Man I love Age Of Extinction yeah the story's really bad but I like the designs of the bots and Galvatrons design was my favorite his transformation was super cool idk why people hate the transformium gimmick what's your favorite transformers movie
What bothers me about Age Of Extinction is that they were right there at the finish line. They could've raced right across it, instead, they limped over it with a participation trophy instead of going for the gold. There were some great ideas that never executed fully, or properly, and that's a big problem. Pros: -Scenes with Optimus and Cade. (Finally, a slow moment where there's both character and world-building. Yes!) -The Cemetary Wind conspiracy to kill all Transformers to use their husks to sell consumer products. (They did okay, here, but they could've gone a little into more depth with it.) -The scenery and the visuals. (Shame they only received a passing glance at times.) -The introduction of the creators. (The fact they even did it gets credit from me, but they dropped the ball in the end.) -The human humor was cut way down. -The Autobots had legit personalities and had proper screentime to flesh them out, by comparison to the other films. Cons: -The runtime was mainly filler and it could've been tightened to help move things along. -The CW conspiracy should've had a lot more shock, along with some awe. (It didn't impact the Autobots nearly as much as it should. Prime's tirade took that away.) -The passing glances of the Asian scenery. (Some of it was beautiful!) -Lockdown was off to a good start, he was a real bastard, but they never did show us who the creators were and never described them and Lockdown was killed far too easily, all things considered. -Far too many human scenes that went nowhere, while still going somewhere to bridge the gap, still pointless in the end. (We won't even mention *that* scene, it's such a waste.) They could've strengthened the pros, got rid of the cons, and they'd have made a truly good film. Things like the positive list, and doing next to none of the negative list, are exactly the reasons why Bumblebee was a critical, financial, and audience success. Was it boring at times? Sure. A couple of scenes really bogged down, such as when she first finds Bumblebee in the junkyard and dealing with her parents in *any* scene, but for the most part, it was all connective scenes without losing focus of the overall story they set out to tell people. Bumblebee and Charlie really, truly bonded and you could feel the deep in-the-heart connection they had. The previous movies had none of that. The closest they came to that was ROTF leading into DOTM. Sam wanted nothing to do with Bumblebee at the beginning of the film and turned him into an unwanted joke, but by the end of it/beginning of DOTM, Sam craved being in the action and needed to be with Bumblebee. It wasn't healthy, he had PTSD and they didn't have a real friendship. Charlie and Bumblebee did. Bayverse tried their hardest to not make that aspect work, let alone actually be a part of the film franchise. They wanted boobs, bombs, and blasts. They got it. I'm angry that AOE was so close and they failed. I'm angry that the films have standout scenes that are EXCELLENT but ultimately overshadowed and ruined by what comes in the scene after them. TF1: Coming to Earth, Mission City battle. ROTF: Forest battle, Pyramid battle. DOTM: Conspiracy got off to a good start, Sentinel's secret heel turn, Chicago battle. AOE: Optimus/Cade scenes, KSI (when the Autobots are there) scene, Galvatron's debut/Lockdown the kidnapper, and showdown with Lockdown. TLK: Cogman. (All of his scenes are straight gold. The playing the piano like it's a film score? Hilarious!) But that's a small handful of footage that doesn't carry a bunch of movies. My favorite Transformers film, simply because it does something different, is Bumblebee. Sadly, it's not on this list.
No Bumblebee or 1986? Out of the Bayverse I've always liked DotM the most, with AoE second. The story isn't half bad, and we got live action Shockwave and Soundwave.
Of the Michael Bay films, the first one is the one I find I can still re-watch. Mainly because as the first big risky outing, I can forgive certain things in retrospect, but cannot forgive in the sequels because the first film showed that the brand and characters were viable and we could have had an improvement on TF07 instead of just more of the same but bigger and more bloated.
Transformers 3 is my personal favorite, but 4 is probably the most well-rounded of the bunch. It's the one that feels the most Autobot-centric of them all, has the least amount of crass humor (although that Romeo and Juliet joke is pretty unfortunate, even if the absurdity of it all makes me chuckle), has a metric shit-ton of varied action, and I loved seeing Optimus go full cynical before coming back around to "alright, maybe all the humans don't suck after all."
Pretty much the entire Michael Bay series as whole. Bigger, Louder, and Dumber! Which is why DOTM and AOE are the worst because they have so much dumbass filler moment scenes that you could completely cut them out of both movies and you wouldn’t have noticed they were gone. Especially AOE, when I saw that stupid Texas Romeo and Juliet law scene I felt ashamed to be a Transformers fan. And let’s be honest here, Lockdown wasn’t even that great of a villain that everyone props him up to be. He was underwhelming and barely in the movie, he has a cool design and Mark Ryan does give a decent performance, but other than that he’s an extremely forgettable character. Mark Wahlberg is definitely a vast improvement over Shia LaBeouf, but that really isn’t saying much and what they did to Optimus Prime as a character grinds my effin gears like there’s no tomorrow.
