Transformers? Kids’ stuff. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Child’s play. Transformers: Dark of the Moon? NOT DARK ENOUGH. Yeah, it’s been pretty disappointing as an adult going to these movies about robots that transform into cars and tanks and giant scorpions and whatever and feeling like maybe the movies weren’t as serious as they could have been. Don’t worry, though, grown-ups, because Transformers: Age of Extinction is going to be so dark that you probably won’t even want to bring your kids to see it before you buy them the Dinobot action figures.
At least, that’s actor Titus Welliver’s take on the film. “It’s a bit more of a darker vision of the Transformers world,” he told Nerdist. “It’s not a kids movie, I’ll tell you that much.” Yes, much like its erstwhile star Shia LaBeouf, it seems like the Transformers series might be having an identity crisis. No longer content to just be a family-friendly film about robots levelling entire cities, probably leading to casualties in the thousands, it has a new star in brooding everyman Mark Wahlberg and will be re-appropriating the robots of the last three films in some sort of meta-commentary on the nature of creative expression and how, like, what even is art anyway?
It’s possible I just made that last part up, though.
Welliver seemed marginally excited to have a part in the film, saying “I’ve now won the hard earned respect of my children because I’m in a Transformers film, and I’ve always wanted to work with Michael Bay and certainly Mark Wahlberg and Kelsey Grammer.” Surely that is the dream of every thespian: to act opposite Mark Wahlberg’s furrowed brow and Kelsey Grammer’s continued indignation at the fact that he’d have a lot more awards if he weren’t shut out by Hollywood’s liberal elite. It’s pretty much the modern equivalent of playing Rosencrantz or Guildenstern in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Transformers: Age of Extinction will hit theaters on June 27th. Don’t bring the young ones, though! This is a big boy movie.
