Posts Tagged ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’

METRO REEL GUYS TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION. “action orgy.”

TRANSFORMERS-AGE-OF-EXTINCTION-8By Richard Crouse & Mark Breslin – Metro Reel Guys

SYNOPSIS: Picking up four years after the invasion of Chicago seen in the last Transformers film, “Dark of the Moon,” the action begins when unemployed robotic engineer Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) uncover deactivated Autobot, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) hidden under a pile of junk. Their discovery puts them under the microscope of CIA agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and tech tycoon Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci). The two are hatching a plan, fueled by equal parts paranoia and genius, to build man made second generation Transformers to seek out and destroy the Autobots. Complicating matters is Lockdown, a ruthless Transformer bounty hunter with no allegiance to Autobots or Decepticons.

STAR RATINGS:

Richard: 3 Stars

Mark: 2 Stars

Richard: Mark, everybody loves spectacle. The Romans had the Coliseum and we have the Transformers movies. Like the gladiatorial shows of yore, in Michael Bay’s movies it doesn’t matter who lives or dies— the films don’t care about their human characters and neither do we—all that matters is the spectacle of the whole thing and at almost frenetic three hours Age of Extinction certainly delivers on that score. For many, getting value per minute for their movie dollar will be enough, but do you, like the old Roman emperors, give this a thumbs up or down?

Mark: Richard, I was glued to my seat throughout! You see, some idiot had spilled epoxy on the seat before I sat down and it took the full two and three quarter hours to wriggle out of my jeans. I have never been able to sit through a Transformers movie, but epoxy aside, at least this one had a coherent story, some decent acting thanks to Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer, and some exciting chase sequences. I just can’t wrap my head around watching a bunch of Swiss Army knives on steroids bashing each other. But then again, I’m not a twelve-year-old boy.

RC: No one can accuse Bay of skimping on… well anything. “Age of Extinction” is a wide ranging action orgy that plays off of Bush era Homeland Security paranoia and also explains why dinosaurs became extinct. It comments on the ethics of unarmed warfare and blows up most of Hong Kong. Bay doesn’t do anything by half measures but I found myself wishing the movie was about half as long as it is with half the bombast. It’s stylish—“Why run when you can run in slow motion,” Bay seems to be asking—not unlike a car commercial, but is excessive on almost every level. I don’t expect or want “My Dinner with Optimus Prime,” but in this case I think less would have been more.

MB: My feelings here are complicated. I used to take it for granted that this kind of direction was evidence of a hack sensibility, which assumes that quantity makes viewers forget quality—a real cynic’s position.  But watching this installment, I’m no longer so sure. I think Bay really believes that these grand excesses are heroic, even Shakespearean—its running time is equal to Hamlet. The movie is cheesy and schlocky, for sure, but the one possible grace note is Bay’s commitment to the drive of the film. Too long, for sure, but at least this movie moves.

RC: Shakespeare never wrote a play about a giant alien robot playing bucking bronco with a humungous dinobot. That’s all Bay.

MB: Or had a billion dollar grossing movie. That’s all Bay St.

Transformers: Age of Extinction: Stars feel the heat of real explosions

Mark-Wahlberg-Nicola-Peltz-and-Jack-Reynor-on-set-of-Transformers-Age-of-Extinction-585x393

By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

“We were happy to do whatever was asked of us whenever it was asked of us,” says Transformers: Age of Extinction star Jack Reynor.

The Colorado-born, Irish-raised actor proved he was game for anything when he was given just twenty minutes to prepare for a wild scene that brought him face-to-face with real explosions.

“It is an incredibly intimidating experience in many ways,” he said, “but at the end of the day you have to trust the people around you, that they know what they’re doing that they’re prepared and that you’re safe. We had a great stunt team who worked on this film with us. Those guys really put us at ease.”

Sharing the explosive scene with Reynor were his co-stars Nicola Peltz and Mark Wahlberg.

“They worked so hard to make this huge explosion,” says Peltz, best known for her role as Bradley Martin on Bates Motel. “I think it took a week but we didn’t know about it. We were kind of confused when we got on set and saw ten cameras. (Director) Michael (Bay) told us a few minutes before, ‘You’re going to do this huge stunt. It’s not going to be stunt doubles, it’s going to be you guys and you have to run from here to here in 4.6 seconds.’

“There’s not much acting when there are real explosions behind you,” she says. “You just have to run.”

The experience of sprinting away from live blasts wasn’t exactly what Peltz expected when she signed on for the role in the fourth Transformers film.

“I thought there was going to be more green screen than there actually was but Michael wants everything to be as real as possible so the car chases and the explosions are all real.”

“You can really tell the difference,” says Reynor. “You can tell when a movie is really heavy on CG. It doesn’t really look real. As far as we’ve come with effects and all the advancements we’ve made—some of them are really great—at the end of the day to do it practically and do it for real always looks best on screen. That’s why Michael tries to make it that way. On top of that it makes everything more tangible for us; a lot easier to relate to and react off. That’s why I think these movies have been as incredibly successful as they have because the audience really does feel it.”

Michael Bay doesn’t care what you think, he just keeps making hits

transformers6By Richard Crouse – In Focus Metro Canada

Director Michael Bay once said he doesn’t make movies for critics. The auteur behind such hits as The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys 1 and 2 and the Transformers movies is best known for making big, loud films that rake it in at the box office but leave critics reaching for the Advil.

Bay acknowledged the adversarial relationship in a 2005 article by Rene Rodriguez.

“They castrate me,” he told Rodriguez. “They call me the devil and all that crap.”

It’s not hard to see why reviewers have a hard time with his films. He never met a building or car or city he didn’t want to blow up in spectacular fashion and critics often feel like they have to slather on SPF 70 to avoid getting get a tan from the glare off the giant fireballs that light up screen in Bay’s films.

Audiences, however, have flocked to his flicks. According to boxofficemojo.com his ten features have grossed $1,898,048,525, or an average of $189,804,853. That’s a lot of beans.

The release this weekend of Transformers: Age of Extinction promises to add to those totals. The fourth installment of the franchise stars Mark Wahlberg as a single father and struggling inventor who discovers the deactivated Autobots leader Optimus Prime.

The movie promises a whole new raft of Transformers, including bounty hunter Lockdown and the rough and tumble Dinobot Grimlock. Bay promises we’ll also see an “angry Optimus Prime.”

Will the critics like Age of Extinction? Who knows? It probably won’t matter, the Transformers movies are as close to guaranteed hits as Hollywood has these days, so reviews most likely won’t matter to the box office.

Not all of Bay’s films have been critically reviled. “The critics were very nice to me when I first began with Bad Boys,” he says and his last movie, the crime drama Pain and Gain was called “the best movie Michael Bay’s ever made,” by the Newark Star-Ledger.

It has a few things going for it. First, there isn’t a robot in sight. Secondly, a great cast—including Wahlberg, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Anthony Mackie—who bring serious star power and third, it doesn’t really feel like a Michael Bay film. And by that I mean there’s only one shot of the three leads walking away from a slow motion explosion.

Years ago I wrote this about his trademarked aural and optical onslaught: “The former commercial director has a knack for making everything look shiny but having great taste doesn’t make a great film director any more than great taste makes a Snicker’s bar a gourmet meal.” I even coined a word for his style: Hullabayloo, but nothing that any critic or I write matters to the director.

“I’ve actually stopped reading (reviews),” he told Rodriguez.