[ZeoRangerV]

I've never been a hater of Bay's Transformer movies, quite the opposite to begin with in fact. I love the first movie, really enjoy Revenge of the Fallen despite its flaws and outright hate Dark of the Moon. So naturally, the decline gave me pretty low expectations for Age of Extinction.

The film surprised me somewhat, it's the best of the Transformers sequels in some respects but by far the worst in others.

The basic plot of the film is pretty solid, but quickly gets muddled with things that either didn't need to be there or just plain don't make sense. Transformers weren't born they were created! Unneccessary Dinobots! Prime's a knight all of a sudden!. With the exception of Stanley Tucci all the human characters were equally as awful as the ones in the first first trilogy.

Worst of all is the Autobots though. I get this is a film about them being hunted. I get that this is a film about Optimus Prime questioning his morals. But the Autobots in this film do not feel like heroes. For a film that doesn't really have any proper Decepticons and a minimal amount of villains, these bots are really obsessed with killing. The bloodthirsty Optimus thing is always something I've found more humorous than anything, but in this film its taken to the extreme and its really unsettling. His first true lines are literally "I'll kill you", and basically tells the Dinobots that can either help him or die when they haven't been involved in any of this.

The good though? Lockdown is brilliant, Galvatron is awesome and the voice casting was spot on (especially John Goodman). Props for making the Autobots feel like actual characters this time around too, even if I wasn't a fan of them.