Written by Connor Zahler
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE?
As a child, I had two paramount obsessions: Star Wars and Transformers. There’s just something about space wizards and robot dinosaurs that can truly capture a young mind. Of course, a big part of it manifested in watching the Transformers movies. Directed (mostly) by Michael Bay, these movies are all shock and awe with little substance underlying it. Over the weekend, I ended up being forced to watch the fourth one, Age of Extinction. I wasn’t paying much attention throughout the run time, at least at first; it’s really boring when it isn’t focused on giant robots punching each other. One line, though, caught my attention:
“Simple Coding. Algorithms. Math! Why can’t we make what we want to make, the way we want to make it?”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully quantitative. In this installment of QMovie reviews, we’re going to tackle one of the worst Transformers movies.
QUALITY
The fourth installment of any series is usually pretty bad, and the Transformers movies weren’t very good to begin with. When the movie includes things like an ancient transformer that turns into a pterodactyl and one with a sniper rifle for a head, it’s a fun popcorn movie. When it’s spending time tracking Stanley Tucci’s business moves and getting way too deep into Romeo and Juliet Laws, it’s bad. Unfortunately, the latter takes up far more of the runtime. This gets a 3/10 for quality.
METHODOLOGY
Okay, this one also feels a little unfair. Age of Extinction isn’t trying to make some sort of big statement about “simple coding” and “math,” it’s using them as a frame to talk about giant robots. At the same time, though, it does make a powerful, if unintentional, point. Transformium, an alien material that allows transformers to, well, transform, can apparently be programmed. It is immediately seen as the perfect material by the villains of the movie, who set to work at finding more and making weapons out of it. It turns out to be tainted because all of their information comes from the severed-but-still-thinking head of Megatron. As a result of Megatron’s inherent biases and assumptions, the transformium ends up producing results that go against what its creators want and intend, such as restarting Deceptions. Buried there is a good point about how the biases that undergird “miracle” algorithms make them much less effective than we might think.
Of course, it’s important to note that this isn’t a serious discussion of the very real biases like racism and sexism that can impact algorithms, nor is it meant to be. Megatron’s “biases” are his unstoppable hatred of Autobots and thirst for world domination. While you can draw a comparison there with the way the biases of an AI’s creators or the assumptions in a dataset can distort the operation of a program, it’s a stretch. Still, though, the possibility of a reading like this is much more than I would have expected from a Transformers movie. 6/10.
SOURCING
Transformers is not based on a true story. I apologize if this is how you found out. The story is also not terribly believable in the real world. Within the confines of the Transformers universe, it makes enough sense, even if it stretches a bit too far with transformers who become dinosaurs. Algorithms here are used to boost military capabilities, which is an accurate depiction of how these technologies have been used in the real world. Again, though, most of the commentary seems unintentional, so it’ll just earn a 5/10.
SOCIALITY
Perhaps this is the only category that the movie explicitly wants you to think about. Michael Bay wanted to make a movie about robots punching each other (again), but he also wanted to take aim at what he saw as the excesses of the military-industrial complex. Here, the CIA and tech giants are working hand-in-hand to amass a terrifying technological arsenal at any and all costs (even killing Autobots!). If this theme is good enough for Dwight D. Eisenhower, it’s good enough for me. As fine as the theme is, it can get muddled at points. Stanley Tucci is having a bit too much fun to seem like anything other than a caricature, and the fact that every figure wants to monologue about how evil they are gets heavy-handed. Shocker: Transformers isn’t subtle. 6/10.
AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT
On the patented QMSS QMovie scale, Transformers: Age of Extinction earned a 22/40, which is higher praise than a lot of other critics gave it. On some level, viewing it this way seems a bit like using Megatron as a template and getting mad when your robot doesn’t look like Optimus Prime. What do you expect? On some level, though, the film is trying to say SOMETHING, and perhaps it deserves to be engaged with at least a little. If you’re looking for something to chew popcorn to and don’t want to see these points made better somewhere else, it’s a fine-enough movie. Otherwise, you can probably just watch the first one again. Bumblebee is supposed to be good, but I don’t watch prequels as a matter of policy, so I won’t speak on that.