Michael Bay is to explosions what Georgia O’Keeffe was to flowers. Her floral paintings are an expression of peaceful feminine beauty. Bay’s filmmaking style is aggressively male – he shoots fireballs in ejaculatory bursts like a randy teenage caveman who comprehends naught but the instinct to launch his DNA as often and as much as possible.
The fourth “Transformers” movie, subtitled “Age of Extinction,” is base and crude in its visual motifs, which range from blasting guns to towering skyscrapers to relatively docile automobiles transforming into tall, erect robots when called into action. I’ve set up the straw man to criticize the metaphor – if the biological purpose of such symbolic masculine acts is to create life, Bay ironically shows only instances of destruction, moreso than any other entry in the franchise. The metaphor brings about its own, yes, extinction.
The success of this franchise is baffling. By the time “Age of Extinction” concludes its theatrical run, the four movies will have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide. All are consistent, in that their primary characteristics are crummy editing, noise, incomprehensible plots, jumbled and nigh-endless action sequences, puerile humor and a restless, undisciplined camera. The new film is especially undynamic, consisting primarily of, in the words of the Motion Picture Association of America, “sci-fi action and violence.” Those words come first in the ratings description. They should also come second, third, fourth, fifth and last. They are the film’s only words. Bay has nothing else in his vocabulary. He shows a lack of interest in developing suspense, except when his human characters are literally suspended on wires stretching from a spaceship to the top of the Sears Tower.
The film is a thorough drubbing. It exists to exhaust its audience. But it’s not an exhilarating exhaustion we feel when we watch, say, a taut thriller or a well-conceived action picture. By the time the credits roll, a weary speechlessness settles over the room, the film having whaled on us for what seems to be an interminable amount of time. At 165 minutes, it’s 11 minutes longer than any other “Transformers” movie, and its final action sequence drones for at least an hour. Bay’s idea of rewarding an audience is to overfeed it, and likely among those who enjoy the experience are the same people who camp at the all-you-can-eat buffet all day, numb to the effects of mindless gorging.
FILM REVIEW
‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’
1 star (out of 4)
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and brief innuendo
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci
Run time: 165 minutes
Under the rubble exists a plot. It’s telling that the first line of dialogue uttered in the film is “Oh (excrement),” which I interpreted as foreshadowing. The people of Earth are reacting to the Chicago-set battle that ended the previous movie, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” We learn that 1,300 people died during said conflict, and you’ll be surprised to know that the deaths occurred within the fiction of the story, and not in our cineplexes, one brain cell at a time. It’s not above “Age of Extinction” to make meta-commentary; in a scene set in an abandoned movie theater, a character quips about how too many sequels and reboots marked the death of the business. The moment is a fine example of the film’s comedic sensibility, which is about as sophisticated as a Bazooka Joe gum-wrapper joke.
Anyway, Mark Wahlberg plays a cash-strapped inventor, Nicola Peltz is his teenage daughter and Jack Reynor is her boyfriend. Bay uses a lot of low-angle shots to introduce his characters, to make the men stand tall and heroic, and so he can ogle the young girl’s lower half, oft clad in skimpy shorts. That way, he can explain away his sexist exploitation – a common element of many of his films – as the product of a consistent visual aesthetic.
The Wahlberg character, who has the only-in-the-movies name of Cade Yeager, salvages the seemingly dead Optimus Prime, the leader of the good Transformers, and brings him back to life, thus implicating him and the other innocent puny humans in massive-scale conflicts between robots. Somewhere in a top-secret laboratory, Stanley Tucci plays a billionaire using Transformer tech, harvested during government black-ops bug hunts for stray Transformers, to create his own robots. He’s gearing up to profit from the military-industrial complex. He partners with a CIA honcho played by Kelsey Grammer, who glowers and hisses as any caricature of a key Homeland Security figure should.
Mark Wahlberg plays Cade Yeager in “Transformers: Age of Extinction.”Courtesy photo | Paramount Pictures
The humans in the film volley garbage dialogue around like a hot potato, typically yelling above the merciless din of firepower, clanking and scraping metal and detonating missiles. (Only Tucci seems inspired to make the best of a lousy situation, and his line readings are relatively amusing.) Sometimes, the action is so cluttered and nonsensical, the actors are required to describe what’s happening so we have at least a hope in hell of comprehending it: “IT’S A GIANT MAGNET! IT’S SUCKING UP METAL AND DROPPING IT!” is something Wahlberg bellows, the kind of thing you can only ask an actor to do if he’s getting a sizeable fraction of the back end.
Bay slows the pace for only three reasons: One, to linger tastelessly on a murdered character’s charred corpse, frozen in place by a fancy Transformer bomb, so we can be impressed by the effect. Two, to allow midtempo Imagine Dragons songs to play over slow-motion scenes of crumbling buildings and robots punching the nuts and bolts out of each other. And three, for dawdling shots of corporate logos: One, for a prominent chain of women’s lingerie shops, is on a bus that’s chopped in half but leaves the logo unharmed. Another, for a popular American beer brand, is on a truck that explodes and scatters bottles of said beverage around the set so Wahlberg can grab one, pop the cap, and take a swig.
Instances of savvy technical filmmaking are occasionally prevalent – where many modern action directors push the lens in too close, Bay isn’t afraid to pull back and give us a sense of scale, scope and visual clarity. Of course, he may also be showing off how much money he spent, which was surely more than you or I could comprehend. But for the most part, his modus operandi is to attack with the camera (not coincidentally, a publicity photo of the director on the set shows him seated on the dolly, manning the camera like it’s a machine gun mounted on the back of a Jeep). It’s a most obnoxious way of making a movie, and Bay employs it purposefully and unapologetically.
John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jserba@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
After more than two years of development, the sex toy company behind the male masturbatory aid Fleshlight has sprung a product that finally allows men to have sex with their iPads.
The Fleshlight LaunchPAD, a very real, most-definitely-not-a-hoax case for iPads, attaches to your tablet and serves as a holster for your Fleshlight, which then allows you to hump the device hands-free. All for the one-time low price of $24.95!
Why, exactly, does humanity need such a device?
“We gathered a lot of data and people are moving in masses to watching their adult content via mobile devices, so the Fleshlight LaunchPAD is the perfect accessory for men everywhere,” Fleshlight spokesperson Daniel Pacheco says. “We’re happy to see that men view this as an outlet of fulfilling their sexual fantasies and men’s pleasure products are getting more widespread acceptance just like women’s sex toys.”
Assuming long-distance friends want to get close to their partners’ shaky paunches, the company explains on its website how it expects the iPad case to be deployed:
The Fleshlight LaunchPAD is perfect for point-of-view content, long distance play with a friend, or enjoying a variety of your favorite films, clips, and images while using your Fleshlight product. Once fitted snuggly in place, it will maintain its position during use while allowing full access to touch-screen functionality and exposing the onboard controls, like volume and power.
Not wanting a soft launch, the company released an ad on Thursday that shows how it envisions the product penetrating the mainstream market: A couple sits video-chatting on their anniversary when the man surprises his lucky lady with a present — lingerie.
“Try it on,” he says with a mischievous grin. “Right now?” she responds playfully. “Yes,” he gutturally demands, tilting the iPad and attaching his Fleshlight as she begins to undress. The ad then descends into a manic fit of bouncing LaunchPADs and dubstep.
YouTube commenters, naturally, were amazed. “Is this real life?,” “WHAT THE F*CK,” and “Wait…this is serious?” some of them said.
Pacheco says the reaction has been immense, with more than 650,000 views on the YouTube video and mentions on several sites around the web.
We’re not sure if this case will void your AppleCare warranty — neither company has said so as of Friday afternoon. The real question, for us, is will we ever trust refurbished iPads again?
* Brian Ries really didn’t want his byline on this, but he did, in fact, contribute to the entirety of this report.
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