Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I'm sorry if this review seems rushed, but I wrote it in about (literally) 2 and a half hours.

I want to tell you right off the bat, I had high hopes for Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Sure the first film was mediocre, but it was also kind of enjoyable, and even though the second film was an absolute train wreck from beginning to end hell, nobody is perfect. So when I heard this film was coming out to somewhat positive reviews my ears began to prick up a little bit. People began to say that this film was the best of the three films, and that Bay had toned down his use of the shaky-cam enough to where you could watch the film and NOT feel like you were having a seizure. So I let my hopes kind of rise a bit, I mean I loved Transformers as a kid, and the idea that this was going to be a big budget action movie with a cool story and flushed out autobots for a change made me a little excited. So I rented the movie, made a tub of popcorn, and sat down with the wife to watch the movie.

Oh……………

I didn’t know this film was supposed to be a satire. I didn’t know this film was supposed to be a mirror to reflect everything an action movie SHOULDN’T be, but man did I have that coming. Where do I begin?

The biggest problem I had with the film was the story, or rather, the epileptic construct of a “mock” story. Nothing in the film made ANY sense, it was just a series of clean, crisp, colorful images put together by a first year film student to piece together long and intense action sequences. Critical plot points are glazed over in the span of seconds, and that is NOT an exaggeration. Remember when I did my Twilight review last week and I said the only thing the film had going for it was that at least the scenes were constructed to explain what was going on in the film? Well this film with it’s $400 million dollar production budget (I didn’t make that up) and it’s nearly three hour run time failed to accomplish even THAT simple objective.

Getting back to the biggest problem though, is its utter confusion at how to properly handle important plot points. Here’s an example that stood out in my mind. So Sam and John Turturro find out the most important thing ever, they find out the Decepticons have collected these doomsday devices and they’re gonna use them to kill us all. Basically, how the good guys plan to manage this information would require a series of short scenes explaining the game plan to the audience and going something like this in a normal story driven film:

1.       Explanative dialogue discussing the implications of this discovery (1:30)

2.       Scene of Sam and John discussing a battle plan of what to do with this crucial piece of knowledge, allowing the audience to understand the game plan. (1:00)

3.       Scene of Sam talking to CPT Lennox over the phone about an idea. (0:30)

4.       Lennox relays information to autobots, one will likely volunteer to meet Sam (1:30)

5.       Sam meets up with the volunteer and they head to destination (1:00)

That’s just five and half minutes to set up a coherent scene that explains the motivations and actions of the characters and shows how they arrived at a destination. Instead, here’s how the film does it:

1.       Quick gloss over of moon pictures by Russians (0:05)

2.       Sam is on the phone saying “We picked up Sentinal and we’re moving out (0:03)

3.       Arrival at destination (0:02)

The film crammed all that important discussion into ten seconds, leading to a disjointed, confusing scene where the audience is wondering what in God’s name they’re doing. Now you may say “Well if they took that long then the film would be WAY too long”, to which I reply “They didn’t have to waste as much time as they did on pointless parts of the film”. Here are some examples of wasted film, and I am NOT lying about the times:

1.       Nine minutes are spent on slow motion close ups of girlfriend #2 and her grotesquely over-inflated lips.

2.       Two additional minutes are spent on an initial close up of said girl’s ass.

3.       Nearly fifteen minutes are spent in useless dialogue with Sam’s parents (there was one good joke however)

4.       Nineteen minutes are spent on a side-plot involving an autobot spaceship that ends up going nowhere.

5.       Eleven minutes are spent focusing on girl #2 and Sam’s s**tty relationship

6.       The last eighty minutes of the film focus on the climax.

EIGHTY MINUTES! This film wasted eighty minutes on one action scene, and while yes, this is an action movie and this is the most important part of the movie you didn’t need to drag it on for eighty god damn minutes and create a scene that became boring around the twenty minute mark. The point is…

SPOILER ALERT!

 the doomsday device is destroyed, bad guys lose, and Optimus beats Sentinal. You could have gotten all of that in around twenty minutes, like the first film did.

END SPOILERS

Dragging this scene out for that long detracts from the crucial time you could have spent developing the story into something more than a disjointed, confusing mess. At one point during the film my wife turned to me and asked if I understood what the f**k was going on, and she pointed out that it felt like huge chunks of story were lobotomized from the film to make way for bigger ‘splosions. As a result of this strange compressing and expanding of the wrong film elements we are left with important scenes that are squeezed way too small and action scenes that are stretched way too long. What’s even worse is that some elements of the story were actually really cool, it felt like this film might have had a decent writer pen out a real story at one point, but when he went to see his movie in the big screen with his family he was tearing out his hair in fury at what Bay had done to his script. If you had met in the middle with these two elements you could have had a breathtaking action film with a great plot, good action, and interesting characters.

Speaking of characters, what the hell is wrong with them? Sam is supposed to be the strong male lead in the film, but instead he comes across as a childish brat. At one point in the film he pulls up to a secret military base, and when they tell him he can’t go in he screams like a girl and starts flailing his arms like a child throwing a tantrum. I am not s**tting you, that actually happened in the film, and I expected him to start screaming “I WANT IT I WANT IT!” during this scene. He is utterly unlikeable in every sense due to rushed time constraints, and two people in the movie who are supposed to be “dicks” actually appealed to me more than the protagonist.

One of them was John Malkovich, utterly wasted and underused in this film, who explains that Sam “Wants the job ahead of the job he’s getting without actually putting in his time at the job”, which is unwittingly a perfect analogy for this entire flick. It wants to be this great summer blockbuster film about character and story without putting any effort into developing either, it’s like a spoiled rich kid who wants something without putting in the work for it. The other “dick” I agree with is Frances McDormand, also utterly wasted in this film, who is supposed to be a serious jerk because she gets angry that they a two twenty-something year old civilian and his girlfriend into the most secure, top-secret military base and doesn’t want someone who isn’t in the military to be part of military operations. Why is that a bad idea? How is she a jerk for insisting on that?

Luckily, Turturro returned (thank GOD) to his role as a former Sector 6 agent, and he’s joined by the always brilliant Alan Tudyk as his flamboyant assistant. I love me some Alan Tudyk, and the dude can do no wrong in whatever role he plays, but while he makes the most out of his limited screen time and turns in a genuinely great performance (I STILL wonder to this day how things would have played out if he ended up playing the Joker like he was supposed to) it isn’t long before the shitty script has this civilian commanding an operations center. How is this guy at all qualified to run a critical battle? The script does have a brilliant one line excuse for his existence though, and it’s “he’s a whiz with electronics”. Oh, so anyone who has a penchant for C++ can command entire armies in a battle that will decide our continued existence?

Worst of all though, is what they’ve done with the usually well rounded Optimus Prime. Normally he was a moral compass for the group, and took the moral high ground when faced with a tough decision, but in this movie it seems like he just stopped giving a s**t. At one point a turncoat for his side realizes the error of his ways and begs for forgiveness, and Optimus shoots the remorseful and unarmed person in the face. While I myself may not be opposed to capital punishment, Optimus always was in the show and previous movies, and with this simple act (and soooo many more in the movie) we see how the character has fallen from grace.

When all is said and done and the credits roll it just seems like this film is a weak excuse for a summer action film. It feels like a generic, by the numbers, production line assembly film. There’s no emotion to it, no feeling, all it comes down to seems to be Michael Bay ripping off countless other better movies shot for shot, then piecing them together into his cosmic joke. I saw a lot of scenes stolen from a lot of movies in this film, and I don’t mean scenes that are similar to other scenes, but shot for shot remakes of identical scenes. There’s a lot of stunning action in the movie, but one of my favorite shots involving a group of spec ops guys jumping out of a plane was a shot for shot copy from a video game called Metal Gear Solid 3. It doesn’t end there either, I saw scenes ripped off shot for shot from movies including (but not limited to) Back to the Future: Part 2, Inception, Uncharted 2, Cowboy Bebop, The Rock, Apollo 13, The French Connection, Swordfish, and Children of Men. And don’t say that these scenes are supposed to be a homage because they aren’t. If you want to see what an homage looks like watch Paul, because these scenes are a director ripping off ideas and scenes and claiming them as his own, trust me, he’s done this before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts:_The_Clonus_Horror).

Even the music is a rip-off! While I was watching this film I really dug the main theme of the movie, it reminded me of a score I would hear in a much more emotion driven, better written action film. About half way through the movie though I realized that it was FROM a much more emotion driven, better written action film, the score was a total rip-off of the score from Inception! I don’t mean they borrowed the same music, I mean they wrote an entirely new score meant to emulate the dark tone and powerful crescendos of the Zach Hensey’s classic score, complete with the infamous “BWAAAAAAWM” that was mocked so much in the movie. Don’t believe me? Check this out, it will blow your mind.

This is the main over-arcing theme from Transformers, move the slider so the music will start at the 1:06 mark when you hit play, then keep it paused.

This is the main over-arcing theme from Inception, move the slider so the music will start at the 1:00 mark when you hit play, then keep it paused.

Now listen to the Inception piece from 1:00 to 1:50, then immediately start the Transformers piece and listen from 1:06 to 1:56. Yeah, the whole of the two songs are identical too, but that part made me laugh. It seems like all these decisions like butchering the script, bloating the action scenes, ripping off other movies, castrating talented actors, they all come from one man, Mr. Bay.

Now it’s hard for me to pick on Michael Bay, I have friends who have met him and say he’s a super nice guy. He’s patriotic (as is apparent in his movies), loves what he does, loves the military, and can direct some good action sequences. I also think that if he were to change gears he would be one of the best cinematographers or producers Hollywood has ever seen, plus it seems like all I ever do is pick on him. On the other hand, he keeps making it sooooo damn easy to make fun of him! It seems like every single moment that it’s time to have normal character dialogue, plot development, or anything not explosion related, he panics and rushes through it as fast as he can so that he can get back to more action scenes. It’s just lazy direction, and his perpetual making of empty, hollow, meaningless action scenes reminds me of one thing.

It reminds me of a dumb hick sitting at a gas station, complaining about the economy and saying over and over that we can fix this problem by printing more paper money. He doesn’t understand the idea that you need something (emotional connection) to back up the currency (action scenes), and people will try to tell them that this won’t work without a gold currency to back this cash up, but he waves them away with his hand and insists that his stupid theory is right. Well guess what, the dumb hick is starting to prove he was right after all. His plans to direct three stupid Transformer films have now grossed so much money that the studios are now begging him to do a 4 and 5, and WE are to blame. By making these jokes of films box office gold WE have made the decision to keep encouraging studios to abandon brilliant independent projects in favor of this crap, and over time WE will pay the price. Whether you saw this film in theaters or at home is besides the point, all that matters is that there are two people reading this review, people who understand what I’m trying to say (not even agree, but understand), and people who insist that we can fix the economy by printing more paper money.


By the way, let's take a look at that list I made a few months back before I made this review.


1. Sam screams "OPTIMUUUUUUUS!" a lot-Check
2. Extended close-ups of the girl-Check
3. Doomsday machine that's going to kill us all revving up during climax-Check
4. A traitor emerges and tries to screw over the good guys-Double Check
5. Sam runs around in the finale trying to save his girlfriend-Check
6. Lennox jumps in with super special forces to save the day-Check
7. Optimus has to fight new, more powerful villain-Check
8. Optimus has to team up with Megatron to fight new villain-Check
9. Optimus and Megatron fight... AGAIN... Actually no! I missed one, even though he did kill Megatron

I don’t like the fact that I hate these movies, and I know I come off as a hater when I write these reviews, but I refuse to acknowledge that these films are OK action films when there are so many good, interesting, well made action movies out there with a soul to them. You watch a film like Transformers 3 and it feels like the soul of the movie has been removed, like there is nothing to the film other than an insecure and incompetent director just trying to make action scenes, and then you watch movies like The French Connection, Inception, The Dark Knight, and District 9 and you see how simple it is to create an emotional connection with the audience, a connection that makes your action so much more enjoyable and watchable. I remember seeing Transformers 2 in theaters and seeing tons of kids texting during the biggest action scenes in the film, not giving a crap about these dazzling action sequences unfolding in front of them. Shortly after that I saw District 9 in the theaters, and for the entire last half hour of the film I didn’t see a single phone, hear a single purse being shuffled through, or see a single person leave the theater even to use the bathroom, they were so engaged in the film. At the end of the day, it’s all about the emotion, and my emotion is resigned.

4 out of 10