The relationship between humanity and robots has always been strained in the Transformers movies. The same could be said about the relationship between certain audiences and franchise director Michael Bay. Film critics have been especially brutal to the five TF features Bay has helmed. I quite enjoyed the first film from 2007. But the follow-up two years later, “Revenge of the Fallen” was hard to endure.

For that reason it took some time before I was willing to watch another Transformers movie. Yet the series kept moving forward and making a lot of money. That is until 2017’s “The Last Knight” which saw record low box office numbers for the normally profitable big budget franchise. Bay has since left the director’s chair and the series has went in a (sorta) new direction starting with 2018’s well received “Bumblebee”.

In between all of the highs and lows is 2014’s “Age of Distinction”, the fourth film of the five that Michael Bay directed. The movie performed well at the box office making over $1.1 billion. But fellow critics had a much sharper opinion of the movie and the last time I checked it was sitting at an abysmal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. But what can I say? I had a great time with “Age of Extinction”. And many of the issues brought up by others were never a problem for me.

“Age of Extinction” may look like a reboot but it’s actually a direct sequel to 2011’s “Dark of the Moon”. But in an interesting shake-up, the story moved on to an entirely new human cast. Many of the same Transformers return, but Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger bring a new group of people into the mix. Most of the characters have pretty familiar angles but they service the movie well. And the performances are generally good and get the job done.

Despite the best efforts of the Autobots and their leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), the devastation left from the Battle of Chicago (see the last movie) has given rise to a strong anti-Transformer sentiment among many humans. This opened the door for Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), a rogue CIA official who created and oversees Cemetery Wind, a black-ops unit with a goofy name whose prime objective is to eliminate all Transformers remaining on planet earth.

Leading Attinger’s field team is the ruthless Agent James Savoy (Titus Welliver). But Attinger has another card up his sleeve – a Cybertronian bounty hunter named Lockdown who has his own reasons for hunting down and killing other Transformers. It turns out that Lockdown has been sent by a mysterious alien group called “The Creators”. We learn they have a special interest in Optimus Prime and Lockdown is to bring him to them by any means necessary.

Meanwhile a down-on-his-luck inventor named Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is struggling to make ends meet. The bank is ready to foreclose on his Texas farm. And as a single dad he’s having a hard time making enough money to send his 17-year-old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) to college. Cade happens upon an old broken down semi-truck which he plans on stripping down to its parts. But wouldn’t you know, he quickly discovers his junky big-rig is actually Optimus Prime who has been in hiding.

Elsewhere a pompous and ambitious entrepreneur named Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) owns a mega corporation called KSI Robotics. Due to some shady backroom dealings with Attinger, Joyce has secured a “government contract” that helps fund his own devious secret initiative to build his own Transformers. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out it’s not the best idea.

Nothing about the story will surprise you. Cemetery Wind gets tipped off that Cade is harboring Optimus. Attinger’s connections with KSI come to light. Joyce’s greed-driven plan blows up in his face. And of course Optimus Prime and the few remaining Autobots find themselves once again protecting a humanity that doesn’t appreciate them. Buildings crumble, vehicles blow up, and we’re treated to countless scenes of metal-on-metal combat. In other words just what fans of the series are hungry for.

I do get how some might find the action to be overwhelming, but it can also be exhilarating. As with every Transformer movie, it’s obvious that a ton of money went into the special effects. It’s also hard to miss the incredible detail that goes into each towering robot creation. And then you have Bay’s usual bag of visual tricks – the grainy saturated color palette, sweeping camera shots, slow motion, and explosions galore.

Occasional corny dialogue aside, Wahlberg and Tucci get the best human roles. Jack Reynor joins in as Tessa’s rally car driving boyfriend while Li Bingbing gets an utterly thankless role playing KSI’s representative in China. But the most fun performances comes through the great collection of voice work led by Cullen and including John Goodman, Ken Watanabe, John DiMaggio, Mark Ryan, Robert Foxworth, and Reno Wilson. They too sometimes find themselves handcuffed by bad dialogue yet they manage to overcome it.

But lets be honest, no one goes into a Transformers movie expecting an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. We just need the script to be functional – something that connects the dots, defines the characters, has at least some heart, and sets up the action-driven money scenes. “Age of Extinction” does that while also toning down a lot of the nonsense that can bring these movies down. It’s ultimately Bay realizing the promise that these movies have always had but didn’t always deliver. And it goes to show what a little focus and restraint (and I do emphasize “a little”) can do.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS