Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon Review

I think we all know why we keep seeing this movie series in theaters. It's because we either liked Transformers as children and thus the franchise will always be apart of us when we were experiencing the bliss of youth. It might also have to do with the fact that movies like this make for better trailers than actual movies. Suffice to say, most all of the best scenes for Dark of the Moon are in the trailer and what's left for the movie is utter garbage.

Michael Bay once again proves he is about as good of a director as I am a walrus. There were a lot of problems establishing locations and time frames for which the events took place. I found myself confused for a while about what actually was going on or what the movie was trying to show to me simply because I didn't know where anything was taking place. Pretty much the whole middle part of the film is like that, characters just jump from one location to the next without any sense of continuity and it makes the "story" harder to follow, what little there is.

Most of the scenes in this movie were also shot with a sweeping camera, which makes it look like there's more happening than there really is. For a while it disguises the fact that this movie has no substance, but after an hour, it becomes noticeable that the camera just never sits still. This isn't a problem specifically with Transformers 3 because it extends to most every other film he has ever directed. Bay needs to slow down the camera and focus on something or someone at some point, establish a setting or scene before he goes tearing through it.

Continuity is also a major problem this movie has with the other two movies established in the same canon as this. My biggest problem was, they showed us new characters without introducing them to us. New Autobots appear in this movie without any explanation of how or why. Most of them aren't even given names so I can't even tell you which ones I liked, and about the same number never even spoke. So how or why should I care about what happens in this movie when half the protagonist robots weren't even cared enough for by the director or writer. There was a really cool red Autobot that used a God of War-like weapon, referring to the Blades of Chaos, where the Autobot would throw two hooks at the enemy which had tethers at the ends of their handles, so he could latch on and pull back on his weapons to disable the Decepticons. I liked that, I could relate that to my crippling video game addiction and enjoy it, but beyond that one time he used it, the Autobot left no impression on me. Even when I tried to enjoy this movie, it didn't allow me to.

And that's the biggest flaw this movie has that separates it out from the other two movies. It's hard to enjoy. Every scene and twist is either ripped directly from the first two movies, or something else. There are no surprises in this movie at all. There's nothing to get excited about. None of the action was built up, so there was no drama or suspense. There was nothing to look forward to. It's just more of the same. How many more times could they use the scene where people are falling and one of the Autobots catches them? All the action, all the characters, all the effects, it's all exactly the same. It's so copy and pasted that it's actually really boring to watch. They blatantly ripped off other movies like District 9 and actually got the composer from Inception to do the soundtrack. And guess what, the soundtrack sounds just like Inception. How about something more original?

What that all amounts to is shallow action scenes. When two robots fight, the weight of the outcome should make the viewer care about the fight itself. But almost none of the fight scenes had any weight to them. When you don't build up the anticipation of the fight, the fight doesn't leave an impact, the characters fighting come off as shallow and you lose your audience's interest. When Optimus and Megatron finally had their 15 second bout, I didn't even care. All the bad guys before this point in the movie had mostly been off-camera accept Soundwave's bird. So the villains never really did anything to make us hate them or provide the proper context for the battle. You never actually SEE them do anything evil. It was almost like everyone just came together in the climax because it was expected at that point: like Megatron and Optimus were just looking at scripts off-camera and going through the motions before breaking off and reminiscing about the 80's around the buffet table on set.

Three of the new Autobots were pure product placement from Chevy and NASCAR. They were replicas of the Sprint cars driven by Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. It was a little treat to see them since I am a NASCAR fan but it raises more questions than hopes. Why choose those car models to impersonate? It seems so random and quite frankly, very improbable. I know why the writers did it; it's because all of the cars in the movie were Chevrolets. And the three drivers I mentioned before drive Chevy Impalas. But it made no sense to the setting or story, it was just random. And again, they were never given any names or introduced to us, and only Juan Pablo's car spoke. This is another thing that confuses me: Juan Pablo is Columbian, but the car in the movie spoke with a Scottish accent. How does that work? If it had a Columbian accent, it would've made a lot more sense, but they went in a completely terrible direction which only adds to the confusion of the character. It made it hard to enjoy seeing those three Sprint cars decked out in heavy artillery and jet engines.

It wasn't just the Autobot characters that were mishandled, but the humans too. Once again 80% of the movie is about what those lame humans are doing which is far too long to spend on what people didn't pay to see. The movie is called Transformers, not Dawson's Creek or Saving Private Ryan. I also found most of the characters too cartoon-ish for the movie, which is an odd feeling to have since Transformers was originally a cartoon. But here, they don't match the tone of the movie. Everything else is pure action, but now we have these awkward comic relief moments where characters just act goofy for no reason. I understand humor is something that can be worked in, but it was as gently placed in this movie as a space shuttle would be in an elephants rectum. There's also an obscene amount of models in this movie, female models, model rockets, model cars, everything so polished and perfect that it's distracting. Every female in the background under the age of 25 looks like they're shooting their own private commercial, posing at opportune times to sell something. The biggest distraction would be the female lead. I know she's a model by trade, but god, could she stop posing in this movie and start acting? Almost every scene she's in, she has to pose for the camera. We get it, she's hot, let's have more robot action now.

It wasn't only new Autobots that seemingly sprung up between films, a whole slew of new nameless Decepticons showed up who were apparently hiding on the moon the entire time. I'm not even sure how that makes any sense. We run into another continuity problem; where were they in the other movies? Why weren't they summoned to fight in those films? Once again, nothing is ever explained.

The coolest new Decepticon was the giant worm that apparently was a part of Shockwave or controlled by Shockwave, once again, nothing is ever clarified to what or how this transformer works which is a shame. It is unique and interesting but it's given no explanation and doesn't even receive a proper exit from the movie. It was never destroyed or stopped, it was forgotten after it's final scene and that was the end of it.

Soundwave does make another appearance and once again he's cool to see. But he's only in one meaningless scene, it's his bird that gets most of the screen time. The bird itself is cool to watch since it can mimic the appearance of technology like TV's and such, so it's practical and fun. It was nice seeing something that was treated right, but again, Soundwave has about 1 line in the entire movie, he sounded great by the way, but he never shows up again.

Some inconsistencies that I noticed on-camera are that: no matter what desperate or life-threatening situation the lead female was thrown in, she always looked her best, which was a little jarring. Perfect makeup, perfect hair every time is distracting to see when you were supposed to have gone through a battlefield. Even the cars maintained an absolute perfect shine even if they transformed and were suddenly battle-worn. This just contributes to the on-going continuity problem this movie had. Also, Chicago gets wrecked beyond belief, but then some shots have the buildings looking pristine and undamaged, which makes me focus on that instead of the action.

The plot is dumb as a pile of bolts. This one gives the second movie a run for it's money, and that's really bad. The big twist in the movie didn't even make sense. There's also a scene where the female lead (you've probably noticed by now I can't remember the name of any of the characters) talks to Megatron and chews him out. First off, why is Megatron taking crap from a human and not bashing her face in? It would have been so satisfying for them to kill her off right then and there, but no. Megatron takes it like the mega-bitch he is.

Even Optimus Prime seems rather weak in this movie. Three scenes stood out to me: one where Optimus doesn't talk to people because he's having a sissy fit, one where the Intelligence Department lady chews him out, and one where he gets tangled in a bunch of ropes. I was honestly embarrassed for him. Optimus is a prime, certified bad ass and someone had the gull to write a scene where he's stuck in some wires, and the other Autobots have to cut him free in the middle of a battle.

The Intelligence Department lady also had the biggest stick up her ass and acts like the stereotypical, no-nonsense, everything by the books lady, and comes off as obnoxious and predictable. Never having seen a Transformer up close before, she has the balls to argue with all of the robots like they'll listen to anything she has to say.

For a third time, Michael Bay had absolutely no respect for the source material that he was working with and ignored what was already established to give us utter garbage. There's so much substance to work with when trying to put together a Transformer's movie, but instead, Bay went after the clueless retard demographic. The people who see these movies for the thrills and action, and that's what brings in the most money.

Overall, the acting is hokey, the action is redundant, the story is abysmal, characters are shallow and forgettable, the jokes are lame, the soundtrack is pretty much Inception by the end of the movie, there are no surprises, nothing to leave an impression and is a waste of time. This is a done-by-template movie that just copies the other two movies without adding anything of substance. If you want to see this movie, just watch the second movie, because that's basically what Dark of the Moon is. Or better yet, just watch the 1986 animated Transformers film.