Transformers: Dark of the Moon Review

You may have thought that the transformers series could simply not get any worse after Revenge of the Fallen. Boy did you think wrong...

He did it again. Michael Bay tricked me into hoping, just that tiny hope, that the new Transformers film wouldn’t but another total steaming pile of trash. That first teaser trailer was actually rather exciting and my eyes boggled at the possibilities of distorting something as cool as the moon landing into the transformers fiction. And do you know what Michael Bay does with all that potential? Absolutely nothing. Instead he brings us another Transformers movie, one that is even worse than those previous films in the series, a feat seemingly unimaginable. So now I’m going to write a review, detailing all the things I hated about Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and you are free to read that, or, if you do not have the time, you could just read this sentence and get on with your lives: Do Not Go And See Transformers: Dark of the Moon – It is simply, irredeemably awful.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon starts quite strongly, seeing the Moon landings twisted into the Transformers fiction – a mission now not only to travel to the moon, but to investigate a mysterious space craft which hit the moon several years before. Then we have the title card, and everything nose dives from here on. Skipping to the modern day, the discovery of the crashed space craft on the moon had been kept a secret from the autobots until a piece of it is found in Chinoboyl, ostensibly used as power source there until the disaster. From here the autobots must investigate the crashed space ship, known as the Ark, and prevent the dicepticons from reaching it and gaining access to a secret weapon hidden within its bowls, the Space Bridge, a weapon that can transport matter from one side of the galaxy to the other. After a barrage of twists and turns which I won’t go into, the decepticons, surprise surprise, get a hold of the Space Bridge and transport hundreds of decepticons to earth. From here Sam Wiwicky (Shia LaBeouf), who finds himself involved in the story at some point along its long winding path, and the autobots, must prevent the decepticons from using the Space Bridge’s full potential and destroy it before they can summon their long lost planet, Cybertron, right onto the door step of earth. Throw in some other rather meaningless characters, tonnes of explosions and nearly 3 hours of somewhat bland drudgery, and credits roll.

Maybe we should start with what’s good about transformers: it looks fantastic. The visuals are nothing but stunning CGI and the 3D compensates this greatly, especially the robots which, as before, are mind bogglingly detailed and almost indistinguishable as CGI. Also Bay seems to have got past the fact that these jumble of over complicated mechanical parts made the autobot on decepticon battles almost impossible to keep up with. The scope of the action has also increased from previous films, seeing humans and autobots fending off countless decepticons of both huge size and large in number, all those look equally as visually pleasing. If nothing else, he sure knows how to make things blow up good. However, these stunning visuals cannot nearly compensate for the ridiculously bloated running time, the terrible acting and script, lifeless characters, and the fact that the action itself equally as lifeless, despite its computer trickery.

Surely if you gave anyone $200 million they could make something look pretty and make buildings explode nicely, it is the job of the director to make sure that this is done in a way that is entertaining and exciting, a job that Bay fails totally to succeed in. Clearly, he seems not to realise that action, no matter how visually stunning, is only as good as the characters involved within it, if these characters are not good, realistic, or likeable, at least for me, action involving these characters can never reach high levels of excitement. In essence, I never cared about the action because I never felt enough attachment to any of the characters, especially those of metallic ilk. For me the action carried no real weight and was essentially lifeless.

For me, Bay just doesn’t seem to know how to portray character development. The initial scenes are case in point – all the stuff revolving around the moon landing is great because there are no real characters involved. As soon as any characters are introduced the film takes a huge nose dive because they simply aren’t portrayed in any way entertaining and they never develop in a way that made me sympathise with them, if they developed at all; obviously a fault of the screen writers as much as Bay's direction.

In the place of character development we have goofy one liners and horribly strained comedic scenes, which lie alongside super serious action, a mix that simply does not work. It’s as if Bay wanted everything including the kitchen sink within the films running time – probably a reason for its soul sucking length. There is just so many scenes included that bring nothing to the plot, nor increased my enjoyment of the film (actually probably lessened it considerably). In fact many of the problems could of been somewhat overlooked if this was only 90 minutes long, but its extreme length just makes all the film's issues ten times worse and though the action picks up enough at the end to bring some enjoyment, by then I’d already lost my interest anything that was happening.

If you’re looking for laughs, you will be further disappointed; they are few and far between. The one ray of sunshine is that of Jerry Wang, played Ken Jeong who translates his brand of The Hangover crazy into Transformers in an enjoyable way, though his part on screen is short lived. There is a smattering of other good laughs, but these are far exceeded by some truly aweful unfunny moments, especially those which are produced by the comic relief autobots and decepticons, which do nothing but make me feel less affectionate towards them and portray these essentially hyper-cool robots as cheesy one dimensional machines.

The poor plot is made no better by those actors and actresses involved. At best they bring little to the roll, at worst they are simply cringe inducing. Whatever you feel about the departure of Megan Fox, you will be soon craving her return when Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who plays Sam's new love interest, makes her entrance. She is simply awful, painfully pushing out the dull dialogue with no hint of emotion or anything you might be able to recognise as ‘acting’ – lifeless and totally uncompelling, she is the epitome of the phrase nothing more than a pretty face. At least Shia Labeouf attacks his role with some gusto, even if he also ultimately fails to be compelling; none of the other characters are anything more than bland stereotypes and no matter the effort of the film makers, I felt was never pushed to care for the autobots, making their times of peril lifeless. For every interesting autobot, such as Octomus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, there is are those which are cringe worthy, like that one with the head which looks a bit like Albert Einstein (...yeah what?), which remind me that this is essentially a kids film. When Einstein-head gets his, I was relieved rather than emotionally effected.

In the end, Transformers’ dull plot, lifeless characters and extreme running time will the suck the enjoyment out of the film for even the most ardent transformers fans. I’m sure this new iteration will make a tonne of money and I’m sure that there will be another Transformers film soon in production, but for me, this is the last time I will ever care about those transforming robots from space.