Genre:

Science-Fiction, Action Adventure

By Simon Jago

Wow, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where do I begin? Well it's better than the second one, but then don't take that as praise because 'Revenge of the Fallen' was in a new sub-standard of awfulness! I've come to grips with the fact that Michael Bay is just one of those directors who just simply fails to learn from his previous mistakes and it’s foolish to expect him to.

PLOT SYNOPSIS
The film plays out with the storyline that the infamous NASA Moon landings were actually exercised in an attempt to make contact with an Autobot spaceship that crashed down on the Moon in the 60's.

Over the years the various lunar missions were actually to retrieve various bits of technology from the alien ship, despite the fact that there were no surviving transformers. However, after this revelation (which was hidden from the returning Autobot characters) Optimus Prime and some of the others visit the Moon and bring back their dead Autobot leader, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) to revive him using the Matrix of Leadership. Confused yet?

Well there is no actual reason to be confused because Michael Bay has simply just done away with continuity in this one. After reviving Sentinel Prime, it all goes downhill as there is an invading army of Decepticons that apparently have been waiting on the Moon since the 60’s. This is where you start to think wouldn’t they have come in handy for Megatron throughout the first and second film?

The film then plods along with poor script and terrible character development until the final climax which is nearly an hour of Chicago being destroyed. Even though this became tedious and boring at parts, one thing Michael Bay does know how to do well is destruction, and the scene at the end in the falling building is very entertaining. However, this is quickly ruined by the fact that when anyone is in trouble from the last hour onwards, Optimus Prime always swoops in just in time and saves them.

In 'Revenge of the Fallen' we had the racist robots 'the Twins' that were nothing more than exploitative stereotypes of the lower class African-American. In Dark of the Moon we get introduced to 'The Wreckers', a collection of three Nascar Autobots  who by description in the film are a bunch of 'assholes'. You would think that these rude Nascar robots would have deep south accents, not that I think intergalactic alien robots should have accents of any kind, but instead it's the 'British' that are insulted this time as these shallow but intriguing characters have a hybrid of Scottish/Irish/English accents. Why does Michael Bay feel he has to recreate human stereotype characters within the Autobots, and flawed ones at that?

Considering this is a Transformers movie, there isn't a lot of Transformer involvement. We see so much of Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebouf) and his awful comedic sub plots, being introduced to frankly infuriatingly unfunny characters such as John Malkovich as the boss and Ken Jeong from 'The Hangover' that the Autobots always play second fiddle. Now stop me if I'm wrong but isn't the title of the film Transformers? and not Humans? Now I'm not slating Shia Leboufs performance as Sam Witwicky, because he really brings the character to life, but I just don't care that much about him having strops with his super model girlfriend who happens to have a better job than him, I want to see the epic war that’s waging across the universe between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

I just expected to see more character involvement with the Transformers in this one, and not just see Optimus Prime show up to say a few lines and then bugger off again on some mysterious Transformer business. There is hardly any good screen time with the Transformers and I was left so desperate to see any Transformer interaction that I would have been happy to watch Optimus chat to Bumblebee over a cup of tea. Oh wait, Bumblebee still has that stupid radio voice problem that I thought they’d fixed at the end of the first one?
 
The human characters in this film are totally unbelievable, especially the male villain 'Dylan' played by (Patrick Dempsey) who has been aiding the Decepticons for years. He realises that the Decepticons will destroy the Earth and enslave humanity and he has only been helping them thus far because he wants to pick the 'winning side'. However, when the Autobots start winning the battle and actually have a chance of stopping the Decepticons, does he follow his own advice? No, for some stupid reason he continues to try and complete the Decepticons plan even though this bears no advantage to himself. It's just a poor excuse to give Sam a head to head fight with a human villain. 

RATING
Optimus Prime is pretty blood thirsty and ruthless at the end of this movie when it comes to disposing of his foes, and I think I’m going to have to be just as ruthless. 2 stars out of 5.