REVIEW – Transformers: Age Of Extinction, They’re Not Extinct, They’re Back. Unfortunately.

Michael Bay seems to be under the impression that all the film critics on the planet are out to get him. Commenting recently in an interview, the director stated that critics "love to hate" him. We can categorically state that this is just not the case. In fact, there's nothing a bunch of film critics prefer more than to be proved wrong, than to watch something so amazing it will literally blow everything out of the water. Well, let us assure you, Transformers certainly blows up a lot of things but it did NOT blow any of the critics out of the water. You really have to question a director's ability to put people to sleep during an action film. Let us tell you Michael, THAT is an achievement. When we first heard that Michael Bay was taking the Transformers to the big screen, we had a lot of hope for the project. Despite the fact that Bay wasn't exactly the best director we could have thought of for the film, the fact that he completely understands how to direct action scenes sold us for Transformers. That coupled with the fact that Spielberg was involved with the first film made sure the project was pretty good. Then, everything went wrong. Revenge of the Fallen sends a shiver down most peoples' spines and not in a good way while Dark of the Moon just ensured that besides the dedicated the Transformers audience, most were bored. But Bay put bums on seats and really, wasn't that the important thing? So Michael Bay is back with another self-indulgent piece but this time he seems to be dragging quite a few people down with him. Following the disillusionment with the Transformers at the end of the last film, most of Optimus Prime and his crew are now in hiding, some have been destroyed completely. The population is urged to report any spottings of Transformers while it seems the government is handing over the remains to a company who promises to protect the world against them. However, Bay always likes to bring the Transformers story to a human level and so we are introduced to Wahlberg's Cade Yeager, a widower with a daughter who has a vision that he will be able to invent things and earn a fortune. Of course, he stumbles across Optimus Prime and with the government hot on their heels, the leader of the Transformers finds himself on the run from a race he is attempting to defend. Where to start? Let's get the good stuff out of the way. No one, and we mean no one, can direct any action sequence like Michael Bay and the scale of the project is probably the biggest he has been working on, although bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. The inclusion of good actors does help the film an awful lot, anything with Tucci is going to be a good film while Wahlberg and Reynor are pretty engaging despite being overshadowed by massive machines. However, despite the above, nothing has really changed here. Age of Extinction still has a running time of nearly three hours which is just about an hour and a half too long. The action sequences are far too long, please just don't dismiss that, they are FAR too long. Although Optimus Prime is probably one of the most charming machines we have encountered, at times the sound isn't great and it is incredibly hard to decipher what they have been saying. This is just more of the same but a little better than the last. We're just not sure we can take anymore.