Pop quiz, Nicola Peltz! How do you know you’re the lead female in a Michael Bay movie? Check if you’re covered by the director’s patented step-by-step objectification programme, of course! Are you introduced legs first? Do your always pristine, tight white clothes show up your radioactive orange skin? Are you given the direction “cower and scream orgasmically” ad infinitum?  When playing a 17-year-old character, do the actors playing your father (Mark Wahlberg), boyfriend (Jack Reynor) and Uncle-type figure (TJ Miller) have prolonged conversations about your “hotness” and the legality of having sex with you? Has Michael Bay done extensive research on the subject and discovered a loophole, assuring the audience that there’s no legal need to feel like a pervert for drooling over you?
Yes, to all of the above? Congratulations, you’re in a Michael Bay Transformers movie! Prepare to run around in this 165-minute onslaught of lights, action, clunky dialogue and singular excess. There are good Transformers and dragon Transformers and dinosaur Transformers and warrior Transformers battling bad Transformers! There’s a secret Chinese facility! There’s the endless mass destruction of bland modern-looking buildings, but never the billboards for advertisers who paid for product placement! There’s Jack Reynor being called “Lucky Charms” because he’s Irish! There’s a car punching a guy in the face! EXPLOSIONS. LOUD NOISES. TRANSFORMIUM!!
So, welcome Nicola Peltz. You’re in The Age of Extinction. The beginning of the end. You’ll make millions.