June 26 – Transformers: Age of Extinction Theres one part late in the movie where Optimus Prime trots out his line about “The Spark” - the Transformers life force/ soul. Most of us heading in to this movie know that we can expect no moments of spark/ real life from this continuing franchise. In this episode theres a setup for a war on many fronts. Lockdown, a Transformer bounty hunter is on earth, working with the CIA, to bring back Optimus Prime to their home planet to face their creator in a trial of some sort – which partially replicates the Man of Steel story. Meanwhile a tech company has collected all of the body parts of the Decepticons (among which is Megatron), from after the battle in Dark of the Moon, and are using the alien technology to replicate robots for use in the military. The robots of course take on a life of their own. The supposedly new metal, which it is discovered that the Transformers are made of, looks really passé compared to the still wondrous liquid metal in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Then theres a prehistorical bit about how the Dinobots came into existence. All fine and dandy except for the need for human characters. Mark Wahlberg replaces Shia LaBeouf, Nicola Peltz tries to be a stand in for Megan Fox, Jack Reynor kind of tries to be Josh Duhamel, Stanley Tucci is asked to play the wacko John Turturro role - all of them are the same cyphers from the previous movies. The Transformer robots try to be better examples of honour bound beings but are not entirely successful even when viewed against such low standard homo sapiens. All of this is moot. At 165 minutes, one definitely gets a whole lot of bang for the buck right from the start. There’s a certain part of me which thinks this might be more of a worthy time in 3D as there is one added visual dimension which helps offset the loss of other dimensions. The protracted ending battle takes place in a replica Hong Kong. This is the first time that the climactic action takes place in new environs away from American cities. We’ve of course seen Hong Kong action movies before, but never on this scale and this will have been the first time that the SFX departments will have had to render new sets, rather than reuse the boring “Gotham” CGI backlot for the umpteenth time. Despite all of the destruction, I also appreciate the movie for avoiding my pet peeve - scenes that mimic the 9/11 building collapse and resultant debris storm. This is something that other movies should strive to keep off our screens from now on. NB: The movie was seen as a RealD 3D projection and this was the first time I had seen a 3D movie away from an IMAX screen since Toy Story 3. The darkening effect that 3D glasses have on a normal screen is huge while the IMAX system almost wholly overcomes this. I am aghast at myself for this suggestion but if you have the wherewithal, and it was a movie you were always going to see, I would suggest going big and seeing it on an IMAX screen. Additionally, be sure to not watch it when you’re tired or at the end of the workday. It’ll just end up feeling like more work. Vijay Ramani (SFS Committee and Programming Member)
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:36:55 +0000
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