<em>'Transformers: Age of Extinction'</em>... what the hell happened here?! I actually seriously enjoyed a movie from this franchise, I'm ho...
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<em>'Transformers: Age of Extinction'</em>... what the hell happened here?! I actually seriously enjoyed a movie from this franchise, I'm honestly flabbergasted. It's written, directed and produced by the same people, though I wouldn't have predicted that whilst watching.
This, to me, felt almost entirely different to the preceding films in the series, despite the aforementioned. The opening 45-60 minutes are especially entertaining, it does wobble in that regard once or twice but when all is said and done I actually had a lot of fun with this!
I was, for the first time, actually invested into not just the robots but also the human characters too. It's a new bunch on the latter side and, despite minimally liking Shia LaBeouf & friends, I found this lot to be a big upgrade - the change also made it feel fresh. Mark Wahlberg is great as lead, Stanley Tucci and T.J. Miller (for once) are pluses as well.
Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor are the weakest members of those onscreen, though even then I was still marginally interested in them. Kelsey Grammer, despite playing a fairly standard antagonist, is good, as is Li Bingbing in a relatively smaller role. Peter Cullen, John Goodman and Ken Watanabe, meanwhile, impress with their voices.
Upon starting this review, and still now, I was struggling to come up with negatives. I guess the near three-hour run time truly ought to be one, yet somehow it really... isn't, rather unexplainably. As for a criticism, the excessive product placement is all I've got, I'm afraid.
I'm yet to see the reception that this got, as usual I'm hoping my thoughts are not an outlier in a sea of dissatisfaction. I'd guess it's rated as mid-ly as the prior installments, at worst. Not that any of this is all that important of course, because I enjoyed it and that's all that matters. I did not expect to be saying that, at all!
*checks reception*: Welp. An outlier I seemingly am. Then again, 12k (on Letterboxd) others agree with my rating (and it incredibly again made a billion on the big screen, I see) so I guess it isn't as bad as it looks. Some uncertainty has crept into my mind, I'm thinking it over and comparing it with other films I've rated similarly and... it's not even in doubt. Wild.