Though Transformers: Age of Extinction smashed its way into theaters last weekend to the tune of $100 million, Paramount is giving fans an incentive to turn out over the Fourth of July weekend as well.  If you see director Michael Bay’s action sequel on Friday, July 4th in IMAX 3D at either an AMC Theater or Regal Cinema, you will receive a limited-edition collector’s print of the film (though quantities are limited).  There are two different prints available, one at AMC and one at Regal, and we’ve got an exclusive first look at both posters.

Hit the jump to take a look at the posters, and if you’ve missed any of Steve’s coverage, check out his interviews with Michael Bay, Mark Wahlberg, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz & Jack Reynor, Li Bingbing, and screenwriter Ehren Kruger.

This week on The Collision, we’re joined by freelance film critic Curt Holman to talk about Transformers: Age of Extinction.  We talk about the film’s huge box office, critical reaction versus general reaction, why the franchise continues, how it fits into the blockbuster landscape, the directing style and filmography of Michael Bay, and much more.  As always, we finish up with our recommendations.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“Game of Thrones: Looking Back at Season 4″), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg and @AdamChitwood.

Going into Transformers: Age of Extinction, I wondered who was excited for this movie?  What in the marketing convinced them that, to quote the tagline, “The Rules Have Changed”?  If anything, these movies hew closely to the rules of the franchise: Create as much mayhem as possible, make the plot insultingly stupid, the characters should be dull as dishwater, and bonus points for squeezing in any racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.  Yes, these movies are “criticproof”.  They’re not for people who watch movies for a living; they’re for people who want to “turn off their brains”.  But the latest Transformers is the most mind-numbing yet.  It’s an exhausting experience that tries to do everything, and yet accomplishes absolutely nothing.  It doesn’t excite.  It doesn’t engage.  It just wastes time and space.

We’re only days away from the release of the fourth entry in the Transformers franchise, but if you just can’t wait any longer, Paramount Pictures has released a collection of new high-resolution Transformers: Age of Extinction to tide you over.  Everything we’ve seen from the film promises something bigger, badder, and (hopefully) different movie than the previous three installments, with director Michael Bay now turning his attention to an entirely new set of human protagonists.  These hi-res images offer a further tease of what to expect, including plenty of robot-on-robot action captured in singularly “Michael Bay” fashion.

Hit the jump to check out the high-resolution Transformers: Age of Extinction images, and be sure to watch Steve’s recent video interview with star Mark Wahlberg.  The film also stars Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th.

Paramount has released seven minutes of Transformers: Age of Extinction B-roll. Some of the footage is mundane such as an actress walking out of a car, and then other parts are amazing like pulling back to show that they’re filming on the Great Wall of China.  Not surprisingly, there are also multiple shots of the actors surrounded by explosions and running towards the camera.  But the real money shot comes at the very end and involves an IMAX camera.  Say what you will about Michael Bay (and much has been said), but he knows how to do some cool things behind-the-scenes.  It may be in service of a script that was written on a cocktail napkin, but there’s still cinematic craft involved.

Hit the jump to check out the Transformers: Age of Extinction B-roll footage.  The film opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th, and stars Mark Wahlberg, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.  Click on the respective links for our set visit coverage and interviews with Tucci and Myles, Reynor and Peltz, Wahlberg, and Bay.

Paramount has released a new Transformers: Age of Extinction clip and TV spot.  In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays a burgeoning inventor/family man who runs into trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  In the clip, Kelsey Grammer‘s character levels a grave threat at Wahlberg saying that he has to either play ball or else his teenage daughter will be killed.  The TV spot shows Transformers beating up other Transformers and riding around on Dinobots, so you can see that the tone is perfectly balanced.  I don’t know how you make this franchise look phoned in, but I can’t believe a film with this many explosions can look so ho-hum.

Hit the jump to check out the Transformers: Age of Extinction clip and TV spot.  The film opens in 3D on June 27th, and also stars Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.

With this summer’s Transformers: Age of Extinction, director Michael Bay aims to reboot his own franchise with an installment that allegedly takes place in a very different world (it doesn’t seem that different, really).  Set three years after the events of Dark of the Moon, the fourth Transformers film finds the inhabitants of Earth united against any and all Transformers, blaming the action figures robots for the destruction in Chicago.  As part of a new viral campaign for the film, these Transformers: Age of Extinction propaganda posters and “Fall of Chicago” video advocate a human-only Earth and urge people to report all alien activity.  It’s a cute campaign, but I’m mainly curious to see just how far Bay has gone in resetting this franchise.

Hit the jump to check out the Transformers: Age of Extinction propaganda posters and video.  The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 3D on June 27th.

Paramount has released a new Transformers: Age of Extinction poster online.  In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays a burgeoning inventor/family man who runs into trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  As you can see from this poster, he must also struggle with the fact that his daughter (played by Nicola Peltz) was born with a tree branch for an arm.

Hit the jump to check out the new poster.  The film also stars Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 3D on June 27th.

A new Transformers: Age of Extinction international trailer has landed online, hot on the heels of the recent new domestic trailer debut.  Michael Bay directs the fourth installment in the Transformers franchise, which acts as a sort of reboot for the series and revolves around a burgeoning inventor and family man (Mark Wahlberg) who finds himself in a world of trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  This international trailer isn’t drastically different than the previous one, but there are a few bits of new footage involving Wahlberg’s character.  Though he’s certainly worlds away from Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager appears to be filling the same hero/comic relief hybrid type of role, as he has a couple of comedic lines in this international cut.

Hit the jump to watch the new Transformers: Age of Extinction international trailer.  The film also stars Jack Reynor, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th.

Paramount has released a Transformers: Age of Extinction trailer for director Michael Bay’s fourth entry in the action franchise.  In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays a burgeoning inventor/family man who runs into trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  This trailer probably gives us an accurate idea of the movie since it doesn’t make any sense.  It starts off by being excited about the physics of the Transformers, and then goes in a completely different direction with Optimus Prime saying that humanity faces a grave threat, and the only way to save the day is to ride around on a robot dinosaur.  I thought I would at least be amused by this trailer, but the franchise just feels incredibly stale at this point.  I don’t see anything here that’s worth being excited about.  For all of the CGI wizardry, the only moment that caught my eye was when a guy took a tire to the face.

Transformers: Age of Extinction also stars Jack Reynor, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, T.J. Miller, Han Geng, and Titus Welliver, and opens June 27, 2014.  Watch the new Transformers: Age of Extinction trailer after the jump.

The Croisette is abuzz with reporters, film critics, wannabes and tourists.  It is time for the annual event that puts all those attending in a cinematographic bubble for ten days.  The rest of the world is being attacked by aliens for all we know, but we would go on unawares. Or the reigning cinematic ambience would annihilate them.  This is, after all, the biggest film festival and market on the planet where imagination, movie stars and clever publicity abound.

Hit the jump for our first report from Cannes, including posters from Transformers: Age of Extinction, How to Train Your Dragon 2, The Homesman, The Expendables 3, Awol 72, and more.

If you really like the band Imagine Dragons, you’ll be thrilled to hear that they’re doing the main song for Transformers: Age of Extinction.  Paramount has released two promos announcing the band’s contribution to the soundtrack, and while I don’t care for their music, the promos do contain new footage.  And it’s important footage because it reveals that there’s a Transformer with a beard and a cigar. Sure, there’s Optimus Prime riding around on a robot dinosaur, but I’m far more amused at the fact that we’re getting a robot with a beard again (there was one in Revenge of the Fallen and god I hate myself for remembering that movie in any way) and he has a cigar.  That’s the kind of lunacy I demand from a Transformers movie.

Hit the jump to check out the new Transformers: Age of Extinction footage, and come back later this week for the new trailer.  The film opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th, and stars Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, T.J. Miller, Titus Welliver, Han Geng, Sophia Myles, and Li Bingbing.

Paramount has released some new Transformers: Age of Extinction images.  In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays a burgeoning inventor/family man who runs into trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  While we’ve been seeing plenty of the human characters, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime get their due attention in these images, especially Optimus.  There’s an image of the lead Transformer, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be in the movie, but it’s so overly dramatic that I love it.  He’s on his knees, looking towards the heavens (do Autobots have a god?), and this is something that looks like it should be an oil painting on a wall or spray-painted on a van.  You can almost hear him screaming, “Whhhhhyyy?!” or “Nooooooo!”

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The film also stars Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, T.J. Miller, Titus Welliver, Han Geng, Sophia Myles, and Li Bingbing.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th. [Update: We've added a new poster; also, Paramount has announced that a new trailer will be released in three days]

The fourth film in the Transformers franchise hits theaters in a couple of months, but a pair of late-minute additions to the cast have been made.  Director Michael Bay announced today that John Goodman and Ken Watanabe (Inception) will provide the voices for two new autobots in Transformers: Age of Extinction.  Goodman will play Autobot Hound and Watanabe will play Drift, while Peter Cullen reprises his role as the voice of Optimus Prime and Frank Welker will voice Galvatron.  Goodman is no stranger to voice work having starred in two Pixar films—Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University—but this will be Watanabe’s first time voicing a character.

Hit the jump to read the full press release, which includes news on characters voiced by John DiMaggio, Mark Ryan, Robert Foxworth, and Reno Wilson. The human cast of Transformers 4 is led by Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Treynor, and Kelsey Grammar.  Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th.

New Transformers: Age of Extinction images have arrived online.  In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays a burgeoning inventor/family man who runs into trouble when he accidentally discovers a beat-up Transformer.  These images feature Stanley Tucci and Li Bingbing, and according to TFW2005, Tucci plays arrogant designer while Bingbing is the head of the human-created Transformers program, Su Yueming.  We still don’t know much about the movie, but I know this: Stanley Tucci will probably come out unscathed.  No matter how terrible the film, he’s always great (e.g. Jack the Giant Slayer, The Lovely Bones).  Of course, give him a great movie, and he’s unstoppable.  You can’t go wrong with Tucci.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The film also stars The film also stars Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer,  T.J. Miller, Titus Welliver, Han Geng, and Sophia Myles. Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 27th.