Transformers: Dark of the Moon - A(nother) Review

I don't know where to really begin.

Maybe it's the fact that I hold a special place in my heart for "nigh-unwatchable" crap, hence my unadulterated love for Power Rangers: The Movie, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros. and Batman and Robin (of which I remain unflinching in my conviction that it's the better one of the first four films). Maybe the movie just caught me at a particular point in time when my brain and all its sensibilities simply decided to skip town altogether and went off to have a torrid romance without me knowing about it. Maybe I was just looking for something dumb to keep my mind occupied after being bombarded consecutively with ideas and premises impossible to ignore from other media (Torchwood, I'm looking especially at you, you bastard). Or maybe it really was a fun movie.

Either way, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

It was ridiculous, childish, predictable, drawn-out, incredibly immature, somewhat misogynistic and it clearly wasn't shy about its total lack of character development. It's Michael Bay. It's pure Michael Bay. It's everything we've come to know, and sometimes even love, from him and he didn't disappoint by "phoning in" his performance. The man delivered on the expectations placed on his shoulders with aplomb and I commend him for it.

We knew exactly what we were getting with this movie whether we liked it or not, so I decided to leave my brain at the door and just go with it.

Truth be told, and since I'm well-aware how close to blasphemy this might come off as, I'm choosing my words very carefully, I had more fun watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon than I did during the entirety of X-Men: First Class.

Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved that film. My unabashed love and adulation for Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender notwithstanding, I considered X-Men to be a very thought-provoking, fun, character-driven drama disguised as a 60's Cold-War spy thriller for ambience (i.e. Ian Flemming on crack). It is, by all accounts and considerations, my favorite movie of the Summer, so far (still waiting if Captain America will be the one that clinches it).

Yet, as much fun as it was, Transformers had absolutely no expectations of me as an audience member, and I had none for it as well. The movie went by in a breeze and while I do attest to the length of the final act to be overblown, it didn't bother me. All I cared at that moment was that I was laughing hysterically at every turn, the action sequences were much easier to follow than in the previous two films and that Leonard Nimoy got to pander to his Trekkie audience by spouting that one classic line of his from The Wrath of Khan (if you've seen that one, you'll know it's coming here because the screenwriters telegraphed it from a mile away).

My one, true gripe is the very end of the film. If this is supposed to be the end of this trilogy (though I highly doubt we've seen the last of this highly-profitable franchise), I wished more effort was put into their send-off. Instead of a few more minutes of little character moments so the audience can wave at them as they sail off into the sunset, the film ends almost as soon as the action ends. Optimus Prime gets to speechify a little like it's become tradition for the past two films but you almost get the feeling Master Bay originally wanted to end it with a bang and had to settle for a whimper. So, might as well make it a very short whimper.

Regardless, for there to be genuine character arc resolutions, I'm assuming that, at least, the characters have to be more than plain caricatures. Unfortunately, we don't have anything resembling more than just that in this film. Fortunately, that's exactly why it works.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the very best-looking and loudest B-Movie you're likely to find anywhere on the market. The film looks fantastic, but it's dumber than every single plot of CSI: Miami put together. And I respect Bay for not even bothering to pretend to do otherwise.

I'd never buy it, and I'm sure I'm unlikely to watch it again, but I do recommend it. It's two-and-a-half solid hours of dumb fun. Leave your intellect at the door and enjoy the ride.

If you take a piece of shit, and make it large scale, it's just a large piece of shit: The Transformers 3 Review

I'm going to warn you, this review might contain more than my usual amount of profanity. You see, some people seem to enjoy saying "I told you so." But me, I'm the total opposite. It pisses me off when people don't listen to reason, and the fact that I warned them just irritates me, because I was right the whole time.

That said... I fucking told you so!

Before I even begin, I need to point out that I found the first Transformers movie watchable. I mean, it was way overhyped, but even if it lacked character development at least the story was bearable the ending felt true to what I grew up watching.

Now (and this might sting a bit), the second movie is without a doubt in my top five pieces of shit I actually paid to see. First of all, it suffers from the worst case of what I like to call "Jar Jar Binks Syndrome" I've ever seen. There are almost as many comic relief characters in the movie than there are regular characters. And I'm not even going to go into robots with balls.

I'm saying next to nothing with this statement, but Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is a better movie than Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, if only because of the fewer Jar Jars, the slightly improved story and the better villain. But right there is probably my main problem with the two sequels; Megatron is and will forever be the main villain in Transformers, but in these two sequels he becomes nothing but a side character who enables the arrival of some "bigger threat" to the Autobots. He can't just be a side character, Megatron is supposed to at least be on equal footing as Optimus, he can't just get his ass handed to him every movie.

But not only is Megatron downgraded to a side character, but we get stuck with a whole bunch of generic gray and silver robots that are never even developed as characters. That's a huge problem. Look at it this way, the Trannies, much like G.I. Joe at the same time, were team based cartoons. We had the Autobots and the Decepticons, just like we had the Joes and Cobra. In both cases each member of each team was a genuine character, not just an extra standing around waiting to get killed off, and that's why it meant so much when one of them actually got killed off. You would never see Corporal John Smith fighting next to Duke and Snake Eyes, because he doesn't belong there. I'm just saying, if they spent more time elaborating other robot characters instead of focusing on Shia LePoop's relationship problems, his parents, his job hunt, his crappy car, and his gripes with the government we might actually care when a robot gets shot like we did with the cartoon.

Sometimes these extra bots get so generic it's hard to tell when they're good guys or bad guys. There's this one specific scene where four robots come off two buildings into an intersection and one of them yells "Well I guess we have ourselves a Mexican standoff", the only problem is you can't tell which ones are the good guys until we zoom in on their faces. Obviously the Decepticons are the ones with sharp teeth. Duh!

Then again, it is Michael Bay, a director who isn't really known for being subtle. But in this movie he just really takes that to new heights. It's like he really thinks his viewers are that dumb. Lets give an example: Rosie Huntington who plays the new girl who's name really doesn't matter gets a car from her boss, played by McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy (who pretends not to be a villain for the whole movie but everyone knows he is). Funny part is that when she gets the car, not only do we see it's a shiny new Mercedes, but LePoop proceeds to Google it, show us the website, recite the full name of the model (Mercedes SLS AMG 4500), we then stare at the damn thing for about five minutes, and then he starts a fight with the girl about it. Just saying, this is the mother of all product placements

Could it be?

Now, Mr. Bay, after this much build up for product placement, do you really expect me not to believe this thing is a fucking robot in disguise? If you guessed no, you probably loved this movie.

But like most action movies, it hinges on the final battle scene. It's just that in this case it's the most drawn out thing ever. I honestly thought the movie was almost over as they headed into Chicago, boy was I dead wrong. That "Chicago destruction scene" has been the selling point of the movie since the hype machine began in January. Except in this case it isn't much of a battle, we just get Shia and a bunch of army dudes running around like ants being chased by the magnifying glass.

With buildings collapsing and just mass destruction the best thing I could compare this sequence to was that city part in Uncharted 2 for the PS3. Except that Trannies does wrong what Uncharted does right. You see, Drake and his companions are likable characters, and when they're in a collapsing building you genuinely get nervous for their safety - meanwhile, by this point in the movie you're so tired and annoyed by these characters that you almost wish that a building would fall on them so you could just get up  and leave.

And there's my main point. Uncharted takes these characters that you like and care about and puts them in these larger than life, dangerous situations. But it's not the situations that get you into the story, it's the characters. Sure explosions and pretty effects help, but they won't do much if you're wishing death on the protagonists every time they're in danger. Putting things on a grand scale is fun when done right...

Remember the original Transformers Movie, the animated one with "Weird" Al Yankovic in the soundtrack? Well, Optimus Prime gets killed in the first twenty minutes of that children's cartoon. And honestly, that death overshadows everything done in this current franchise because it was well written and the characters mattered.

Trannies 3 isn't a horrible film. I really expected it to be much worse. It might just be me yearning for nostalgia, but I just can't help but think that with the direction of these movies they will never compare to the depth of some of the animated versions (not just the original). My advice that no one will listen to: Dump most of the human characters, the animated versions had one or two at most. Concentrate on what's in the title. The fucking robots.

4/10