"Transformers: Age of Extinction" Review

Michael Bay, the filmmaker everyone loves to hate, returns for fourth helpings of the Transformers franchise with a film that probably should've been subtitled "Age of ExSTINKtion". The small, fleeting moments of classic summer fun are drowned out by brain-rattling explosions and sounds of crunching metal.

The story - if you can really call it that - picks up when Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a down-on-his-luck inventor, makes a discovery that brings the remaining Transformers - and a team of government bad-guys - down on himself and his loved ones (Nicola Peltz, TJ Miller, Jack Raynor).

The bureaucratic baddies and their corporate conspirators (led by Kelsey Grammar and Stanley Tucci, respectively) have figured out the most diabolical, green-friendly best practices ever by harvesting alien scraps from the Battle of Chicago (see Transformers: Dark of the Moon) to literally build and customize their own Transformers.

There's a toy tie-in there somewhere...

On several occasions, the Autobots are told that the humans don't need their "kind" anymore; that "the age of the Transformers is over". There are a few problems with this:

1.) Sadly, their age is not over. Transformers 5 has been green-lit. Meanwhile, Dramamine sales skyrocket...

2.) Racist, much?

3.) The human villains would be nothing without Decepticon back-up, so clearly some Transformers are still needed.

I blame series scribe Ehren Kruger for the plot holes, caricaturist characters, and 6th-grade-level dialogue. For example:

Cade, to Savoy (a Black Ops military official): 

"You can't search there. You need a warrant!"

Savoy: 

"My FACE is the warrant!"

But does anyone really watch a Transformers movie for a master class in screenwriting or storytelling? No. You go for the spectacle. You go to have your senses assaulted in an IMAX theater. At nearly three hours in length, Age of Extinction has a bit too much of that. After a certain point, the combat wears you out. Everything after that is like a hammer to the skull.

Many audiences had hoped Bay would either leave this clunker of a franchise to more capable hands or learn the error of his ways and correct things for future installments. Save for Tucci, who continues to elevate whatever material he's given, the humans in these films have been rather square. I, for one, would like to see a Transformers movie without people in it, since they've always been superfluous anyway. Age of Extinction has the best sequel setup of the series, and if they stick to it properly, Bay and company might avoid yet another suck-fest.

My only fear is that Paramount Pictures may be the ones unwilling to change their tune after netting $300 million at the worldwide box office this opening weekend.

D-