Transformers: Dark of the Moon
History: Transformers began as Hasbro toys. Then they became a much beloved TV show. In the past four years Transformers was remade into the action fest, explosion orgy that are Michael Bay films. The first movie was released in 2007 and resembled Bay’s 1998 success Armageddon: plenty of senseless action, a little heart and emotion, and almost everything blowing up. It was a solid pop-corn, summer blockbuster action flick. The plot centred on hapless Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebouf) who buys his first car in high school which turns out to be an incognito alien robot, Bumblebee of the Autobots. The Autobots are locked in a centuries long conflict with a bunch of evil robots, the Decepticons. Once the Decepticons realize Bumblebee and his Autobot friends are hiding on Earth, they launch an all out assult, hoping to destroy the Autobots and reclaim a powerful alien tech cube called the All Spark (also hidden on Earth).
The film was good, for what it was.
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was released in 2009. By this time, Sam had entered college, the Autobots, having vanquished (but not destroyed) the Decepticons are partnering with the American military to hunt down and destroy any remaining enemy robots. Unbeknown to them, an ancient evil robot called the Fallen has been waiting in stasis on a broken starship. He returns to earth hoping to find an ancient tomb of powerful dead robots and reclaim a powerful object that will allow him to harness the sun’s power, but destroy earth in the process. The Autobots, and Sam, rally with the US military to overcome this new, and more dangerous, threat.
The second Transformers film had much more action, a little more emotion, and a lot more things exploding. It was as good of a story as the first film, but suffered from an unrestrained Michael Bay. There really is a certain level of over-the-top filmmaking that Bay can get away with, but T2 really pushed that boundary.
Hype: I was expecting another solid entry in the Transformers franchise with Dark of the Moon. Early trailers showed some sort of NASA coverup involving more alien robots on the moon, which seemed like an interesting plot device. Trailers also showed completely absurd action sequences inside of falling building. I was at once intrigued and dismayed.
Megan Fox, who had played Sam’s love interest in the first two movies, had been replaced for the third movie. While Fox has sex appeal, she seemed increasingly bored in her scenes, and her contempt for Bay and Shia off camera oozed into palpable distaste for Sam on camera and I was glad to see her go. I was hoping for a stronger female character to counteract Sam and the rest of the male characters (ie, every other character). Mostly I was wishing that the story would be strong, and the action restrained to normal Bay amounts.
The Good: Alan Tudyk was in this movie. He had a bit part, but it was a hilarious part, to me anyway. I know Tudyk from Joss Whedon’s TV shows Firefly and Dollhouse. In Firefly he played a space ship pilot who was a funny, wacky, oddball. In Dollhouse he played a psychotic serial killer named Alpha who had multiple personalities, some of which were funny, oddball, wacky, creepy, weird, hilarious, or pyschopathic. In this film, he seemed to be continuing his performance as Alpha, albeit reformed somewhat. Whenever he talked, I totally lost it. There was one scene in a bar when Tudyk’s character, for no reason whatsoever, snaps and does some awesome kung-fu and snatches a few guns away from some bad guys only to suddenly “wake up” and mutter “Sorry, that was the old me” and that was pure Alpha. I wonder if the writer’s did in fact rip off the Whedon character, but even if they didn’t, Tudyk was funny as hell.
Oh yeah…the good. Hmm. Megan Fox was not in this movie. Some of the action scenes were restrained and more on par with T1 than T2.
I’m still thinking.
Oh, the recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing was fantastic. I loved seeing that intercut with archival footage and recreations of JFK in the White House. Best cinematic opening sequences and the movie only went down from there into a deep, dark, hellish abyss from which there was no escape.
The Ugly: The first hour of the movie consists of Sam living with a Victoria Secret model who works for a car museum and who totally despises him for not having a job. Sam then whines about not having a job despite having marginally helped to save the planet twice and having got a medal from Obama. Sam whines a lot. And then he meets a totally psychotic John Malkovich who has no reason to be in the movie. At all. There is some very unfunny stuff in the first hour with employees at a place where Sam does some stuff. I seem to remember something about the color red. Oh, and a murder that involved a man flying out of skyscraper window which the writers tried to make quite a few jokes about, but the scene was played sort of seriously, but then they also tried to make jokes. It was awkward and wrong and bad and clunky and completely unnecessary.
After Sam stopped whining about not having a nice car and a job working with the Autobots, the Autobots find the alien robots on the moon which nobody thought to mention to them, and then they find this ancient robot who they revive thinking he will be nice and helpful for them in their fight against the Decepticons, except that this guy made a pact with the evil robots back in the day and he totally betrays everyone and goes to the dark side.
Then for no reason he and his Decepticon pals destroy Chicago (for no reason) and demand that Earth expel the Autobots. The Autobots then leave on a special space shuttle (despite the fact that they themselves can fly into space or transform into space flying robots) which the Decepticons then destroy. But not to worry, because right as Sam is infiltrating Chicago basically on his own to rescue his uncaring girlfriend, the Autobots return, declaring that they allowed Chicago, and millions of humans to be murdered horribly, simply to show the Earth that the Earth really needs them…to save millions of humans from being murdered horribly.
Then some action happens, none of it believable, which is par for the course on a Bay film except that half the time it seemed like Bay was directing normal Bay scenes and someone else was directing totally-off-the-charts scenes. Seriously, this movie felt like it had 3 directors all fighting with Bay who was trying to make a T1/Armageddon scale movie.
Eventually, the incredibly evil former-good guys and the criminally inept US military win the day, and Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, stands as victor over his original enemy, Megatron, and his new enemy, Sentinal Prime. Both surrender, and Optimus Prime pulls the spine out of Megatron and shoots Sentinal Prime in the head execution style. After both surrendered to him.
The story was good, except for the bits where Sam whined about being unemployed for an hour, the irrelevant characters, and, oh yeah, the events of the first two films being completely invalidated because if the facts of this film really were known by people during the first two films, then the first two films would not have happened like they did. This was one of those sequels that makes the prequels incomprehensible.
The Personal: I didn’t connect with this film at all. Sam whined like a bitch. One of the heroic soldiers from the first two movies transformed into a coward. And the heroic leader robot turned into an accomplice to mass murder before he summarily murdered two of his enemies who had just surrendered to him.
Final Thoughts: Sentinal Prime, the new villain, was voiced by Leonard Nimoy, Spock from the Original Star Trek. The writers used this as an excuse to steal Spock’s most famous lines from Wrath of Khan and completely misunderstand them and misuse them, which in addition to making the writers look stupid, also made them look completely lazy.
Sam whining about a job seemed selfish in the wake of massive national unemployment, especially when he had a few good job offers that he completely pissed on because he felt he deserved better. When millions are out of work, it makes your writers look like douches when their “hero” character won’t work available jobs.
There is a low standard for Michael Bay films, and this film worked way too hard to not meet that standard. This film could have been as “good” as Armageddon but whatever was happening with the especially horrible writing and inconsistent directing made this movie so much worse. All the way through, it seemed like there was a Michael Bay Transformers movie in there somewhere, but it kept getting interrupted by someone else’s idea of what would make a funny, or cool, or something scene, most of which didn’t belong or have anything to do with anything else in the film. Shia Lebouf has said that he is done making Transformers movies, and I hope that Bay is too. I think that someone else could bring a fresh vision to Transformers, but hopefully not for 20 years. We need more original stories right now and we need to forget about giant fighting CGI robots for a while.
Final Score: 1.5 of 5 transforming car robots (entirely due to Alan Tudyk’s presence and Megan Fox’s absence and the uber cool recreation of Apollo 11 and a cameo by the real Buzz Aldrin).
a simple man 