Transformers: Age of Extinction 3D

As a family, we went to see this movie this afternoon. I normally wouldn’t be too bothered to see this in the cinema but this was Lego Lover’s big movie and he really wanted us to all go together. Funnily enough, he never did see the previous installment of the series in the cinema and this time we see it on opening day. That almost didn’t happen as it should due to a curious ad at the Supanova convention last weekend. On entrance we were issued with wristbands of different colors, depending on which sort of ticket we purchased. On the wristband was essentially an ad for this movie and the date of June 27th. Hmm…it all seemed a bit odd to both the Scientist and me, because new release movies generally start on a Thursday here. If there is a change, it’s almost always earlier in the week rather than later. I jokingly commented that perhaps the wristbands were imported from the US. Either I was correct or the convention got wristbands that were meant for use in a different region.

Anyway, Lego Lover has been eagerly awaiting this movie for months. And if not for the release of The Lego Movie a few months ago, it would be his only cinema experience for the year. Until today, we could count his cinema outings on one hand. Today makes six in his fifteen and a half years. Half of those movies have been Transformer movies. All but one of those movies have been with the whole family. Game Fanatic didn’t want to see Toy Story 3 with us so stayed home a few years ago. I would have been perfectly happy to wait for the dvd of this movie to come out, but Lego Lover really wanted us all to go together so that’s what we did. We arrived well in advance of the starting time, partly so we could get discount tickets and partly to make sure we got seats at the time we wanted I needn’t have been concerned about missing out on tickets as the cinema was mostly empty. Perhaps this was due to it being a mid-afternoon showing, before school let out.  I’m not sure if we were in the same cinema as for the Lego Movie or not. But we had the same experience at the beginning when the ads and previews started to run but no picture. Last time the audience (very small) sat through the whole set of ads and finally I went out to the front to advise of this. Today, the Scientist went up, quite a bit sooner. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence considering the previous time was in April which leaves me wondering what is being neglected at the cinema. I don’t have a problem missing the ads but I imagine the advertisers would.

We got special 3D glasses for the movie instead of just using ones we had from previous movies. The only special part was the small accents on the side of the ear pieces. I guess they might be collector’s items…although more valuable if they hadn’t been used already. :) I had forgotten how very long these movies are so it seemed like it went on for longer than the previous ones. Apparently I have easily forgotten how long the action packed movies are. Plenty of bang for our bucks, to be honest. That’s not to say I didn’t like it. It’s not really the type of movie I go in for, but it did have plenty of entertaining parts. And for those that were less so, it was always interesting to pick out some of the movie cliches typical for an action film. There was even a really cute nod to an interest of Game Fanatic’s included that we all really liked.

Lego Lover, really loved it and was talking non-stop about it with his brother on the way to the car, then to all of us at home, then later on when I took him back out to buy Transformer toys in the toy sale that just started today. It makes me happy that he loved it so much and also happy that he wanted to share it with his whole family. The funny thing is we were talking just today about his extremes of very happy and very unhappy as a younger child. He was never much in the middle until he got older and matured. But today his joy reminded me of his younger days…just pure bliss. And now, of course, he has two new toys in the series and is so pleased with them too.