It’s not uncommon for studios to release a barebones version of a film the first time around, and that’s exactly what Paramount did to make sure impatient fans of Transformers: Dark of the Moon could get their fix right away. Now that the version packed with extras has come along, the truly dedicated fans might be wondering if it’s worth double-dipping, and the patient ones may be curious to know if their wait was worthwhile. The other bonus of waiting was that fans with 3D compatible televisions can now watch the film in the only way that was ever even remotely gratifying: in 3D. Michael Bay was right to go on and on about how fans should pony up the extra cash to see Dark of the Moon in 3D glory, though that was obviously a bit self-serving. The 3D doesn’t actually make Dark of the Moon a better feature, but it does give audiences the one pleasing aspect it has to offer: an added dimension; because the characters and the story sure as hell aren’t giving it to us.
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 itTransformers: 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
“Everything’s much better in this film. It feels magical.” – Shia LaBeouf
If you can’t read the quote above and take it seriously, find comfort in knowing that the expansive extras are comprised mostly of an almost two-hour exploration of the third film starting with how bad the second film was and the cast and crew (Bay included) copping to the mindless and awful behemoth they made with Revenge of the Fallen. It feels like the right first step, but it’s also very much just lip service to a truth that you can tell not everyone agrees with: the first sequel was bad in almost every way. The flimsy condemnation shows its true nature when they move past it right away and start talking about how they made all the same mistakes again, but in a way they thought was awesome because now it was 3D. They have this conversation by discussing everything from new character models, to the huge sets, and even the cast of humans who run about with no real purpose.
We can appreciate how much fun Michael Bay and the crew of Transformers: Dark of the Moon had in creating new characters and deriving their inspirations from other parts of pop and car culture. What’s harder to laugh along with is the like of Lorenzo di Bonaventura gushing over parts of the film that just didn’t work. Conversely, the technical crew of the film, the ones who were actually designing characters, have a more grounded impression of how “cool” the film’s robotic characters are. To a point, the finer points of Shockwave and his visual elements are interesting, but mostly this is a collection of people more enthused with their own work than the rest of the world was.
The funniest part of the presentation is hearing Michael Bay sanitize the reasons for Megan Fox’s departure from the series. It’s painfully awkward to listen to them play nice. It gets even more awkward when Bay tries to convince us he hired Rosie Huntington-Whiteley for any reason different than the reason he hired Megan Fox (to make men drool). Maybe they’ve convinced themselves there’s actually a depth to the stories and characters they’ve created, but the amount of time spent trying to explain away the Fox-Huntington-Whiteley substitution reeks of desperation.
Once you get past that multi-part featurette, the quality drops off precipitously with a basic exploration of shooting in Chicago and a rundown of NASA history as it pertains to the film’s past and present timelines.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is on sale January 31, 2012 and is rated PG13. Action, Sci-Fi. Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Ehren Kruger. Starring Frances McDormand, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Dempsey, Rosie Huntington Whiteley, Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson.
