Transformers: Dark of the Moon Review

*Warning! Major spoilers ahead*

(Note: This is a very long review for me. They usually won't be this long, but I had a lot to say on the matter. Also I saw this film in 2D, hence no comment on the 3D.)

Ok I’m ready to do this. 

I’ve been meaning to write this review for the past few days now, but every time I’ve been ready to start writing, a sudden rage has overcome me. You see just merely thinking back to this movie makes me want to rip out my eyes and crush them with my bare hands. After all, it’s their fault I had to witness this atrocity to modern cinema.

But now I’ve got to get through this. I simply must. There’s probably some Lithuanians constantly pressing refresh, on tenterhooks, waiting for the words of their most coveted blogger (i’m presuming).

So to combat the rage I’m going to feel while writing this review, I’m just going to take a second to get it out my system.

Bear with me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYOUGODDAMNMOTHERF***ERMICHAELBAYHOWCOULDYOUPUTMETHROUGHTHISYOUSTUPIDSTUPIDMORONWHYCAN’TYOUDIRECTAFILMPROPERLYDIDYOUEVENREADTHESCRIPT?ISWEARTOGODIFYOUMAKEAFOURTHONEI’MGOINGTOCOMEOVERTHEREANDRIPYOURTONGUEOUTSOYOUCANNEVERDIRECTACRAPPYMOVIELIKETHISEVERAGAINIHATEYOUMICHAELBAYIHATEYOUSHIALABEOUFWHATDIDYOUDOTOJOHNMALKOVICH?IMEANSERIOUSLYWHATWASTHISIHADTOPAYALMOST8POUNDSTOSEESCREWYOUBAYSCREWYOUAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

That should do it. 

Before we get into the film itself, I better give a bit of context on my personal history with the Transformers franchise. 

Growing up I never watched the Transformers cartoon. There was no particular reason for this, I just never saw it. Thinking back, I don’t think I even owned any Transformers toys either. I remember an Action Man, a lot of Batman toys and even some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but never a Transformer. In hindsight, I’m wholly disappointed in my parents.

I’ve also never seen the 1986 animated movie. (Although it’s something I’m meaning to get round too.) So I’m not by any means a fanboy. So I went into the 2007 film, the first in this trilogy, with an open mind. And I enjoyed it very much. Sure it was cheesy in parts but it was a Michael Bay film for christ’s sake, you’d expect nothing less. Nevertheless it was a very solid and very enjoyable action film. 

Then came 2009’s sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, and woah it was bad, really bad. Its been pretty well documented how poor the film was, and all the usual problems you find in reviews (Sam’s parents, Skids & Mudflap, Megan Fox’s acting, poor villain) are the problems I have with the film too.

So I wasn’t expecting Transformers: Dark of the Moon to be good. No, no, I’m not that stupid or naïve. In fact I knew it was going to be bad. But I was just hoping it wasn’t going to be as bad as Revenge of the Fallen. 

How very wrong I was.

To be completely blunt and honest, (and let’s face it you knew where this review was going anyway, so why bother drawing it out any longer) Transformers 3 is easily in the top three worst films I have ever seen in my entire life.

It is terrible.

It is so bad I could probably write a 3000+ word essay on the problems this movie has. Instead I’ll try to compact it as much as possible. In fact to make it slightly easier, and because this is essentially a rant rather than a coherent review, I’ll bulletpoint my thoughts on the movie for you.

• For a start it’s too long. Way too long. The movie clocks in at two hours and forty minutes, and it doesn’t need to be that length at all. There is about an hour and twenty minutes you could easily cut out of it. So much of this movie is filler it almost doesn’t feel like a Transformers movie half the time.

• The opening ten minutes are actually quite good. There’s a prologue that includes a couple of scenes on Cybertron, and a sequence showing an Autobot ship crashing on the moon, and subsequently the US Government using the 1969 moon landing as a cover-up to find out what crashed there. “An interesting start”, I was thinking, "this might be ok". Then BAM! The opening title shot followed by a full HOUR of Shia Labeouf looking for a job. I’m deadly serious. The first act is Sam Witwicky looking for employment. There are hardly any Transformers in the first hour; at least it felt that way. I’m pretty sure Optimus Prime didn’t enter the movie until at least forty minutes in, and even then he was only in that scene for about one minute. 

• I’m not a fan of Shia Labeouf. I didn’t mind him in the first movie to be honest but in this film he is unbearable. Not only does his smug face remind me that there was an Indiana Jones 4, it also reminds me how terrible an actor he is. He spends the entirety of this movie either whining or screaming. He either whines about how amazing he is that he saved the planet twice (ok first film sure, he did destroy Megatron with the All Spark, but in the second film it was Optimus who killed The Fallen and wounded Megatron) or is shouting “Optimus” or “Bumblebee”. It drove me mad. Then if that isn’t bad enough, in the aforementioned first hour, we have the standard ‘Shia Labeouf comedy’ section, and it’s brutal to watch someone with no comedic timing or talent try and draw a laugh. I have yet to see Labeouf justify why he is such a coveted A-lister. I can think of several other actors who would have been far better in this franchise playing that character (Justin Long, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Joel David Moore come to mind).

• The film is boring. The last hour is a massive fight in Chicago between the Autobots and Decepticons, but we already saw a city battle like this in the first movie. It’s too long. The desert fight in Egypt was criticised for being too long and losing focus, but clearly Bay didn’t take that criticism on. Even worse, most of the fight is focused on the humans rather than the Transformers… in a TRANSFORMERS movie.

• The villains suck, again. Everybody in the entire screening saw Sentinel Prime’s betrayal coming. His motives for betraying the Autobots makes no sense whatsoever, and although he does give Optimus quite the fight at the end, there was no real threat that the Autobots would lose. Megatron, you know the coolest villain, is once again a bit-part player in this film. He may as well have not been in it. Even worse, even though the Optimus and Megatron are pretty evenly matched in the cartoon and comics, Optimus once again beats him within thirty seconds.

• Patrick Dempsey. He’s not terrible per-se; it just feels like he’s wondered in from a completely different movie.

• John Malkovich. Oh Jesus, what did they do to John Malkovich? The guy is a fantastic actor, reduced to an extended cameo that adds nothing to the overall plot and isn’t funny. What’s worse, he’s in the film for about a twenty minute period, then leaves and we never see him ever again. Wasted.

• Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. She actually is far from the worst thing in this movie and was more bearable as the lead actress than Megan Fox was in the first two movies. Plus she’s dating Jason Statham, so she gets a pass from me.

• Ken Jeong. For the life of me I cannot remember what his purpose in this movie was? He, like Malkovich, was in this movie for about twenty minutes, and I think his character was there to spout exposition, but the first hour was so terrible I can’t remember what it was. The problem with Ken Jeong is that he is now stuck playing this crazy Asian stereotype that developed from The Hangover. It is annoying and no longer funny. He wasn’t bearable in The Hangover Part II, and this just seals the deal.

• Sam’s Parents. I hate these two so much. They are one of the prime examples of why Bay fails as a director. Kevin Dunn and Julie White are playing characters that have no place in this kind of movie. This is the kind of smothering parent stereotype you’d find in 90’s Nickelodeon shows. To be fair they aren’t in this movie as much as the second, but whenever they turned up I still felt like throttling the person next to me.

• Alan Tudyk. I have no idea why he signed up for this film, I really don’t. His character is an awful gay stereotype, typical for Michael Bay really. At least Tudyk plays the character as best he can to draw laughs. He comes out the film unscathed as far as I’m concerned, purely because the character could have been so much worse than it was.

• The action scenes. This is a summer Hollywood blockbuster and there are barely any action scenes in this movie. Ok, there is the hour long final battle, but before that, there is two action scenes I can remember and both only total about five minutes. There is still the problem of when two Transformers fight; it’s hard to tell what’s going on. This may be just a general problem though rather than Bay specific, and it has improved from the first film.

• The humour. Why is Michael Bay putting humour in this film for children, when the film is a 12A and has several cases where the word ‘shit’ is used? Surely the target audience for a Transformers film is a male aged 16-35. This kind of humour isn’t funny and isn’t necessary. 

• Plot holes and general lack of logic. This could be an entirely separate piece on its own. Put I’ll list just a few I remember from the movie:
  

1.  At the films climax, the Decepticons take over Chicago; they kill about 70% of the people there. The American response? Nothing. Apparently America don’t mind their cities been taken over and won’t respond with force.

2.  Harking back to Megatron, we’re supposed to believe the leader of the Decepticons is willing to play second fiddle to a former-Autobot? Does that sound like Megatron to you?

3.  Starscream’s death. Why could they not cut the rope fast enough? Why did Starscream try to fly and be unable to because of the added weight of Sam and Josh Duhamel?

4.  Why is Shockwave on the posters for this movie when he barely features and offers nothing? There’s fan service and then there’s just putting a character in to offer nothing to the plot.

5.  So the Autobots pretended to get blown up in the rocket, only to then wait two days and wait for the entire destruction of Chicago before deciding to get involved. Thousands of humans have probably died in this time. Its not even like they waited so as to hatch a plan, because they don’t have one when they arrive.

6.  So Sentinel Prime and Megatron had this plan all the way back during the war on Cybertron, and were supposed to meet on earth to hatch it. So what about Megatron’s plans in the first two films? Did he just forget the Ark crashed on the moon?

7.  The Fallen said Optimus was the last prime, even though he wasn’t. The Decepticons also knew about the Ark, and Megatron surely would have known Sentinel was aboard since they were meeting on earth.

8.  There are hundreds of Decepticons on earth in the films climax, and only about eight Autobots. Yet the Autobots absolutely destroy them. There are a couple of Autobot casualties, but even so how was it that the war on Cybertron went on for so long if the Decepticons actively suck at fighting?

Wow, that was longer than I expected. But you can now quite clearly see the problems I have with this movie. Thing is, I’m not a cinema snob by any means; I love a big Hollywood action film. Thor is one the best films I’ve seen this year. But this movie was just so awful; it was insulting to my intelligence.

I also don’t hate Michael Bay as a director. The Rock is one of my favourite films of all time and I enjoyed both Bad Boys films and Armageddon. None of them are outstanding movies but Bay can be a competent director, and he is generally a good action director.

But maybe it’s just me? People ate this movie up, it got critically mauled yet exploded at the box office. There is going to be a fourth one. Maybe I’m missing the point of this film somewhere? All I know is I won’t be seeing any future Transformers films with Bay and Labeouf involved.

Verdict: 

Absolute garbage. I’d call it the nadir of American cinema but I know it can only get worse. Avoid at all costs. 

0/5

By ChoccyR with No comments