Cutline: As “Transformers: Age of Extinction” wins over mobs like a red scare, paraphrased words of the great Edward R. Murrow best explain this tragedy.

Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) returns in “Transformers 4”. (photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

No movie buff familiar with the long history of actioners can deny the benefits of major franchises or the satisfaction of grand battle sequences. In an actioner, it is necessary to declare “Yippee ki-yay” while taking down a Norse god attacking New York. But the line between a solid catchphrase and juvenile discourse — especially that provided by Mark Wahlberg’s underperformance — is a fine one, and “Transformers: Age of Extinction” director Michael Bay has transformed that line repeatedly. His optimal achievement is to confuse the public’s sense of good art and narrative reason. At least the Dinobots were kind of cool.

But before I and others like me are labeled “haters,” as Mr. Bay calls his many critics, please know that dissent against this abysmal film does not make me a hater, but a human who expects substance from his actioners, despite the robotic tastes of many viewers. We must remember always that box office profits are not proof of quality — just as a full stomach is not proof of nutrition — and that narrative conviction depends on more than General Motors and Bud Light product placements and young Nicole Peltz, as Tessa, donning an unnaturally orange tan and outfits that would make any father cry, save her fictional father, Cade (Wahlberg).

Casual moviegoers to cinephiles alike, we must not suffer films with confusing villains like Galvatron (voiced by Frank Welker), a reincarnated Megatron, and Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan), a bounty hunter sent for Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus since 1984); and we must not be driven to pay for a 3D ticket only to embark upon nearly three hours of one-dimensional characters.

If we dig deep into our dusty VHS tapes, we will remember the long history of solid performances by acclaimed actors, not the phoned-in performances by Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci as tech tycoon Joshua Joyce, and Kelsey Grammer as CIA black ops director Harold Attinger, who seeks to eradicate all Transformers, friend or foe. And let us not forget voice actors John Goodman and Ken Watanabe as caricatured Autobots (I don’t know what I think about a samurai Autobot), who are barely a step above the wretched, racist Skids and Mudflap in “Transformers 2”.

As this franchise gears up for another trilogy, this is no time for those who oppose Mr. Bay to keep silent amid this injustice to an 1980s icon, especially with Bay’s next production, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, set to shell out more shameless nostalgia at the sake of the same generation’s cherished childhood memories.

This is no time for moviegoers who resist Mr. Bay’s incoherent films to keep silent. We can profess ignorance going into these films eight years ago, but we cannot escape responsibility for continually supporting such embarrassing films based on thin commitment to the Hasbro toy or origin. Of late, Hollywood action movies have come to fruition at a tender age, producing actioners far better than anything by the Idiot Three of old — Bay, John Woo and Roland Emmerich — but we cannot expect cinema to improve in the future by financing trash in the present moment.

“Transformers 4” seeks to embrace the spirit of capitalism (cars as superheroes), defending the individualistic spirit of the innovator by comparing Josh Joyce’s company that strips Transformers for parts to small-town creator Marky Mark’s gadgets that would make Dr. Emmett Brown, of “Back to the Future”, say “Great Scott.” This spirit of entrepreneurialism is especially disturbing since the third act occurs in China, where most Transformers toys are manufactured.

The actions of the director who got his start on a Vanilla Ice music video disturbs any fanboy who loves classic “Transformers” and gives considerable comfort to pretentious cinephiles looking for another excuse to declare a dark age of cinema. But whose fault is this film’s success? Certainly not Mr. Bay’s; he didn’t make anyone  endure a filmgoing experience targeted at our less educated selves, he merely exploited the situation to gargantuan success.

Our response to Bay should echo Sam Witwicky’s (Shia LaBeouf’s unexplainably absent character here) oft-used line in the previous “Transformers” trilogy: “No, no, no, no, no.” Good night and good luck at the movies.

(This is a satire of Edward R. Murrow’s response to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy on the March 9, 1954,  broadcast of “See it Now” on CBS-TV).