4. Cade Yeager
Most things that Mark Wahlberg does seem vaguely ridiculous, and honestly, teaming up with giant shape-shifting robots probably barely makes the top ten. However, his actual role in Transformers: Age of Extinction – Shia LaBeouf’s replacement as the franchise’s human protagonist – is not the most ridiculous part. Instead, his name is.
Cade Yeager is not a name that one would give to a baby. It’s perhaps believable as the name of a puritan preacher who eventually turns evil and haunts a town for generations to come, but not really for a character seeking to protect his daughter and help benevolent giant robots fight their sworn enemies. Somehow, the fact that Cade Yeager is Mark Wahlberg just makes it funnier.
Maybe Cade Yeager wouldn’t seem quite so funny if he was a small-town eccentric played by Paul Dano or Adam Driver (y’know, someone quirky with an underlying darkness). However, as it stands, Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager is a muscle-bound action star in the making, and his name simply doesn’t match. Something less 18th-century would probably have suited the character better, but there he is, shooting Decepticons and not caring one bit.