Movie Review - Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon (spoilers)

[griffin]

You pay for my trip and I'll be there.

[Sky Shadow]

My thoughts after 'finally' seeing the film.

It's a film we had to see. But in many ways, Dark Of The Moon was a worse movie than Revenge Of The Fallen. At least ROTF allowed me to suspend disbelief while I was watching it, and then my brain only went "hold on... that made no sense!" after I left the theatre. This time my brain was critical of the film in realtime.

The opening minutes are great. Then it starts to fall down at two early points. One is when the Autobots go to the Middle East in order to massacre some humans. The second is when some cheesy music kicks in, we open on a sundrenched bedroom loft and the film appears to turn into an ad for lady products. Or something. Other earlyish cringeworthy moments included Jerry calling Sam a 'gaylord'. Nice.

Sentinel Prime is a jerk. Which is good, because that's what Sentinel Primes should be. On the other hand, Optimus Prime is the least likeable protagonist from any film I have seen in living memory. This is not so good. He planned to pretend to be sent back into space to teach the humans a lesson. About being brutally killed. And once again, Prime seems to have the magic-melee-weapons-of-gruesome-death. So much so that the writers had to come up with ways to keep him out of action in the movie. Like having the idiot entangle himself in some cables for half an hour and waste literally half the Autobot forces on getting him untied. And then, the climactic battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron lasts for... about five seconds. This is a film that dedicated a good twenty minutes to humans and furniture sliding back and forth inside and outside a building but had a boss battle that lasted the duration of one slice. Poor Megatron. He had an awesome master plan and a poncho and chains and sits around in the Lincoln memorial and on Trump Tower. And yet... one slice. And then when it's time for Prime to offer mercy to Sentinel or chastise him for killing Ironhide, what does he do? He blows off his head with Megatron's shotgun.

The film was not all bad. The bit on Cybertron, the historic scenes and the blimps and ships flying around Chicago were fantastic. Many of Sam's and Dutch's lines were laugh-out-loud funny (which is possibly due as much to Shia and Alan's delivery as to the quality of the dialogue.) I liked the way that the humans finally worked out how to fight the Transformers convincingly - shoot Decepticons in the eyes with snipers and use your small stature to run in and put bombs on their feet. I also loved the appearances of recognisable toy accessories – Sentinel Prime's sword and shield, Cyberverse Ratchet's Lunar Crawler/Roller, heck Cyberverse Starscream's Orbital Assault Carrier was a more major player in the film than half the Autobots. Shockwave and his massive phallus, Laserbeak, Roadbuster and Leadfoot were great new robotic additions to the cast. And from my perspective, Wheelie was the most likeable robot character in the film. This is possibly not a good thing.

Also, why were there lots of Decepticons buried on the moon? Did they actually agree to being buried on the moon? For how long? I asked my wife, to see if I'd just missed something.

MRS SHADOW: "Didn't they crash there?"

ME: "Um... I don't think so. Why would so many Decepticons have been on the Ark? And if so, how did they all come back to life without the matrix?"

MRS SHADOW: "...I think that maybe there were a lot of issues with the film."

I think maybe she's right.

[Sleeve]

I saw it again yesterday and picked up on something I missed (apologies if it's already been posted but I couldn't see it after skimming 25 pages of posts).

When Wheelie first comes into the lounge room, he jumps onto the couch and ask Brains how he's doing. Wheelie then looks at the TV, sees 'Star Trek' and says "Oh shit, I've seen this one. This is the one where Spock goes nuts."

Nice bit of foreshadowing.

[1AZRAEL1]

I never even thought of that, well spotted.

[griffin]

@ Sky Shadow's review.

The Decepticon army hidden on the moon is the big plot hole in this movie, in that it is explained in an indirect way, but you kinda need to work it out (Soundwave had them hidden there since the early 60s, and had to make sure the Humans were prevented from seeing them after 4 moon landings). That on its own would have made sense, but when you take into account the first two movies, and how the search for the Matrix coulda been centuries later... it didn't make sense to hide them there, on the off-chance that the Matrix would have been found any time soon. It would have made more sense to use that 'man power' to invade earth in that decade (the 60s) and find the matrix themselves. Then they could continue their plan to reanimate Sentinel and activate the Spacebridge technology.

Also, if the knowledge of the Ark was Sector 7 director clearance only, then you'd think that would be a plot problem with the first movie, as Banachek appeared to be the director of S7... who would have known about this to mention it.
So basically, this third movie clashes with the history of the first two... which was bound to happen when you keep doing 'flashback' type plots that rely on events that occurred before an earlier movie.

As for the Autobots attacking a Middle Eastern location at the start - in the comic it was better explained that they were hunting down Cybertronian Technology that was ending up in the wrong hands... as a result of them revealing themselves to the world in the second movie. And I think that was an explanation by the Comic writer to make sense of Bay's movie script, because the voice-over dialogue is recorded in the last few weeks of production, and I don't see any reason why that would have been changed (it just makes America look bad, by making it seem like an American ally was invading other nations on covet ops - just see how it made them look invading Pakistan without authorisation, to kill Osama).

It also felt like the character of Carly's boss was all over the place. At one time he says that he is stuck with working for the Decepticons (as his father's legacy) so doesn't have much of a choice (like being coerced). Another time he seems like a willing ally, thinking that he will be rewarded while the rest of the humans are enslaved. And then he seems fearful of them when they are destroying Chicago, accepting that he may be killed off as well... but when given the opportunity at the end of the movie to save earth (and himself), he instead goes and turns on the spacebridge pillar as if he still had a hope of being rewarded by the aliens whom he knows (and helped) kill humans.

I didn't get all the lunar rovers on the moon when the Autobots went to get Sentinel. Why were they there? The Autobots wouldn't need them... and if they were Autobot probing rovers, they didn't do a good job of sensing the massive Decepticon Army just metres away. And the entire Apollo landing module shouldn't have been there either. It mighta looked visually pretty to Bay to have it there, CG-animated in all its glory, but the top half of those things fly back up to the Command/Service Module that remains in orbit around the moon, and jettisoned to either crash back on the moon somewhere or left floating in space. The only thing that should have been there in that scene is the 'Descent Stage' (the golden bottom half).
For those interested in seeing just how much junk there is now on the moon.
And a map showing where the Apollo missions landed, including Apollo 11 (which is where the Ark crashed)

There was so much product placement in this movie, it almost felt like every logo was there for a reason, rather than just being a random product grabbed by the props department.

[Sky Shadow]

@ Sky Shadow's review.

The Decepticon army hidden on the moon is the big plot hole in this movie, in that it is explained in an indirect way, but you kinda need to work it out (Soundwave had them hidden there since the early 60s, and had to make sure the Humans were prevented from seeing them after 4 moon landings).

Thanks Griffin, that makes sense (in a still-not-technically-making-sense-in-context-but-if-that's-what-they-were-going-for-I-guess-that's-something fashion.)

I have the novel and comics, but haven't read them yet - hopefully they'll polish some of the turdier bits of the film.

[jimoinj]

I'd like to add my voice of dissent to the chorus of approval for this movie.

I watched it, with expectations low from ROF. Honestly, I expected almost nothing. And I was still disappointed.

Most of the problems from that movie remain. This time the movie is over-long, to boot. Apart from Optimus Prime, Sentinel Prime and Megatron, for the robots there was barely any characterisation. I could hardly recognise one robot from the other. Particularly when they're always running around, doing acrobatics and falling to pieces. The G1 cartoon is much derided for childishness and cliches, yet it did a far better job at characterisation than this mush. It's like the movie was only aimed at being very very fast and full of shooting and running. Without bothering with anything else, other than undergraduate jokes and smutty shots of the latest sex object in the film.

It seems the maker of the film doesn't understand that action and shooting doesn't make a good film. It needs a good story and good dialogue and interaction to make people get involved in it and care. I'm afraid this one failed utterly. I barely could tell who was getting destroyed let alone care about it.

The inclusion of the humans, trying to get more audience involvement I suppose, didn't work for me. It just seemed so unrealistic that they even lasted a second against the robots, particularly Sam when he was being thrown around on that cord by Starscream. And Megatron failing to kill his girlfriend like an ant, as he should have. It would have been better if as per G1 it was mostly focusing on the robots and leaving humans as cannon fodder!

Another gripe, I don't see the reason to give Transformers machine guns. They are aliens. What chance they would use projectile weapons as similar to ours as that? They are far advanced, and should be using lasers.

SPOILER

I did enjoy that Spock played Sentinel Prime, and his line 'the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few'. Classic nod to Star Trek.

[GoktimusPrime]

Just looking at the film alone, my understanding of the NEST/Autobot attack on in the Middle East was, from the humans' POV, to combat threats to humanity - like illegal production of nuclear weapons. But the Autobot's actual agenda was to use this as an excuse to roam the globe and keep searching for the Decepticons - as Optimus explained it, "our true enemies' return." And we saw how Lennox was covertly helping to obtain information which led Optimus and a team of NEST operatives to Chernobyl.

Most of the problems from that movie remain. This time the movie is over-long, to boot. Apart from Optimus Prime, Sentinel Prime and Megatron, for the robots there was barely any characterisation. I could hardly recognise one robot from the other. Particularly when they're always running around, doing acrobatics and falling to pieces. The G1 cartoon is much derided for childishness and cliches, yet it did a far better job at characterisation than this mush. It's like the movie was only aimed at being very very fast and full of shooting and running.

Yeah, on the whole I'd agree with this. The G1 cartoon really didn't do much for characterisation - this was better done in the G1 comics. The G1 cartoon essentially created caricatures rather than characters -- but even shallow caricatures are better than hordes of anonymous robots! At least we knew the names of all the Transformers who appeared in the G1 cartoon.

There is a select number of Transformers who have had characterisation - in DotM we notably saw characterisation in Sentinel Prime. But there are heaps more that didn't. And while a movie will never have time to flesh out every character that appears on screen, it should continue to develop a select cast of characters.

Expanded universe stuff like the comics should then be fleshing out on the other characters that the films didn't get time to shed enough light on (e.g. Boba Fett - a pretty minor player in the Star Wars films yet a legend in SW expanded universe), and not patching up continuity holes and errors.

Without bothering with anything else, other than undergraduate jokes and smutty shots of the latest sex object in the film.

I thought that this was toned down a lot more in this movie compared to previous ones. I found that the norti jokes were either:
+ brief and then allowed the story to move on instead of lingering, or...
+ where it lingered it was at least contributing to the story. e.g. the toilet scene with Jerry and Sam -- okay, it's silly toilet humour and stuff, but at least it was part of the plot (i.e. it allowed Jerry to covertly give Sam information without drawing attention from Laserbeak (and we saw what Laserbeak thought about that).

It seems the maker of the film doesn't understand that action and shooting doesn't make a good film. It needs a good story and good dialogue and interaction to make people get involved in it and care. I'm afraid this one failed utterly. I barely could tell who was getting destroyed let alone care about it.

Effects are merely a story-telling tool. At the end of the day, you still need to be telling a good story. And the audience needs to make an emotional investment in the characters in order to care about them. As you said, the audience actually needs to give a hoot about who lives and dies.

The first movie did a decent job of this with Bumblebee. So much so that I continued to care about him in this movie too - like when Soundwave was about to execute Bumblebee, that was a pretty tense scene. I've spoken to others people - including non TF-fans, who thought that was a really edge of your seat tense scene - and it's only because the audience cares for Bumblebee. Quejack's execution, as brutal as it was, didn't have the same impact as when we thought Bumblebee was gonna get killed - or even when Ironhide bought it. How many of us watched Ironhide rust away and thought, "Nooo!" Ironhide may not have been the best developed character, but at least he had some characterisation - especially if you found his death more upsetting than Que's.

How many of us felt relieved when Que died?

The inclusion of the humans, trying to get more audience involvement I suppose, didn't work for me. It just seemed so unrealistic that they even lasted a second against the robots, particularly Sam when he was being thrown around on that cord by Starscream.

I dunno... one thing I've liked about the film franchise is that they don't treat the Transformers like Gods - as they often are in other mediums where human technology seems completely ineffectual against Cybertronians. While the Transformers are super robots, they aren't indestructible - and while humans are physically frail, human technology isn't something to be laughed at either. And the first movie did go into explaining how some of their weapons could harm Transformers (i.e. high heat rounds). And it would make sense that after years of combating Decepticons, NEST - an organisation purpose-made to combat Decepticons - would equip themselves with weapons that would harm Decepticons. And furthermore, their training would also reflect that. I like how DotM showed that scene where Bumblebee was training with NEST operatives where they talked about how to take out a Decepticon - and as Sky Shadow mentioned before, we see the humans using new tactics like taking advantage of their smaller size to get in close and plant explosives.

And this tactic isn't entirely new either - in martial arts it's common for fighters with shorter limbs to use in-close tactics whereas those with longer limbs use longer range "telescoping" strikes.
e.g.
A short-range throw used from Japanese Judo
A long-range telescoping kick from an African martial art

And Megatron failing to kill his girlfriend like an ant, as he should have. It would have been better if as per G1 it was mostly focusing on the robots and leaving humans as cannon fodder!

Perhaps he had enough momentary respect for her at that moment so that he decided to spare her miserable life. That was the feeling I got when he was about to crush her, but then balked.

[Lord_Zed]

Another gripe, I don't see the reason to give Transformers machine guns. They are aliens. What chance they would use projectile weapons as similar to ours as that? They are far advanced, and should be using lasers.

To keep up with the times maybe? Recent future weapon research has shown laser weapons to be impractical and inefficient, as they would need insanely big batteries to generate enough heat to do significant damage. While I suppose TF's may have access to such energy sources, advanced ballistic weapons and railguns would be a more viable choice for an advanced race.

I do wonder what happened to all the the Pulses, EM, and magnetic weaponry they had in TF 1 though, they seemed to have lost it all.

I dunno... one thing I've liked about the film franchise is that they don't treat the Transformers like Gods - as they often are in other mediums where human technology seems completely ineffectual against Cybertronians. While the Transformers are super robots, they aren't indestructible - and while humans are physically frail, human technology isn't something to be laughed at either. And the first movie did go into explaining how some of their weapons could harm Transformers (i.e. high heat rounds). And it would make sense that after years of combating Decepticons, NEST - an organisation purpose-made to combat Decepticons - would equip themselves with weapons that would harm Decepticons. And furthermore, their training would also reflect that. I like how DotM showed that scene where Bumblebee was training with NEST operatives where they talked about how to take out a Decepticon - and as Sky Shadow mentioned before, we see the humans using new tactics like taking advantage of their smaller size to get in close and plant explosives.

I agree with this, for one thing if TF's are gods then why have alt mode disguises? And the value of combat experience should never be underestimated. Sure most of the Decepticons are probably veterans of their war too, but I'll bet few of them actually had any experience fighting small enemies like humans, I could see the cons being pretty overconfident and underestimating the humans (they always did in the toons too).

[SofaMan]