don't bother me 

 

What!! You ignore me?! The Burrrn!!

Why you ignore me? I like your posts! I might not agree with many of your movie opinions, but I like your energy!

Anyway, don't ignore people! I've only ever ignored 3 people, one who kept spoiling the Walking Dead, one who kept getting me in trouble with the mods, and one more recently because, well, he's just a bloody moron, but actually i've cleaned it out, my ears and eyes are open to all!

 

Haha, thanks for liking my posts 
Ignore everyone who hurts you - the golden rule of the Movieverse fan. To read all the shit on this forum without an ignore list is just a disaster for my nervous system!  With ignore list TFW is MUCH more comfortable. Since several of your post last year were rude for me (not towards me, but towards Movies) I included you. I have a right for it. I'm glad that now you write more carefully.

 

And, yeah, we actually win about 5% of these battles. TFW has hundreeds of Bay-haters and less than 20 active Movie-fans.

 

And in this movie, i finally cared about the Autobots and wanting them to win after they got treated so bad by the government.
In dark of the moon, i felt like the decepticons were so weak in the final chapter. Megatron and shockwave were killed off so easily for instance.
The wreckers didn't show their transformation, and some characters like Q looked rather stupid for a transformers movie design.

 

I love AOE more than cookies but I actually dread watching it now knowing what horrors TLK did to continuity.

 

I wish I felt the same way. I hated TLK