Transformers 4 is a good movie but after all the hype, I feel
this may be the weakest of the Transformers saga to date. The movie was like a
reboot to Transformers after 3 strong films with Shia as the main character. Mark
Walberg does a great job here as the new human lead.
The movie’s
plot is good but afterwards its kinda disregarded in TF5. It takes place about 4
years after the events of TF3. The rules have changed. A CIA special ops group
called Cemetary Wind is hunting Autobots. Their leader is a cool dude and a
convincing human villain. There’s also a new transformer villain called
Lockdown who is stalking Optimus Prime. The scene that shows Ratchet get
defeated by Cemetary Wind and Lockdown is pretty cool.
The opening scenes with Mark’s character
Craig Yeager are pretty good. He lives in Texas. He’s a struggling inventor who
is trying to make money to survive and put his daughter through college. “Something
in here needs to make this family some money.” He says. He finds a low power mode
Optimus Prime. Optimus had escaped an ambush in Mexico city. (Which isn’t shown
on film but is talked about.) Eventually Mark repairs Optimus, but his friend
and employee snitches to the government. This sets up an exciting and tense
chase scene. The scene might be the most unbelievable scene in Transformers. It’s
fast paced and ends where I think it could keep going lol.
Afterwards were given more plot and
things get a lil slow. We get some dialogue between Craig and his daughters
secret boyfriend. It’s ok, but the Romeo and Juliet laws reference seems a bit much.
We meet some new Autobots. One with a trench coat, a samurai one, and a big one
voiced by John Goodman. The big one gets a lot of good lines too. Basically the
crew of autobots and fugitive humans goes to KSR where they “make” transformers.
There Craig does some spy work. His goal is to black mail KSR and whomever sent
the death squad to his house looking for Optimus Prime.
Optimus finds out they killed Ratchet
and he loses it. Optimus and the other autobots storm KSR. KSR’s leader (not
sure if he’s the founder) confronts Optimus and says, “We can make you now….” And
“We don’t need you, anymore”. Optimus then decides he will leave Earth to its
demise. I’ll say more on that later. What follows is the coolest fight in the
movie. Optimus fights Galvatron, which is Megatron reincarnated by KSR. (yeah
they gave him a new body). Optimus was going to win but he gets cheapshotted by
Lockdown. I didn’t mention Optimus has a new design after the opening chase
scene. He looks even more bad ass than before.
Optimus gets captured by Lockdown.
Craig’s daughter, Tessa is unfortunately captured as well and taken to Lockdown’s ship.
“The deal is done, one seed for one prime” says Lockdown to the cemetary wind
commander. The seed is basically a bomb that is used to make transformium.
Transformium is what Transformers are made of. Afterwards a long rescue scene
takes place as Craig, her daughters bf, and the autobots try to rescue Optimus.
The scene is full of close calls. It’s pretty well done. The autobots seem to
rescue Prime rather easily. Lockdown’s ship basically leaves earth without
Prime which is funny. However, he returns a lil while later.
Optimus says that they will
retrieve the seed then they’re done with Earth and humans. It makes sense
because as far as Prime is concerned the autobots are underappreciated and hated
by humans. He says, “How many more of my kinds must atone for your mistakes?”
Craig convinces Prime that they are human and that’s why they make mistakes. It’s
a good subtle message the movie has.
After the scene basically KSR moves
the seed to China which makes for some cool backgrounds. Craig warns Joshua
(KSR’s leader) that his man made autobots are out of control. Joshua seems to
be conflicted after this conversation. He tries to back out of the deal with the
Cemetary wind leader. Joshua then agrees to give the seed to Craig and the
autobots. What ensues is a chase scene with Cemetary wind leader and their commander
hunting down Joshua. Without giving all the details its well done. Somewhere in
the mix Optimus gets separated from the group (like always).
Optimus fights a Dinobot. It’s a dope
little fight. Optimus says, “We’re giving you freedom!” then he smacks the T-Rex
transformer in the face. I really like when the Samurai transformer says, “Oh
no, I was expecting a giant car” lol. It’s like really? The 3 displaced
autobots ride in on Dinobots to the Chinese city. Meanwhile Craig and company
and 2 autobots are trying to hold off a wave of KSR transformers that have gone
rogue, but are actually under the control of Galvatron. BTW where was Galvatron
during all this? Optimus and his company save the day. They devise a plan to
get the Seed out of the city.
Lockdown uses the seed’s tracker to
find out exactly where all the action is. He uses his ship’s magnet to suck up
metal and then drop it down. Not sure what the point of this really is lol. Anyways
the special effects here are dazzling. Afterwards this sets up the final fight.
Optimus goes for Lockdown who comes out of the ship. Here we find out Lockdown can
really fight. He has Optimus reeling. Craig shoots at Lockdown. The KSR boss
shoots at Craig, but is ultimately killed by Optimus. Optimus had never
intentionally killed a human before so that’s a big deal.
Lockdown goes on the offensive and stabs
Optimus with his own sword….but Craig and bumble bee intervene. The fight seems
kinda drawn out at this point as Craig’s daughter and her bf find a way to get
the sword out of Prime. When this happens, Lockdown is about to stab Craig but
instead he gets slain by Optimus. That’s pretty much it. Optimus leaves saying
he will find and punish his creators. Galvatron says he will get revenge on
Prime.
Overall, I feel this is a good
movie but it’s a little too long. The pacing is kinda bad too. I did enjoy the dialogue
and new characters. All in all I’d say it might be the one TF movie you really
can skip as TF5 barely makes any references to it. The action is dope, and the movie
does feel fresh plot wise compared to TF2 and 3.
Verdict: 8.5/10