So no offense to anyone else, but I didn't read a bit of this thread. I want to get my own opinion on this down, while it's fresh, without being swayed by the thoughts of others.
I loved this movie.
This is the most Transformery Transformers live action movie they've done, and it rocks. The bay-humor is kept reasonable and appropriately timed, the product placement is downright hilarious and awesome at the same time, the movie takes jabs at itself (Transformium is done so tongue-in-cheek you can't help but chuckle, it actually builds the "character" of FSI), and did I mention that the robots actually get ample screen time? Yeah, the robots get actual screen time and I feel like I know more about Hound, Drift, and Crosshairs than I ever did about Ironhide, Jazz, and Sideswipe even though one could argue outside of Drift/Jazz that the other two are analogues.
Let's move on to Optimus. He's easily the main character of this movie, far outweighing, I think, even Wahlberg's Yaeger. I'm sure there will be gripes on how he's protrayed, but seriously, he gets found in what's essentially a coma after being shelled by humans that he's been protecting for years, he's of course going to be a little mad. We've also seen this version of Prime not be afraid to pull a trigger over the years, so seeing violence out of him suits the Movie-universe version of Prime. Is he G1 Prime? No, and in this universe he hasn't been remotely close to it since 2009. I love that Ratchet's death means so much that he'll kill a dude. And he does. It makes sense and it's exactly what I'd want to see after they killed off Ironhide in DotM and did absolutely nothing with the plot point.
Then there's Lockdown - what a badass character. And I mean really, a character. While we don't quite know his ultimate motivations yet for wanting Prime and the Knights in his ship, at least we know that objective. He serves some higher power and gets good screentime - heck yeah, even the villain gets enough screentime to be something other than a mindless evil guy and his personality makes the FSI "Decepticons" look as silly as they ought to. He's a great foil to the typical TF Movie villain trope that gives his character an air of seriousness that was nice to see. The small touch of him having the Lamborghini symbol visible in robot mode, even after leaving Earth, is an awesome touch that shows they're starting to "get it" with these movies.
Finally, the Dinobots. You actually do get a glimpse of them about halfway through, then they're reintroduced with about half an hour to go. I think they were well used although I'm still fuzzy on their origins and motivations. Yeah, they could have been better at the front end, but do you care? I didn't. Once they were helping out the Autobots it was just a super fun time. Although Scorn seems really especially dumb. He just kept flipping over, even into that lake.
The ending was hilarious. Optimus is like hey Dinobots, you just go do whatever in the Chinese countryside and I'm gonna fly off into space for Adventures. See you later other Autobots, I guess go back to your poopy desert base or something. Bye guys!
Yeah Optimus, that was super irresponsible. Dinobots roaming the countryside, what could go wrong
The movie is a fun ride and if you don't like it, well, I don't know why you watched it. It's not high cinema nor is it meant to be. It's just a fun damn action movie and one that actually has Transformers doing things other than being random plot devices. Best of the four, to me, although the plot of the first one as a human story probably holds up as a little better.
My verdict is
out of
