Trans­form­ers: Age of Extinction

If Michael Bay didn’t exist, Wern­er Her­zog would have to invent him.

He wants too much, he flies too far, he screams and mewls to bring his unique brand of enter­tain­ment to places nature nev­er intend­ed for it to go. No mat­ter the cost. No mat­ter the death toll. Michael Bay isn’t just a sol­dier for cin­e­ma (to use one of Herzog’s favourite expres­sions), he’s its Gen­er­al Pat­ton. And there can be no doubt for which coun­try he fights.

Trans­form­ers: Age of Extinc­tion is the fourth instal­ment of what has become Bay’s sig­na­ture fran­chise — the pub­licly dis­closed bud­get for the film is $165 mil­lion, and if you believe that, you might also believe Mark Wahlberg as an inven­tor (“I am so going to patent this!” he shouts upon fir­ing an alien gun). His character’s name is Cade Yea­ger (pre­sum­ably because Stack­er Pen­te­cost was already tak­en), and he lives with his pouty blonde daugh­ter (liv­ing wax stat­ue Nico­la Peltz as Tes­sa Yea­ger) on a farm in Paris, Texas, which is obvi­ous­ly Michael Bay’s touch­ing homage to his hero Wim Wen­ders. Between tin­ker­ing with use­less machines in his barn and not pay­ing his mort­gage, Yea­ger doesn’t have a lot of free time, but he spends every sec­ond of it try­ing to stunt his kid’s bur­geon­ing womanhood.

Essen­tial­ly, he’s the sin­gle dad ver­sion of Mar­tin Lawrence’s char­ac­ter from Bad Boys II, the sup­pos­ed­ly endear­ing type of father who’d rather take his daugh­ter to a puri­ty ball than let her go to the prom. When it’s revealed that Tes­sa, who is 17, is dat­ing a 19-year-old race­car dri­ver, the guy prompt­ly pro­duces a lam­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment card that proves their rela­tion­ship doesn’t qual­i­fy as statu­to­ry rape in the state of Texas. It’s okay for Bay’s cam­era to linger on the girl’s bare­ly cov­ered ass — that dude has a card. One shud­ders at the thought of the delet­ed scenes.

Bay shoots the Yeager’s farm almost exclu­sive­ly in the mag­ic hour, the lens-split­ting orange sun melt­ing over the wheat fields of Texas like Days of Heav­en if it were reboot­ed as a Super Bowl com­mer­cial. Chica­go is in ruins from the spec­tac­u­lar bat­tle that capped off the pre­vi­ous Trans­form­ers film, and humans are vague­ly aware of a lin­ger­ing alien pres­ence. Cade finds Opti­mus Prime when scav­eng­ing for junk in an aban­doned movie the­atre, and before you can say ​“I think we found a Trans­former!” a CIA death squad lead by Kelsey Gram­mar (aren’t they all?) arrives on the scene.

Cut to Opti­mus Prime rid­ing a fire-breath­ing T‑rex through the streets of Hong Kong as fer­ries rain from a death mag­net hov­er­ing above the island and Stan­ley Tuc­ci screams for dear life. And you may ask your­self, ​“Well… how did I get here?” And you may ask your­self, ​“Where is that large auto­mo­bile?” Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

Bay’s first Trans­form­ers film was a spec­ta­cle as large as it was crass. Shia LaBeouf’s unc­tu­ous lead per­for­mance was an iron cur­tain of good will, and Bay had yet to fig­ure out how to tex­ture the franchise’s zeal­ous­ly cor­po­rate ethos in a way that made a strength of its trans­paren­cy. The first sequel was the most gar­ish vic­tim of a writer’s strike, but also found Bay at the mer­cy of the tech­nol­o­gy that makes these films possible.

That’s why Dark of the Moon stands above the rest of the series and endures as one of the most excit­ing spec­ta­cles in mega-block­buster his­to­ry, the 3D forc­ing Bay to return to the flu­id com­po­si­tion­al genius respon­si­ble for The Rock and Bad Boys II, and allow­ing for a glo­be­trot­ting script so dis­fig­ured that it was prac­ti­cal­ly cubist. Dark of the Moon some­how man­aged to one-up the silli­ness of its pre­de­ces­sors, but its visu­al grace and Brakhage-like plot­ting result­ed in a rare alche­my, draw­ing atten­tion to the immac­u­late­ly ren­dered move­ments that made the film feel like the sum­mer movie equiv­a­lent of a Pina Bausch routine.

Age of Extinc­tion isn’t near­ly as ele­gant as its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor — in fact, Bay’s regres­sive slop­pi­ness undoes most of its plea­sures — but the film almost com­pen­sates for its chop­py action by con­geal­ing into an invalu­able and grotesque­ly accu­rate snap­shot of block­buster glob­al­ism. For the final hour of the film, the action abrupt­ly relo­cates to Chi­na because that’s where the busi­ness is. Lit­er­al­ly, Guang­dong province is the loca­tion of the last remain­ing Trans­formi­um lab.

But not only is every­thing in this movie made in Chi­na, it’s ulti­mate­ly made for Chi­na, as well. The change in scenery is explained by one throw­away line of dia­logue, but the real­i­ty has far more to do with the fact that Chi­na now has the sec­ond-high­est box office receipts of any coun­try in the world, and that their audi­ences have the pow­er to make or break block­buster fran­chis­es (in case you’re look­ing for some­one to blame for the just-announced sequel to Pacif­ic Rim). As Kevin B Lee’s Trans­form­ers pre­make bril­liant­ly lays out, Age of Extinc­tion might be the first inter­na­tion­al­ly co-fund­ed tent­pole in which the sto­ry doesn’t just fol­low the mon­ey, the sto­ry is the money.

It’s com­pelling to see that dynam­ic unfold so trans­par­ent­ly on screen, the metas­ta­sis­ing cor­po­rate glob­al­ism that’s shap­ing the film indus­try ren­dered far more coher­ent­ly than any of the alien robot bat­tles. A lack of log­ic has always been the series’ charm, but if Age of Extinc­tion makes more sense than Dark of the Moon (and that’s a big ​‘if’), it’s just clear enough to be useless.

The film’s inter­change­able char­ac­ters are as car­toon­ish as every­thing else in Bay’s Has­bro-ised uni­verse, and the broad com­e­dy of their quirks is dumb enough to make you miss Shia LaBeouf. Nev­er before has Bay done so lit­tle with so much, the glob­al scale of his film undone by the mis­ery of its mil­lion bro­ken parts. The cli­mac­tic bat­tle wastes a fire-breath­ing alien dinosaur robot, Chica­go just doesn’t blow up like it used to — the mad­ness sim­ply isn’t mad enough, this time around.

The first hour hangs togeth­er because Bay cogent­ly res­ur­rects Opti­mus Prime as part neglect­ed com­bat vet­er­an, part ille­gal immi­grant, sham­ing the suits and politi­cians who left the alien to rot as soon as the fight­ing was over because it was polit­i­cal­ly incon­ve­nient. It’s an inter­est­ing, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful way for Bay to final­ly redeem Ed Har­ris’ char­ac­ter from The Rock, and it’s maybe the franchise’s only bit of coher­ent and delib­er­ate com­men­tary. Tucci’s char­ac­ter threat­ens to have a gen­uine arc, but the les­son of his sto­ry is ulti­mate­ly that hav­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate some­thing doesn’t mean that you should, which makes Age of Extinc­tion the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of shoot­ing some­one in the head to half­heart­ed­ly protest against gun violence.

And yet, there’s some­thing to be said for incom­pe­tence when it’s of this scale. Even Bay apol­o­gists will be fight­ing an uphill bat­tle here, but at a time when fran­chise film­mak­ing is hand­cuffed by for­mu­la and movies this large aspire to medi­oc­rity, there’s some­thing to be said for a sum­mer spec­ta­cle where no scene can pos­si­bly pre­dict the next, and where John Good­man voic­es a pot­bel­lied humanoid robot who chomps on a giant tank shell like it’s a cig­ar. If Bay’s slip­ping tech­ni­cal mas­tery guts so much of the film’s fun, his unbri­dled insan­i­ty insists that this is still the block­buster event of the sum­mer, too big to fail, too dumb to fol­low, and too dif­fer­ent to dismiss.