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

[SharkyMcShark]

One of my really good friends is a Transformers fan (non collector, but loves the comics and has read them all) and he disliked the movie.

My other good sci fi/action movie loving mate really liked it.

I'm going to canvas other people as the week goes on.

[Paulbot]

So a quick look shows me there's 16 pages of comments so far. No time to read them at the moment but I thought I'd type up some thoughts of my way back to London. Just in case other people have been vague big spoilers follow

I really enjoyed this and came out smiling and satisfied. I had lowered my expectations after ROTF but was worried that this time the anticipation would leave me disappointed. (Today was the first time I was in a country showing the film in English. Knowing it was out but I couldn't see it had been really frustrating since Wednesday. )

I was delighted by a movie that had a much clearer, better plotted story, raised the stakes in ways ROTF only teased at, included nostalgic nods to classic G1 cartoon episodes (intentional or not), and kept me enthralled through out.

The action scenes were clearer to follow, and a bit more violent; not just the humans being reduced to skulls and the bus of corpses, but also the robots spraying red liquid when damaged. The Michael Bay cheesecake seemed more tongue in cheek, and the car beauty shots didnt take up too much time. Yes I rolled my eyes when we were introduced to Carly via her bottom, but I also laughed at him choosing this for the first scene post title.

I was surprised by how big a role Laserbeak had, how it matched the interrogator role of his G1 tech spec, and his robot/beast mode looked really good. Most of the new non-generic designs were quite nice really. That big green Decepticon is one I'd like a better look at. And look Barricade is back! That was nice. (But Arcee, Jolt, Skids and Mudflap either dead or previously left the planet between movies?).

It didn't bother me that some of the expected G1 name homages didn't play out. This isn't G1. Shockwave got to be a big heavy with a big weapon and was still a challenging threat to take down despite not resembling the G1 character any more than superficially.

I wanted this film to give some explanation as to why anything that leaves Cybertron seems to end up on Earth (the AllSpark, Megatron, the Primes and the Ark? We got half an answer (I assume the Allspark was drawn to the Matrix as the other half of the puzzle) but what an answer! Despite all the threats of Internet spoilers and previewed BotCon footage I had no idea the betrayal was coming and it upset me. I felt a very child like reaction of "I don't want my Sentinel Prime now, He just killed Ironhide, he's not the Autobot I thought he was! ". If the toy was with me I would have thrown it across the cinema in disgust that's how angry I was (but it's safely in Golden Phoenix's care back in Aus waiting for me to calm down). That the movie managed to move me that much gives it extra points.

I'm trying to think of lowlights and mostly there's only really geeky thoughts coming to mind (like why do Decepticons need fighter craft when they can transform into fighter craft). Mrs Witwicky's dirty humor was back to being subtle again and brief. Simmons played a competent role that made more sense for someone who was in command at Sector Seven than Internet conspiracy theorist. I wasn't even offended by the gay panic humour in the office scenes.

Okay I didn't like Laserbeak being such a chameleon/multichanger transformer, and Wheeljack/Q's head was pretty silly, and there's probably a few other plot holes in there that are slowly coming to me as I think about it (why did the Primes go out to the desert and why did Sentinel come back alone ahead of Optimus) and more might come to me as I rewatch it.

In conclusion I enjoyed the finale to the Bayverse and look forward to rewatching it. I didn't think that after ROTF so that makes me happy.