Ror Reviews: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
Ok, you all know I'm not a Bay fan. Did he win me over with his latest 'splosion fest? Click for my take on his giant robot threequel. Some Spoilers ahead..
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By Mark "RorMachine" Cassidy - 6/30/2011
For me, this movie is a very difficult one to review properly. Whenever anyone tries to point out Michael Bay's GLARING inadequacies as a director you get met with this; "Well, you don't go into a Michael Bay movie for the story, acting, script, dialog, editing etc etc" Yes yes, I get that. He's an action director and we pay to go see his action right? Well see here is my problem with that; if I don't give a shit about the characters or the story, then I don't give a shit about the action. Why should I? Am I going to be on the edge of my seat as Sam and talking sex doll are clinging to the side of a building perilously close to death when A) I know they are not going to be hurt anyway, and B) even if they were I wouldn't care. Sure it's technically a brilliantly shot movie and the special effects are second to none. And if that is all you care about you will love it.
I'm not going to bother with the plot, I don't see why I should when Bay didn't. In fairness, it's nowhere near as nonsensical and convoluted as ROTF but it's still just your basic "Go get this before they do, use that this way" rubbish. Hey, I'm happy enough with a paint by numbers plot in a movie like this, but they can't even keep from making a balls of that! We are talking about a movie where in a scene towards the end when the Autobots are being exiled from Earth, Sam explains that they have no way of leaving the planet. Literally about 20 mins earlier we see Optimus Prime leave a ship on the [frick]ing Moon to rescue Sentinel. And that is only one example, the movie is rife with this shit. Also, The man with the worst taste in music in Hollywood continues to torture us with his cheesy pop soundtrack when ever we are supposed to be feeling sad or romantic. Puke. Doesn't bother you? Ok, how about the performances. They aren't terrible. The problem isn't the acting exactly, just the characters. I actually really enjoyed the first Transformers movie. And not just for the action, I thought Sam Witwicky was a relatable, rootable for hero and I was even a little emotionally invested in the story. But between then and now Bay(or more accurately screen writer Ehren Kruger) has turned Sam into a petulant, bad tempered, selfish little c~nt. I HATED him in this movie. His new squeeze(fabulously leggy model turned "actress" Rosie Huntington Whitely) is there for one reason only; so Bay can lasciviously camera rape her. Get this, one scene has Sam's Mom uses the line "Oh what a gorgeous box" while the camera pans to Whitely's face. Cos this one is, y'know, for the kids. Anyway, she's crap. You will miss Megan Fox. There are also a number of cameos from actual proper actors in this. John Malcovich plays Sam's new boss in what has to be the most pointless sub plot in movie history. He get's a couple of laughs I guess. Frances McDormand is very good actually, she plays the new Government liaison for the Autobots. John Turturro reprises his role from the last two movies and manages to be funny also. But Alan Tudyk, as much as I like him usually, is just annoying and brought on simply because Bay thinks camp men with foreign accents are amusing. Then we have Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Non entities. Patrick Dempsey pops up too, not bad..actually part of one plot twist I didn't see coming.
But what about the most important thing, the Transformers themselves? As always they are awesome to look at. But character wise? In the first movie Optimus Prime was a tough warrior yes, but also wise and noble. In this he is basically just a merciless, inarticulate thug. He even sulks at one point. Optimus Prime SULKS! The others are ok, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes because even their dialog and motivations are all over the place. One of the Autobots, a veteran of the previous movies, dies at one point and not a single mention is made of it. Nobody seems to care. Are we supposed to? Then we have Bumblebee doing his usual radio speak shtick. There is a scene involving he and Sam towards the end that might have been moving if Bay had the balls to shock us. Megatron pops up despite dying twice now. New addition Shockwave is pretty cool, but Soundwave is wasted. The focus of the plot, Sentinel Primes, is interesting throughout and it's great to hear Leonard Nimoy's voice again. Maybe if they had more screen time, and the majority of the almost 3 fracking hour running time wasn't spent on the various moron humans in the movie. But it must be said, a good chunk of time is also spend on the pretty damn amazing action. That brings me to the good stuff.
The final battle in this movie goes on for almost an hour. It's an assault on your eyeballs. It's actually unlike anything I have seen from a special effects standpoint. Visually I cannot fault the movie. The 3D is also great although one or two shots when there are humans and Transformers involved didn't work so well. But generally when there is action there will be jaws dropping. One scene with a bunch of soldiers sky diving into the fray is especially well done. I may have gone a bit easier on this movie if we were at least provided with some kind of resolution or dramatic ending. It's the same crap as last time. No good guy casualties, all the bad guys dead. Optimus voice-over about how they will always be ready for new threat. I'm telling you, he's gonna make another one. And that will be four hours long and feature actual camera insertion into whatever piece of female furniture he brings in this time.
Great stunts, great effects, great battles, car chases, gunfights, fist fights. Bad movie. Like I said if you really don't care about the other stuff at all you will love Transformers 3, I highly recommend it. My star rating reflects this. Depending on your perspective you can either bring it up to 5 or diminish it to zero. Was it better than the last one? I actually don't know, like I said I'm not sure what I witnessed can even be described as a proper movie! It's a force of nature, a directionless hurricane. How do you stick a rating on a brainless natural disaster? The nicest thing I can say is that I was sufficiently impressed, even awed at times by the effects and the action not to hate it.
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