(Courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The latest sequel of the giant robot franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction (AoE), gives audiences the metal crushing and shredding explosions that they love '€” but only in terms of quantity, not quality.

All the Transformers films have been directed by Michael Bay, who is best known for signature over-the-top and fast-paced action scenes.

It'€™s unimaginable that an ultra-explosive Bay'€™s movie can lack bang, but AoE falls short in that department. AoE is mostly (maybe totally) comprised of booms, bangs and crushed robots, all while failing to deliver any of the hoped-for thrills.

The story takes place four years after the events of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), when the final showdown between the Autobots and the Decepticons leveled Chicago and killed thousands of people.

Following the devastating war, the US government cuts ties with the Autobots and starts hunting down all the Transformers. Leading the charge is a CIA unit '€” ominously named Cemetery Wind '€” which gets a little help from Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan), a Transformer mercenary.

On the run, the Autobots go into hiding, including leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). Injured and unconscious in his truck form after a fight with his pursuers, Optimus finds himself sold to struggling Texan robotics inventor Cade Yeager (a pumped-up Mark Wahlberg) and his friend Lucas Flannery (T. J. Miller).

As Yeager is about to sell the truck for parts to send his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) to college, he discovers Optimus. Detecting their most wanted target, the CIA unit rolls down to Yaeger'€™s farm.

The Yaegers and Tessa'€™s boyfriend, Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor), end up on the wanted list by the CIA, too, and join Optimus on the run.

They later learn that the CIA is working with Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) and his technology firm Kinetic Sciences Institute (KSI) to create a Transformers army using melted metal from captured Transformers and the genetic code obtained from the severed head of Megatron.

Rallying the remaining Autobots '€” Bumblebee, Hound (John Goodman), Drift (Ken Watanabe) and Crosshairs (John DiMaggio) '€” Optimus attacks KSI labs. Joyce then deploys his man-made Transformers Galvatron (Frank Welker) and Stinger to stop.

Lockdown joins the chase and captures Optimus and Tessa. As a reward for helping him hold Optimus, Lockdown gives the CIA and KSI '€œThe Seed'€, a powerful bomb that can turns a city into a mine for '€œTransformium'€ '€” the programmable and shape-shifting metal used to make Transformers.

With his lab destroyed, Joyce flees to Beijing where a KSI factory houses dozens of man-made Transformers. There, Galvatron, whose mind is controlled by Megatron, infects the fake Transformers and turn them into his Decepticon underlings.

Eventually, Optimus and Tessa are freed and the Autobots convince Joyce to defuse the bomb, prompting Galvatron to lead minions to chase The Seed, while Lockdown leads his own soldiers after Optimus.

Clocking more than two-and-a-half hours, AoE is the lengthiest film in the series, meaning more sound and fury that, unfortunately, feels grinding and repetitive instead of gripping and exhilarative.

Like the Chinese robotic knockoffs that were outshone by the real Autobots, AoE feels like a flashier, low-quality movie that resembles only in name the other films of the franchise.

Transformers: Age of Extinction
(Paramount Pictures, 165 minutes)
Director: Michael Bay
Screen writer: Ehren Kruger
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Titus Welliver, Sophia Myles, Bingbing Li, T.J. Miller, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, John Goodman, Ken Watanabe, Robert Foxworth, John DiMaggio, Mark Ryan, Reno Wilson

Popular

Kadin urges stability after Constitutional Court ruling

Jokowi says transition to new government to begi

BCA loan disbursement surges 17.1 percent yoy in first quarter