Variety's David S. Cohen believes that Transformers: Age of Extinction is a very patriotic film—if you happen to be Chinese. Writes Cohen:
[Director Michael] Bay has been a master peddler of such jingoism, with his fetishization of the U.S. military, its hardware and its troops in "The Rock," "Armageddon," and "Pearl Harbor," as well as the first three "Transformers" pictures.
There’s nothing wrong with filmmakers either lionizing or lampooning U.S. institutions. That’s what freedom of speech is all about. In "Age of Extinction," though, satire ends at the water’s edge. As soon as the action shifts to Hong Kong, the outbreak of alien-engendered chaos is met by a sea captain ordering a call to "the central government" for help, and later China’s defense minister does a walk-and-talk, sternly and seriously vowing to defend Hong Kong. America’s government is portrayed either ridiculous or diabolical, but China’s is assured and effective.
Justin Chang, also writing in Variety, makes a similar point:
Bay, who has no compunction about mocking the smugness and inhumanity of the American left, displays no such swagger when it comes to critiquing the government of a foreign superpower. Far be it from this filmmaker to bite the hand that feeds him.
Variety, it's worth pointing out, has sometimes been a bit more sanguine about Hollywood's getting into bed with China. Here's senior editor Ted Johnson in a piece entitled "Hollywood takes censorship in stride":
Earlier this year, a deal to ease China’s quotas on foreign films was hailed as a trade breakthrough by the Obama administration, the MPAA and studio moguls. There was little mention of any demand for relaxation of content standards.
Chris Fenton, president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group, which is co-producing "Iron Man 3″ in China with Disney and Marvel, says that acceptance of Chinese edits has much do to with the way studios and producers gain entry into the market: The challenge is to establish trust, not to push the envelope. ...
Moreover, the Chinese have an interest in producing movies that will travel commercially outside the mainland, which will require more liberal standards. Mike Medavoy, who was born in Shanghai and is embarking on production of a historical feature to be shot in China, says the Chinese are studying how to make movies that everyone else wants to see.
You'll excuse me if I find the handwringing over Michael Bay's lack of respect for America in Hollywood's premier trade pub ... amusing. I also think there's a slight misreading of the Auteur of Awesome's work going on: As I noted in an essay of my own, Michael Bay is a populist, first and foremost. So yes, like most populists, he plays up the glories of the military. It is, after all, the most-trusted institution in America (by a rather wide margin, especially when compared to the rest of the government). However, like many populists, he's also quite skeptical of the upper echelons of the American government. Remember "Sector Seven"? Remember Dubya as a slightly dopey Ding Dong fiend? And Obama as a terrorist-negotiating fool? Then there's The Rock, featuring the deeply untrustworthy FBI director (and highest-ranked fed on the scene) James Womack. If "patriotism" is defined as blind allegiance to the federal government, then Michael Bay's probably not your guy—indeed, he seems actively skeptical of the feds and has for a while now.*
That being said, I am vexed by Bay's kowtowing to the Chinese mandarins. It's something of a pet peeve of mine, Hollywood's insistence on self-censorship in the name of securing lucre in a land where the people are repressed and freedom of expression is virtually nonexistent. Given that Hollywood's leading lights (and its leading essayists and critics) get so smarmy about the MPAA and are so quick to scream "censorship!" when a movie they like is "unfairly" slapped with a R or NC-17 rating, I've always been extremely saddened by the willingness to go along to get along in China.
Michael Bay's just doing business, however—and he's doing so in a way that Variety and others in the industry have had little problem with for some time now. So hopefully you'll pardon me if I admit to being rather unimpressed by the newfound concern over China's manipulation of what gets seen at home—and produced abroad.
*The subplot in Transformers: Age of Extinction involving the efforts of a black bag CIA agent to sell out the Autobots in the hopes of securing a rich post-government contract is an interesting one, though not solely for the reason critics such as Chang and Cohen suggest. It is, indeed, a not-so-veiled critique of the revolving door of the Military-Industrial Complex. However, it's also a critique of off-the-books CIA ops and the use of drones, activities that aren't exactly frowned upon by the current administration. It's extremely telling that the American military—always a force for good in Bay's films, and in the Transformers series particularly—is nowhere to be found in this picture: it has receded from the global stage and, as a result, the world has been thrown into chaos, our allies have been betrayed, and a rising power in the East has taken advantage of our absence to assert itself.