http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vid...st&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all
Huh. So MovieBob actually liked it. I mean, he still admits it's got far too long a running time, it's still dumb as hell, but it's second to the animated TF movie (which he - and even I'll admit was dumb). He says it's dumb, bloated nonsense, but the inoffensive kind.
Still, that's a change from before because he always slagged the movies. Given that I tend to agree with
most (not all; I didn't hate the Amazing Spidey movies like he does), I may actually give this a theatre chance, after all. I do like that the designs for the bots are much more distinctive and recognizable this time around.
I had a similar response to MovieBob.
Is it bloated, over-long with more plot strands than it really needs? Yes.
Is it really dumb? Yes.
Is it the awful mess that some of these films had been before? Not really. It's a mess to be certain, but it's not a hate-inspiring force. It's more like the sort of thing "junk food cinema" would describe: a big lot of nonsense that is ultimately disposable and kind of enjoyable.
The over-the-top slapstick, excessive amount of comic relief characters, and crude humor of the previous films is gone from here, with the story and characters playing the whole film much straighter than before. In fact, the one pure comic relief character in the form of T.J. Miller is one that actually works. It also helps having Mark Wahlberg as your main protagonist instead of Shia LaBeouf. In addition to the change in attitude, dialogue that might have been grating coming from Shia works when delivered by Wahlberg.
That said, it is still overloaded with numerous plots that it has going. You have a CIA group led by Kelsey Grammer (who plays his part more like an '80s R-rated action movie villain and actually works well with it) who is hunting down all Cybertronians, killing them and having them be scrapped by a billionaire inventor played by Stanley Tucci, who is harvesting from them a substance known as transformium (yes, it is called that). Stanley Tucci is then using the transformium to build man-made Autobots to control, which goes as well as you can expect when the main one is called Galvatron. Galvatron is trying to take down Optimus Prime for his own ends. Then there's Lockdown, a Cybertronian bounty hunter called in by the mysterious "Creators" of the Cybertronians to capture Optimus Prime. Suffice to say, there's a lot they crammed in and they could have trimmed some of it out. Personally, I would have saved the Lockdown business for another film.
Also, for those excited for the Dinobots, they are unfortunately underused.
Anyway, would I recommend this? It feels a bit much to out and out recommend it, but it may be worth giving a chance. It's not the rage-inducer some of this film franchise's entries have been, but it is still an overly bloated and stupid mess.
That said, I got to see a sword-wielding Optimus Prime ride a fire-breathing Grimlock into battle on the big screen. That is freaking awesome, logical complaints and issues be damned.
