Well, it's that time of the year again, where I try and reply to a whole bunch of posts at once.
I'm so divided about this film. In some respects, it's much better than the first three. In others, it's just as bad if not worse. Let me borrow JonLeung's format, with much spoilers also...
THE GOOD:
-The immature humour is gone;
-So is the constant military fetishism;
-Much better human antagonists;
-The Transformers themselves finally have scenes together where they exhibit some individual personalities! I love that they didn't completely forget about guys like Ratchet or Brains and actually took the time to introduce the new Autobots. I also loved Lockdown as a character who was frightfully effective and methodical, as well as considered himself above that silly "civil war";
-Cade was also much more bearable than Sam who was alright in the first movie but kept getting worse with each sequel.
The BAD:
-Very little humour, as in not enough for such a grim film;
-Boring human cast. Say what you will about Sam's parents, Leo and Simmons, but they were, if not good characters, at least entertaining ones;
-For that matter, no references to any human from the previous movies;
-Although the Autobots actually have individual personalities this time around, most of them are not endearing. Bumblebee became super immature, Drift goes from wise samurai to bloodthirsty fighter in half a second and Hound likes to shoot helpless aliens because they're ugly. Also, Prime is even most inconsistent then in the previous films (wants to kill humans for revenge then not, then frees the Dinobots from prison before threatening to kill them if they don't help him?);
-Speaking of the Dinobots, they're barely in the movie and have no characters worth mentioning;
-The plot makes even less sense that Revenge of the Fallen and keeps dropping plotlines. Prehistoric metalized dinosaurs have no link to the Dinobots, Prime's backstory is retconned but half-heartedly (after Megatron's three mutually exclusive master plans, we have Prime being not a descendant of the Primes but a product of the Creators and also a knight but he doesn't seem to remember?), Transformers now require transformium to live (instead of the Allspark energy or Energon), humans can make better Transformers than the Transformers themselves, Galvatron is Megatron reborn and he wants the seed but then he just runs away and he has very little presence in the movie, etc;
-Action scenes that are pointless and way too long (Lockdown's tractor beam antics made the movie feel a half-hour too long);
-Not enough transformations! In hindsight, only the first movie made sure to showcase every character transforming graphically and in details, and every movie after that started cutting corners, this one being the worst. Even leaving aside the Decepticons with their magical "flying little cubes" transformation, I don't remember seeing either Hound or Crosshairs change at all, Drift only turned into his helicopter form and not his car mode and little was done about the fact he's a triple-changer. I'll give them something though: it took four movies but they finally showed a Transformer adopting a new alt-mode in details.
I know I have a lot more negative points than positive ones, but that's how I felt. I still enjoyed watching it in general, but I can't help but hope they somehow reboot the movie franchise someday and do something closer to the new comic. Seriously, IDW's "More Than Meets The Eye" is my favourite TF comic ever, and it creates such enjoyable characters that feel alive and distinct in speech and mannerism that it makes the vast majority of what came before feel lifeless and boring.
