Movie Review: Transformers - Age of Extinction

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I believe I have watched most of the movies under the Transformers series, even though Sci-fi and robots aren't exactly my favorite genre. If I'd first fallen in love with Bumble Bee in a previous movie, I must say that in "Age of Extinction", Optimus Prime's courage and intelligence clearly won me over.

In this flick, Cade Yeager (played by MarkWahlberg) bought home a beat-up truck only to have it morph into an autobot, Optimus Prime, which threatened to kill him. Optimus Prime was badly injured by the last battle against the Decepticons, and he only managed to survive by taking the form of this truck, and Cade , a self-proclaimed inventor, helped to fix the gigantic autobot and was instantly in his favor.

Ironically, Lucas Flannery (played by T. J. Miller), a good friend of Cade and his teenaged daughter Tessa (played by Nicola Peltz), was the first one to be killed in the midst of escaping death - he was the one who invited death to the turf when he innocently dialled the hotline to report Optimus Prime's whereabouts, hoping for a large sum of reward in exchange for information.

Photosource: http://www.beyondhollywood.com/transformers-4-2014-movie-preview-images-and-videos/the-autobots-in-transformers-4-2014-movie-image/

Meanwhile, there were deadly collaborations between the an elite disvision of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) named "Cemetery Wind" and Kinetic Science Institute (KSI) where the owner of KSI, Joshua Joyce (played by Stanley Tucci) believed he was controlling the robots he invested heavily in making. In actuality he was being controlled by the manipulative and dangerous Megatron in a reformed and enhanced form, named Galvatron.

The robots took on various forms throughout the movie and engaged in fights against Lockdown and the weird alien race named "Creators" sent to capture the Autobots leader, Optimus Prime. There was also a battle between Megatron and Optimus Prime.

Be prepared for a lot of fighting scenes, and almost humurous but brilliant tactics employed by Cade, Tessa and her secret boyfriend Shane Dyson (played by Jack Reynor) to aid Optimus Prime in his fight against Lockdown. It was rather touching to first see how these robots (at least autobots) have feelings instead of being mere empty metal shells; secondly, to watch them and humans defend, protect and fight alongside each other with no regard for their own safety / lives.

Optimus Prime activated a group of legendary knights in the form of Dinobots as reinforcements, seeing as they were outnumbered and outmatched against Galvatron and his minions, which I thought was rather brilliant. However, I find that scene vaguely familair - has the same thing happened in one of those Lord of the Rings or Star Wars movies before?

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This movie brings us from Chicago to Texas to China to Hong Kong and then back to outer space, so be prepared for some rather interesting cultural infusion.  Horror and terror invaded the cities as the robots continued their fight and buildings toppled mercilessly. There were lots of chaos and emotional scenes, including the inevitable romance blossoming between Joshua and Su Yueming (played by Li Bingbing) as they worked together to bring the Seed to safety.

As the autobots and humans gained victory and Galvatron retreated, Optimus Prime set the Dinobots free and flew into space with the Seed, sending a message to the Creators. As Galvatron vows battle against Optimus Prime, we are sure that will be another sequel to this movie.

An entertaining movie overall, with lots of stunning effects and gratifying scenes of humans and robots working hand in hand to destroy those who intend to cause harm to Earth.