The Transformers franchise really had nowhere to go but up after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a plodding nonsensical piece of special effects garbage that made no pretense at telling a story and really just sought to throw as much up on the screen as possible. With his second Transformers sequel, Michael Bay went back to the drawing board, fixed a few things, added a few others, changed up the MacGuffin, doubled the scope and called it Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Unfortunately, for almost every positive change he made he screwed something else up, and so while Dark of the Moon is much more entertaining and not nearly as offensive to the senses or good taste, it still has a long way to go to legitimize the franchise as anything other than a special effects enhanced orgasm.
If you ever though it was weird that John F. Kennedy selected a moon landing as the rally point behind the public face of his presidency then Michael Bay has an explanation: Transformers crashed on the moon and the lunar landing was just a front to go up and take a look and bring a few things back. In present day, the evidence of extraterrestrial life gathered from that lunar recon mission has become the subject of an international conspiracy managed by Megatron who lies in wait in the desert for the right moment to make his return. Meanwhile, in the big city, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is feeling the strain of the recession as he struggles to find a job in the tech sector while living with his gorgeous girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) who assists a big time executive (Patrick Dempsey) with ties to just about everything. Sam’s life has become far less exciting as Optimus Prime and the other Autobots have begun working as special ops teams for the US government, a division recently taken over by a new stony agent (Frances McDormand).
Everything goes south when Megatron’s conspiracy goes public and Sentinel, the transformer lying dormant on the moon in the crashed spaceship, wakes up and brings the technology intended to end the war for their home planet to Earth. Suddenly, Earth is occupied by an alien force and it’s up to the Autobots and a troop of humans to bring it all crashing down.
The story is so bloated that it barely moves even as it jumps from one point to the next. Characters will disappear and reappear as the script calls for them with no explanation of where they were or how it is they suddenly arrived where and when they were needed. Similarly, character motivations will shift in and out, with established characters like Optimus Prime doing things entirely out of character and uncalled for (in the last few seconds of the big final fight) and others just have no character whatsoever. Perhaps it’s appropriate that Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replaced Megan Fox as Shia’s on-screen girlfriend, she’s equally incapable of feigning emotion and she’s more an aesthetic choice than an act of casting. Of course, the same is true of Shia, whose inability to do anything than sputter excitedly and scream has made him an intolerable protagonist since the first film.
To give the proceedings credibility, a number of familiar faces pop up including Sam’s parents (Kevin Dunn & Julie White), an obsessed Simmons (John Turturro) and his all-purpose assistant (Alan Tudyk), Sam’s boss (John Malkovich), Ken Jeong as conspiracy theorist at Sam’s new job, and Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson reprising their roles as military men. Granted, Duhamel and Gibson add nothing to the film’s credibility as their characters are nothing but arbitrarily selected soldiers and not actual characters, but John Malkovich and Alan Tudyk are poorly used, if at all. Tudyk, who is incredibly strong as a comic actor, sits on the sidelines for 99% of the film, and even when he sits at the center of a piece of the story, he does little more than smile and nod.
Where the film succeeds is as a CGI sizzle reel. While Bay can’t film a straightforward conversation to save his life, he can create gigantic cinematic diversions that encompass entire cities for the sake of one good take. And he has a lot of good action takes in Dark of the Moon. It’s eye candy from square one. Whether it’s sports cars, Huntington-Whiteley, or huge battles between robotic airships and transforming aliens, Dark of the Moon is all about flash and it’s got that in spades. The Blu-ray presentation is spectacular, the only trick is getting through it without the poor writing and acting making you want to scoop out your eyes with a melon baller.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The practice of having absolutely zero extras on a first-round DVD and Blu-ray release isn’t new, but it’s become very uncommon in the last 10 years as studios saw consumers wise up. The tactic becomes borderline criminal in an age when studios delay NetFlix and other services from having new releases available for rent to encourage purchases. Paramount did it here though, this version of the release has nothing but the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and as a digital copy. Multiple formats are convenient, but they’re no substitute for a loaded release.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is on sale September 27, 2011 and is rated PG13. Action, Sci-Fi. Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Ehren Kruger. Starring Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington Whiteley.
