Director Michael Bay caps of the Transformers saga with Transformers: Dark of the Moon. This time a crashed alien ship holds yet another artifact for the Autobots (good) and Decepticons (evil) to wage war over. Series protagonist Sam (Shia LaBeouf) doesn’t really have anything to do with this, but by now you won’t be surprised that he finds a way to get to the center of it and work with his Autobot pals Bumblebee and Optimus Prime to save the day.
This isn’t the first movie of the summer to intertwine actual events with fiction (X-Men: First Class), but the effort to make our space race and the Chernobyl disaster relevant to the plot lends for some of the more compelling exposition found in the series. It is however interesting how the Autobots and Decepticons keep finding reason to come to let along stay on Earth, as though their technology is attracted to us like a magnet. After a cold shoulder, the 2nd entry in the series has found itself all but written out. There is little mention of those event, other than the fact that Sam can’t find a job despite saving the world twice. This raises another interesting point in how his activities are forced into secrecy whereas it’s generally accepted by the public that giant robots are destroying our cities.
Shia is so intensely into his role that he’s quick to over react. At first it appears that maybe Sam is just a little peeved over the job market, but we soon discover that every human in this movie is a cartoon. They’re all but bouncing off the walls with antics.
After a spat with Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg, leading lady Megan Fox found herself on the chopping block. Her replacement is Victoria Secret Angel Rosie Huntington-Whitely. You’d think the repetition of saying that name would translate to a better delivery. Her lines recognize the fact that people don’t want to listen to her, but for what it is I didn’t hear her excessively screaming.
Humans have always played too big of a role in the managing of a plot that they can’t affect. For two films we’ve seen people stand around and hope the Autobots save them, and it only gets worse here as the most idiotic plan ever gets put into place just so that Optimus Prime can prove a point. It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to touch for the sake of spoilers, but a good analogy would be that you want to prove that your dog needs to eat so you starve him to the point that he’s about to kick the bucket.
The visuals are very Bayian. Colors are vivid despite the graying of 3D. Maybe my projectionist listened to his memo, which urged theatres to show the film with bulbs bursting at 200% brightness. Maybe reading the memo distracted him from putting the movie in focus because I was not getting a 3D effect of any sort and saw faint ghosts far off point. The CGI designs are as strong always, remaining the key selling point. I noticed that one of the gripes has been addressed as now battles are comprehendible with far fewer shots of nuts and bolts exploding from trading blows.
There’s a great deal of carnage, the story continues to twist in the wind, and all the characters are turbocharged with bi-polar disorder. There’s even the requisite gay joke and tasteless desecration of a memorial to one of our greatest leaders. If that sounds like an appealing movie to you, then there’s no way I can sway your judgment. **
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