“I too have a saying: I don’t care”
– Lockdown- the Robot Bad Guy
This is my favorite line of dialogue in Transformers 4: Age of Extinction for a couple of reasons.
First of all, it’s a hilariously dumb chunk of words that perfectly encapsulates the Movie IQ of this film. Any and all that transpire during the film’s 2 hours and 45 minute running time (!!!!!!) has a low intelligence sheen about it.
The saying “I don’t care” also reminds me of my own motto: “I am hungry.” Words to live by. Words to cherish.
Also “I don’t care” is the underlying theme of the entire movie. It’s apparent that no one cares. Mark Walhberg doesn’t care. He (thankfully) replaced Shia LeBeouf as the lead non-cartoon character in the film and I can’t imagine it could be out of love for the craft. Couldn’t possibly be the reason to take on a role where you run away from invisible nothings to be added later in post-production. The role did not challenge him the way playing against a talking teddy did and this is no David O. Russell film. He got paid and I never fault an actor for taking a role for the money. It’s a job. Good for you Mr. Markie, you are in a huge, vapid blockbuster.
Michael Bay doesn’t care. He truly can’t. He doesn’t care if his movies make sense or have any sort of pace to them. He doesn’t care that the movie rambles and repeats essentially the same action scene over and over to the point of mental torture. He doesn’t care that he only puts uber-thin women in his films with nothing better to do than run around in slow motion and scream for help. He doesn’t care that he has turned into a remake/sequel machine that has spent the last 7 years of his career producing horror movie do-overs and 4 of these bloated Transformers movies. What’s next? He’s the producer of another 80’s cartoon come to computer generated life, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Why? I’m guessing that it must be the money here too but I do fault Mr. Bay for whoring out for dollars.
Because Bay used to have promise. While there was much debate about his storytelling skills, Bay’s early work had a heavy, unique aesthetic that in some ways set him up as the heir apparent to Spielberg. I’m speaking visually only but I had hopes that he’d find himself the right screenwriters and make a couple great films. Instead he found this funky groove and looped on it. 4 of these noisy films. And while money (or access to new, fancy cars ????) may be the driving force behind this repetition, the reasoning cannot be that he cares and he wants to entertain.
Hell, even Optimus Prime seems over it.
Finally, when Lockdown utter those words of wisdom it made me realize that I don’t care. Up to that point I was noting plot points and character names. Performance quality (I still love T.J. Miller) and weird gaps in plot logic. But “I don’t care” resonated deeply and I realized that anyone who comes to see Transformers 4 is doing so because they want to see giant robots turn into cars and to care about any of that other junk is a waste of energy.
So to those that do care: There are robots that turn into cars and they do it a lot. There are also huge robots that turn into dinosaurs. If that’s all you care about, you will not echo Lockdown’s sentiment.