You get the feeling the guy who wrote “Transformers: Age of Extinction” used the entire script as a passive-aggressive running joke on his boss, director Michael Bay.
There are lines like, “You have no soul,” “It’s been sucky around here lately,” “Let’s try to use violence as a last resort” (said just before a random outburst of stabbing).
And “I’m out of ammo. I’m out of ideas.”
Well, not ammo. Never ammo.
Loud, ridiculous and nonsensical — even for a Transformers movie — episode 4 reboots with new characters. Mark Wahlberg is crackpot inventor Cade Yeager, who discovers his beat-up truck is actually Optimus Prime, the mighty blue-eyed leader of the good Transformers. His daughter — Blondimus Prime, played by Nicola Peltz — is a sultry teen whose panting boyfriend (Jack Reynor) makes Daddy seethe.
Optimus and his fellow Autobots are in hiding while an evil CIA chief (Kelsey Grammer) has joined forces with a Steve Jobs-like techno-jerk (Stanley Tucci) to replicate the Transformers metal (Transformium, natch) in pursuit of huge profits and to create a robot army to protect the homeland.
The CIA doesn’t trust the alien race, even the good guys among them, which leads to a lot of nudge-nudge talk about unwelcome immigrants.
The company and the Company get a bit flustered when they learn their custom-built Transformer clone turns out to be harder to control than, say, your average iPad. Meanwhile, the humans have to deal with a variety of death-defying situations, like shimmying down wires strung between the tops of skyscrapers, dodging the girder-like fists of angry Decepticons and driving GM cars.
Scrambling from rural Texas to a sleek techno-fabulous HQ to the skies of Chicago to Hong Kong, “T4” can never decide, from one moment to the next, whether to go scary or jokey — “Dark Knight” or “Looney Tunes.”
The humans are so irrelevant — rag dolls in the hands of the giant city-smashing robots — this seems like the moment the Michael Bay Blockbusterbot became self-aware.
With a lurch, the blockbuster software shifts us to China or throws in some Bud Light (gotta pay the bills!) without worrying much about making sense. Technologically superior beings are too dumb to notice humans have sneaked aboard their mother ship, picking up large guns seemingly placed for their convenience, and Prime saddles up a dino-bot and rides him around Hong Kong just because.
Too rarely, there’s ironic wit, as when Cade, having survived two hours of battles with intergalactic super-alien robots, is nearly killed by a falling air conditioner.
This series was never good, but it was once fun, or at least flashy. Now that its gears have gone rusty, it’s time for an “Alien vs. Predator”-style rethink. It’s lucky that Hasbro owns other properties. How about “Transformers Vs. My Little Pony”?