‘Transformers’ make more mayhem in ‘Age of Extinction’
Marry a top action star like Mark Wahlberg to a top action franchise such as “Transformers,” and you can be sure you won’t have a quiet time while watching the result.
Add the news that dinosaurs apparently were made extinct by evil Transformers, and you’ll know even more that you and the movie will not go quietly.
“Transformers: Age of Extinction,” released in 2014 as the fourth film in director Michael Bay’s toy-inspired franchise – and being shown Wednesday, Feb. 22, and Thursday, Feb. 23, on MGM+ Marquee, and Saturday, Feb. 25, on MGM+ – starts by going back to the future in a sense. Much of the prehistoric world is erased by aliens, according to the plot here, but one T. Rex gets preserved in a way that figures in big as the story progresses.
A new breed of sinister Decepticons is envisioned by a FBI man played by Kelsey Grammer, who enlists scientist Stanley Tucci to do the real dirty work. Meanwhile, an inventor played by Mark Wahlberg (so long, Shia Laboeuf, the head actor in the previous “Transformers” chapters) finds an old truck that actually turns out to be the rundown Optimus Prime, the good-guy Autobot that’s in big need of refurbishing. Thus, the battle lines are drawn anew, with the bad guys wanting to get their hands on Optimus. Expectedly, the pursuit poses great peril for Wahlberg’s character, as well as for his scantily dressed teenage daughter (Nicola Peltz, who will be recognized by those who watched television’s “Bates Motel”) ... not to mention the populations of Texas, Chicago and Hong Kong, the principal settings of this saga.
Among the human cast members, the customarily excellent Tucci fares best as a character whose change of heart gives him some actual acting to do. It shouldn’t come as a news flash by now, however, that “Transformers” movies aren’t exactly built for that.
They’re much more about the spectacle of the battles between machine that actually do transform, and the 3-D that was an option for moviegoers during the film’s original run added that much more to the overall visual awe.
No one should complain about there not being enough of that degree of wonder this time: “Transformers: Age of Extinction” runs just shy of three hours. By and large, it delivers the expected goods, and it’s hard to ask much more of a movie that has the Transformers brand on it.