ZRE Podcast #21- Transformers: Age of Extinction
Viewers trying to make sense of the plot.
Spoilers ahead!
Transformers is out and you really aren’t going to be surprised by this one way or the other.
In any case, I just can’t bring myself to hate Michael Bay no matter how often he casts supermodel women, shoves an ad in your face every other shot OR spins the camera around dramatically to have the sun hit you in the eyes for the billionth time. Sorry, I just can’t hate the guy.
And just for the heck of it, here’s the Chinese poster, which I think looks cool. Probably because there are no humans on it and they’re what makes the thing looking super photoshopped. At least this way, we’re just looking at a cartoon.
Zombies Ruin Everything 
06/27/2014 at 1:14 pm
Lockdown??? WOO! I’m going to see it today. I believe you said you’re an ENTP, so I trust your assessment to set my expectations. Lockdown was really introduced in Transformers: Animated as a bounty hunter, so that’s cool if they are actually heartening back to that. Not sure if he existed before TFA, but it isn’t in G1.
I laughed my ass off at the tan people comment omfg. Everyone is brown and sweaty in Bay movies. Sam was in DC, not Chicago in the 3rd one (Chicago at the end), but same problem. They aren’t closer to the sun, it’s the spotlight of big budgets making them sweat. Oh and that wasn’t Cybertron coming through the space bridge in TF3, it was Michael Bay’s ego. Hurry ur
Gotta love me some explosions and fists through robot heads tho.
06/28/2014 at 1:33 pm
(How about I actually log in this time)
Alrighty I saw it, and it was, well, Bayformers. CGI-explosion-sexism-racism-fest, but still enjoyable. I personally rank it 3rd, but anything is better than TF2, so:
TF1: 7/10 — Cool! <–Like the first Iron Man
TF2: 3/10 — Oh god, ew. <–Like the second Iron Man
TF3: 7.5/10 — NICE SAVE! <–Like Iron Man 3
TF4: 5.5/10 — Exactly as expected. <–Like Avengers
I could go on for hours, so I will limit myself to my top 3 favorite and least favorite things.
(Obligatory Spoiler Alert just in case)
Favorites:
1. The designs: The robots finally had faces and bodies that didn't look like trash!!! Some might think they look too human, but they look exactly how you'd expect the cartoon robots to look in CGI. It was, like, worth seeing the movie just to be happy about the redesigns.
2. Optimus Prime was seriously a badass motherfucker. He was arguably out of character canonically but honestly, within BAYVERSE at least, it makes total sense. He has stuck his neck out for humanity constantly only to be met with selfish, egomaniac, dirtbag traitor humans. He has been constantly betrayed and disappointed. Thankfully there is some kid or dad that restores his faith in humanity, but really…? He's a bloody warrior who has seen the extinction of his friends and race at the hands of an endless civil war. In this movie, you can see he is JUST SO DONE WITH CRAPPY PEOPLE AND IS JUST GONNA "KILL THEM ALL!!" It was honestly refreshing. For a Bay movie, Prime had serious depth. I could even speculate a lot about where this darkness in him is coming from, but not here.
3. Lockdown was a great touch. This movie took SEVERAL ideas from the brief Transformers Animated series, and Lockdown is one of them. He's a cool black and green bounty hunter who has hook hands. Cool! He was true to character and honestly really interesting, which says a lot in a Michael Bay movie.
Least Favorites:
1. The macho man male fantasy that was the entirety of the humans' character development. Nuff said.
2. The Autobot characters. They have no killed the big 3 main Autbots with the loss of Ratchet. The only reason I'm not absolutely furious is because it actually served as really good motivation. It upset me so much that I was really glad to see Optimus Prime mad as hell and out for blood. John Goodman voicing Hound is a nice touch, and they stayed pretty close to the original Hound character. I really hated Crosshairs and Drift last night, but sleeping on it has made me feel better. Drift is an actual character, not an OC, and he is pretty samurai-esque, and I guess it's not so bad to have some demographic variety, even a Transformer with an East Asian accent makes no sense at all, whatever. Crosshairs just gave me the heebie-jeebies, but his design was really freakin' awesome. Now, I'm a little sketchy on this canon, but canonically Drift is just a car, not a triple changer as he is in AOE (who is a car and a helicopter), and Crosshairs is just a car in AOE — well…this could easily have been reversed. In the 1986 movie, the green autobot Springer is one of the first Autobot triple changers, a helicopter and a truck. Springer is a weird name, so why not make Crosshairs (green!) the triple changer who is a car and a helicopter instead of Drift who is canonically just a car..? I dunno, weird choice. Same weirdness as switching Mirage and Sideswipe's names in DOTM, then changing Mirage to Dino last minute…. BAYYY!!
3. The plot was a train wreck, a junkyard scrapheap, straight outta Unicron's exhaust pipe. It was confusing, ill-conceived, random, and lacked motivation. Too many worthless subplots and no singular driving conflict. The only reason this is not my number 1 problem with the movie is because it's setting up the sequel, which looks REALLY promising. Megatron is reincarnated as Galvatron (HELL YESSSS!), and they are strongly hinting at discussing the origins of the Transformers as being the Quintesson origin — unlikely Bay will call them Quintessons, but it REALLY looks like it's the same idea. I'm totally stoked for TF5 (which, should totally be called Transformers: The Five Faces of Darkness, because that's the title of a G1 arc that introduces the Quintessons who have 5 faces but it's also the FIFTH movie. COME ON!!!!)
So that was long, sorry, but there it is. I love your blog, man XD I apologize for my lengthy nerd-rant.
06/30/2014 at 2:30 am
No, nerd-rants are cool. I’ve to be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a single thing on here that I know about and disagree with, down to the Iron Man comparisons. I’ve been saying the same thing. Aside from Downey Jr. in the role, the suits and the action, I’m not a big fan; same as Transformers.
The majority of the Transformers themselves are pretty cool with Optimus and Starscream (aside from this one of course) being the most entertaining for me….but who cares about the friggin’ humans? You seem to know your stuff though, so it’s good you got a bit of what you wanted. I’d watch another one, it doesn’t really get old for me because I’m not tied to the source material but once again- leave the humans out of it. I’d love to see Optimus wreaking havoc on his “creators” in space.
06/27/2014 at 1:18 pm
Not heartening…. i swear I have a bigger vocabulary than my phone, but then it will pull “dais” “poignancy” “onomatopoeia” “polymath” and “ketosis” out of its autocorrect ass. What in God’s name do you think I was trying to say???
06/28/2014 at 3:28 am
Yeah, autocorrect in my experience does more harm than good. Two words that in no way involve food have turned into “cookie.” Michael Bay’s ego probably would kill all humans if it ever materialized. And on his ego planet, everyone is brown and beautiful. Let me know what you think of TF4.