Anti-Transformers Viral Campaign Sets Up Age Of Extinction’s Destruction
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Finally, Transformers: Age of Extinction has given me a phrase to latch onto that demands more attention than Mark Wahlberg’s doe-eyed faux-clamation, “I think we just found a Transformer.” I’m much more into this “If you see something, say something” campaign driving the film’s viral website TransformersAreDangerous.com. The smear campaign is very broad and on the nose, mind you, but I like the fact that they’re building up what’s transpired in the time between Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction. As someone who isn’t bursting with excitement for Michael Bay’s next entry in this franchise, I do find my interest in it is building. I love something that can be referred to as howl-worthy.
Shying away from ridiculousness like fire-breathing robot dragons, the video above and images below build on mankind’s aggression against the Transformers, who are totally responsible for the mass destruction of Chicago. Seriously, I would quickly turn my back on these guys, too, if one of them made a crater out of Wrigley Field. The video would have worked so much better had Robert Stack been able to do the voiceover, ending on a creepy Unsolved Mysteries vibe.
But it isn’t just the citizens of the Windy City that want the Autobots and Decepticons to go away and return to where they came from. As you’ll see from the images below, the entire world preemptively feels like a victim and demands the sentient beings off of the planet. As if. Australia doesn’t want none, son.
Neither does Japan.
And San Francisco…
…is hardly over Godzilla‘s recent world tour. It’s hard for a Transformers movie to pull of pathos, but there’s some of that present here, in mankind’s unapologetic dismissal of even the best of the bunch—don’t these people know that Optimus Prime just wants to HELP, that he’s on their side?!? I don’t feel sorry for anything in this movie, but I feel something. Hunger maybe.
Just try not to draw any comparisons between Bay’s fictional world and civil rights issues of the past in the poster below.
And above all, if you or anyone you know has seen a Transformer, tell someone. Anyone. Even a Transformer that you happen to start working on, as Mark Wahlberg does. He thinks they found a Transf…dammit, now that line is in my head again.
Find Transformers: Age of Extinction in theaters in just over a month on June 27.
