#46 TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

#46 TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer.

Directed by Michael Bay. Written by one of those online automatic plot generators and weighing in at a truly stagger 165 minutes or two hours and 45 fucking minutes of your life you're never getting back.

INT: HOLLYWOOD BIGWIG OFFICE/DAY.
AUGUST 2011.

MICHAEL BAY is summoned to a high level meeting for a critical debrief on the awfulness of TRANSFORMERS 3.

SUIT:

MICHAEL, PLEASE TAKE A SEAT. 

SUIT 2:

 TO GET STRAIGHT TO IT, MICHAEL. 

WE'VE BEEN RUNNING A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

 ON TRANSFORMERS 3 AND WE THINK WE'VE 

FOUND OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT AND 

WHY IT GOT SUCH A CRITICAL MAULING.

 

MICHAEL BAY:

LISTEN, BEFORE YOU GO ON, LET 

ME SAY SOMETHING, PLEASE...

CONT'

...I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY! 

YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME THAT THE 

REASON IT GOT SLATED IS BECAUSE OF ME! 

CONT'

THAT MY STYLE OF FILM-MAKING IS JUST TOO

 BOMBASTIC! MY EDITING IS TOO FRENZIED, 

THAT THE FILM LACKS ANY PROPER STRUCTURE,

 THAT THERE'S TOO MUCH ACTION AND NOT ENOUGH

 REAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
THAT I SACRIFICE IT ALL FOR EMPTY SCENES 

FILLED WITH LOTS OF THINGS EXPLODING

 AND NO EMOTIONAL DEPTH OF ANY KIND.

THAT ALL I DID WAS BLOW SHIT UP,

 FILM STUFF IN SLO-MO, OVER-USE THE

 FILTERS, STICK A TON OF PRODUCT 

PLACEMENT SHOTS AND BASICALLY I 

JUST KEEP ON MICHAEL BAYING IT!

 WELL I'M SORRY! 

I PROMISE I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN!

SUIT 3:

NO! MICHAEL NO! THE ONLY THING

WRONG WITH TRANSFORMERS 3 IS 

SHIA LEBOUFF AND ROSIE HUNTINGTON-WHITELEY.

CONT':

AND WE WANT MORE OF THE SAME, JUST WITH 

MARKY MARK WAHLBERG INSTEAD OF LEBOUF AND 

SOME BINT TO REPLACE THE LAST ONE.

MICHAEL BAY:

JESUS, I WAS SURE YOU 

WERE GOING TO FIRE ME.

SUIT 1:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
WITH THE PHOTOS YOU'VE GOT ON US!?

I'm not a 100% sure that's how the post-Transformers 3 conversation went down, but you never know...

So, what to say about this film.

I heard it described as cinematic piss, well, that's unfair to piss. This film is more like being run over by a truck carrying liquid shit to a vomiting convention and having that truck reverse over you to ask directions. 
 

This is a stupid piece of shit film and not in a good way, it's a stupid piece of shit and a boring, bland, dull, yawn - I'm bored, bored out of my gourd kinda a way, bored-when-will-this-end-sort-of-way, in a 'I wish I could eat my own eyeballs and escape' kind of way. A sort of, 'dear god, why won't this shit end, sobbing into your own hands' sort of way. Like realising you've just lost three hours of your precious life watching this overblown, underwritten, expensive, bloated, boring, unintelligible, homogenised, badly acted (except for Tucci) mess of pixels hitting other pixels for some reason. Everything in this film explodes, EVERYTHING, even Transformers who aren't awesome beings of metal and machine but soft little tin plated toys that explode in huge fireballs of fireworks, debris and rubble each and everytime something taps them to ask them to move.

This film is a sickening, bloated advert for insanely expensive items from cars to underwear, to drinks to trips to China designed to do nothing other than make more mucho money for Hasbro and Michael Bay. It has NO redeeming features of any sort at all.

I frankly had no way to understand anything that was happening, or who any of the characters were, or why anyone was doing anything. i just didn't care.

And yet, when it started and right up to the bit when the truck one transforms and starts on about something to do with something, I was midly intrigued, but as soon as Wahlberg starts complaining about his teenage daughter it was a  lost cause.

There is so much wrong with this film I can't be bothered to explain it, this film just isn't worth it. i lost 3 hours of my life to it and I don't want to lose any more.

2/10