‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’: A Three-Hour Explosion of Contempt for You and Your Family

Yeah, the critics don’t seem to like the movie very much – it’s currently coming in at 17 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest rating yet for a Transformers film. I didn’t like it, either. In fact, I hatedhatedhated it, for all the reasons that every other critic mentions. Very original, I know. Actually, my original angle for this review, originally, was to gripe about the film’s lack of originality. You see, it’s very important to me that as many people as possible know that I listen to NPR while driving my Subaru to the farmer’s market, and I was going to tie in my theme with the subject of the latest TED Radio Hour episode, What is Original. However, maybe I’m maturing as a critic, because I’ve concluded that it’s just not fair to expect a film like Transformers (2014) to be original. I mean, it was loud, senseless, clunky, and almost THREE HOURS LONG. But, as Stephanie Palmer wrote recently, summer blockbusters aren’t usually intended to be original. Rather, they’re designed to minimize risk and maximize profit. Fair enough.

I also thought about making the best out of it, as Charlie Jane Anders does in her review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2011). After all, when life gives you poop, make poopjuice, right? No. Nope, in fact. It doesn’t matter that this is an action figure movie designed to appeal to adolescent males, I just can’t muster the good will to hold my nose, wink, and keep my tongue in cheek.

You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate Transformers: AOE. It’s a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.

By vulgarity, I don’t mean expletives, I mean excessive tastelessness. Shiny, five gallon buckets of Dom Pérignon tastelessness. Bay is a master of landscape cinematography, and it shows since almost every shot in the movie is a landscape onto which a CGI robot will be projected. For example, after the prologue (dinosaurs), we’re introduced to Yeager. He’s just a regular guy – he drives a rusty blue pickup, he’s dirty, he wears tight T-shirts (yeah, his biceps are dreamy), and he cares about his teenage daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz). He’s also a single dad and a small businessman, struggling to make ends meet with his barn-based cassette tape and film projector repair shop/ROBOTICS ENGINEERING LAB. While establishing Yeager’s down home bonifides and cat-saving prowess, Bay treats us to endless shots of cornfields, soybean fields, and field fields. I haven’t seen so much lingering on a cornfield since Field of Dreams (1989) mated with Children of the Corn (1984).

Similarily, the viewer endures an excess of shallow, inarticulate references to the concerns of the day. Posters and billboards in the background allude to our national discussion of immigration policy, while mean Kelsey Grammer and his très chic CIA deathsquad reflect our trepidations about government surveillance.

Violence certainly has a place in storytelling but, like its predecessors, Tranformers (2014) has an excess of violence. Mr. Bay, where is the blood? We see countless buildings ravaged by rockets and errant robots, but where are the human bodies falling from the 55th story, blown out or jumping to escape the flames? Likewise, those same rockets strike countless vehicles, robots slice cars in half, space magnets lift tour buses half a mile into the air only to drop onto elevated trains full of commuters. I’m guessing Paramount couldn’t afford to break off some of that $210 million budget to cast a few hundred thousand dead bystanders. To be fair, I could ask that same question of Godzilla (2014) or Pacific Rim (2013) (and I do).

It’s not like this so-called family film shirked from depicting violence and death entirely. In one disturbing scene, a government agent holds a gun to Tessa’s head while she pleads for her life as Cade looks on, helpless; later, we see Cade’s affable best friend Lucas (T. J. Miller) burned to death, leaving an obscene smoldering effigy that Cade and Tessa…absolutely do not react to. Maybe they’re just like the film’s young audience as the exit the theatre – numb to death.

Bay doesn’t just excel at bloodless mass murder or at getting actors to stare skyward at imaginary robots, he’s also good at casual racist caricature. Early on, our white male protagonist has to defend his home from a real estate agent who is not a black woman who is also large, she’s a Fat Sassy Black Woman. Later we’re reacquainted with Brains, a small robot with a cybernetic afro and dialogue co-opted from a minstrel show. We also see Orientalist cliches, including Every Asian Knows Martial Arts and a Wise (Robot) Samurai.

While the film passes the letter of the Bechel Test, women don’t fare well, either. Bay’s camera often lingers on the female character’s bodies. Lucas’ introductory scene begins with his verbal sexual harassment of two women crossing the street separating him from Yeager. This harassment goes unrebuffed by Wahlberg’s character. Boys will be boys, I guess.

Sophia Myles plays a geologist, Darcy Tirrel; while she’s the first main character to be introduced, she spends the remainder of the film playing The Watson for Stanley Tucci’s Steve Jobs character, Joshua Joyce, to explain Transformer tech to. During the climatic battle (I think it was the climatic battle, it’s kinda hard to tell), she marks Joyce’s development (now he’s a friendly capitalist!), saying “I’m proud of you.”

Bingbing Li plays Su Yueming, Joyce’s Chinese attaché. She wears tight pantsuits, knows Kung-Fu, and can drive a motorcycle. While initially she rebuffs his creepy-boss advances, she relents in the end and they sunset into the credits.

Tessa exists a perpetual protectorate for Yeager. For example, an hour and a half, i.e., midway, through the film, Yeager boards an alien prison ship to rescue her. While Tessa is hiding from her captors, a masculine green alien prisoner wraps a slimy green tongue around her bare leg. As the tongue gets longer and longer, it starts to reach for her genitals. I was reminded of the infamous tree rape scene in Evil Dead (1981).

As Rebecca Phale at The Mary Sue notes, the most disturbingly misogynistic scene is also the most subtle. On the aforementioned prison ship, Hound, a horribly erratic and violent Autobot voiced by John Goodman, murders an alien – essentially, a walking vagina dentata with an unfortunate sniffle – because it is “too ugly to live.” He punctuates the act by calling the corpse a “bitch.”

And so on. I intended to discuss the plot, but there wasn’t one. I was going to use phrasing like “soul crushing,” but I will decline in the interest of originality. How about “a long, loud, and dreary exercise in post-postmodern nihilism,” has that been taken? I will say that you, reader, are free to not see this movie. By all means, see a summer blockbuster, but hold out for one that shows more respect for women, minorities, and your ears.

OK Mr. Bay, I’m done, I’m broken, just leave me alone and I’ll buy a fucking million pack of Bud Light.

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Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.