5.0
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Review
Well I’m glad that’s out of the way. By “that” I mean Michael Bay’s Transformers trilogy, now maybe someone can take the material and do something great with it, something more than a movie where evil Robots attack the Earth; It’s happened three times now and it wasn’t that great the first time. With this third movie, Dark of the Moon, Bay and Co. have tried to please the fans of the cartoon by making the film revolve around a very important piece of Transformers cartoon history - I won’t spoil that here – but they still manage to make it all about the Humans and the Autobot’s need to protect them. I’m not saying the Autobots should be assholes and let everyone die, but the filmmakers could have definitely toned down the human interference this time around, especially when the movie ended up at two and a half hours in unnecessary length.
The ‘plot’ this time around sees Shia LeBeouf’s Sam Witwicky out of College and on the search for work. Sam doesn’t want to work though, he wants to help his Autobot friends defend the Earth from Decepticons, but that doesn’t pay the bills now does it? Luckily, he has a new alien-looking girlfriend – who’s so far out of his league that the relationship scenes are less believable than the ones featuring giant robots – and she pays all the bills. What happened to Megan Fox? Michael Bay fired her and found Rosie Huntington Whiteley to replace her, which makes the relationship in the past two movies mean nothing, and he’s given Whiteley an even shallower character than Fox’s.
While this new pointless relationship is going on, the Autobots find out that the government have covered up the fact that they discovered something on the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were up there. It was a ship that contained one of the head honcho Autobots, Sentinel Prime voiced by Leonard Nimoy. Sentinal Prime is needed by the Autobots because only he can control… something… I think that’s what happened. It doesn’t really matter because it’s all just a stupid reason to have giant robots blow up a tonne of buildings, something that takes place over the course of an hour of the movie’s runtime.
The first hour and a half of the movie is just the setup for the last hour. None of it makes sense and none of it matters in the overall scheme of the film. The relationship between LeBeouf and Huntington-Whiteley feels forced, and Bay directs every scene featuring her as if he’s a twelve year old boy with the camera attached to his shoe, trying to get an upskirt shot at every chance he can get; it’s a little too stalkerish and obsessive. She’s good looking, but she can’t act, and shooting every scene she’s in this way just goes to prove that Bay doesn’t give a shit about making movies with characters. Where Megan Fox’s character in the first two films was tough and headstrong, Whiteley’s character is just the chick who gets kidnapped and has nothing to offer outside of looking good. She’s poorly written and would have been better kept out of the film entirely.
Sam’s parents come back but luckily their “comedy” is kept to a minimum. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson are back to do nothing but scream and shoot guns. John Turturro is back to… um… well, he’s back. Shia LeBeouf’s character is probably the most well rounded human again, he has an arc and he offers more than any other human character. There are new characters introduced, the stand-out being Alan Tudyk’s Dutch, who plays the sidekick to Turturro’s character and out shines everyone who is unfortunate enough to feature in a scene with him. John Malkovich is great in his role as Sam’s new boss, but he’s under-utilised and Patrick Dempsey is decent in his part but, again, doesn’t get to do much.
So once we get all of the human drama out of the way the film actually gets entertaining. The last hour of the film is non-stop action that sees the city of chicago attacked by the Decepticons. Humans actually die, the city gets destroyed and some giant robots don’t make it to the credits. I actually felt a little sad during one part when some really great robots died, not just because some of the best characters died, but because their deaths meant more to me than any of the human characters, which made that first hour and a half feel even less necessary than it had earlier. This final battle is quite visually striking and it makes up for some of the boredom induced by the first half of the movie, the effects are the best they’ve ever been in this series and Bay has finally realised that shooting the scenes from further away and keeping the camera steady helps with people’s ability to actually see what the fuck is going on. Of course, he still felt the need to use the most slow motion he’s ever used in one of his films, but it’s still an improvement.
Now, I like to get my money’s worth when I sit down to watch a movie but that doesn’t always equate to runtime. Bay doesn’t seem to know where the editing tools are in Final Cut because it’s like he just put all the footage into a computer and rendered it out without trimming it down. As I’ve said, the last hour is great and I think it’s fine as is, but the first hour and a half could have been shortened to half an hour and you still wouldn’t miss anything. There also could have been more at the end of the film, a coda of sorts; Instead, as soon as the battle is over, the credits roll and a shitty Linkin Park song plays. Bay needs to learn where to place his priorities.
So it’s over, the Bayformers Trilogy is at its end and I for one am quite glad. Say goodbye to the prevalent sexism, racism and hyperactive cutting and hello to a much better world. I must say though, the second half of this film is, at the very least, entertaining and it’s a hell of a lot better than the second film. It’s still not as good as the first movie though, so if you hated that one you’re not going to like this one. I’d recommend it if you just want to see a movie you don’t have to think about, but that’s the only reason anyone should bother to see this. Shallow characters, terrible dialogue and a runtime that should be saved for epic novel adaptations are things that were all wrong with the second movie and Bay didn’t care to fix that for this third film. At least the plot isn’t as convoluted.
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