Year:  2011 Country:  United States Studio:  Paramount Runtime:  2 hrs. 37 min. Rated:  PG-13 Directed by:  Michael Bay Written by:  Ehren Kruger Starring:  Shia LaBeouf Starring:  Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Starring:  Peter Cullen (voice) Starring:  Leonard Nimoy (voice) Similar Films: 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers

Transformers: The Movie

Battle: Los Angeles

An improvement upon ‘Revenge of the Fallen,’ but not by enough.

It’s no secret that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the predecessor to this film, was severely flawed. I know it, you know it, even those who made the film have admitted it. But therein lied the hope for the third and final Transformers film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Since it was unanimously considered to be bad, the filmmakers had a lot to learn from it and plenty of criticism to turn to for direction. Unfortunately, it seems that they took only one or two lessons from the experience when there were many more to be had. There are no humping robots or out-of-body experiences this time around, but there are still pacing problems and character inconsistencies without the right kind of action to make up for it all.

Roughly four years after the events of Revenge of the Fallen (or however long it took main character Sam Witwicky to graduate college), Sam has moved in with a new supermodel-like girlfriend, Carly, and is engaging in the humbling task of trying to find a job. After eventually succeeding in his job search, he finds himself confronted by someone who knows of his involvement with the Transformers. This individual also has a warning: the Decepticons are after something on the moon. With this and numerous other developments to follow, Sam is once again pulled into the war between the two opposing sides of the Transformers race. The Decepticons, it turns out, are unfolding a plan to enslave the human race on their home planet of Cybertron, and one Autobot buried in the moon, Sentinel Prime, is the key to enabling them to do so.

The first half of Dark of the Moon is about Sam’s struggle to find his place in the world, coupled with his borderline depression stemming from the thanklessness that has pervaded his existence after being a vital component of the Autobots’ ability to save Earth on two occasions. Sam’s job situation eventually ties into his coming back to help save the world once again, but in this lengthy setup to the action-laden second half of the film, we speed through plot developments as if watching an extremely long movie trailer. Plot points are given only the most cursory exposition before jumping to the next link in our race to the action, crucial new characters are given the briefest of introductions, and we can go from everyday dialogue to all-out robot battles in seconds. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with what is happening, much less relate to Sam during the events.

During the latter half of the film, there are plenty of action scenes, but, for the most part, they are not the kind you want to see when you watch a movie with “Transformers” in the title. Most of the action consists of the human characters trying to survive particularly dangerous situations brought upon them by the Decepticons. Sure, there are Autocon/Decepticon battles, and some of them are actually pretty awesome, but there are not nearly as many as there should be. Most often, we’re watching Sam being tossed around in ways he shouldn’t survive or running and hiding from robots from which he shouldn’t be able to escape. This movie needs more scenes like its Transformer freeway battle, or the final fight between an axe-wielding Optimus Prime and the chief antagonist.

Dark of the Moon has even bigger problems when you take the two halves of the film as a whole. It runs through the setup like a commercial, so there’s no way to relate to the human characters. Then when we get to the action, most of the scenes are centered on those characters. But, there’s no reason to care what happens to them because we ran so fast through the setup. At the same time, we’re frequently deprived of the robot-based action we came to see. Furthermore, in the end Sam’s personal struggle is never resolved. He helps save the world again, but it is this very heroism that has fueled his feelings of thanklessness. The general approach to the story just isn’t right.

While the humor in Dark of the Moon does not as frequently reach the juvenile levels to which it often fell in Revenge of the Fallen, the points at which this juvenility does occur mar the generally serious tone the film tries to achieve. Sam keeps two small Transformers as political refugees, and it’s difficult to understand why because all they do is spy on his alone time with Carly and complain about being treated like pets. Some of the larger Transformers are hardly better. One of them resembles an elderly man with glasses, speaks with a tired voice, and doesn’t contribute to the film in any way. Another resembles an obese human. Yes, one of the Autobot soldiers has a chin so large it hides his neck, and a metal belly that sways between his knees when he walks. Combine elements such as these with a handful of characters that exist almost solely to act in awkward ways that only a child could find humorous, and the urgency of the film comes to a halt on multiple occasions.

There are two particular moments in the film that stand out as the most problematic. One would be a spoiler to discuss in full, but it involves Optimus making an offer that we later learn made absolutely no sense for the other character to refuse. The worst, however, is an act of Optimus’s that completely ignores the basic qualities of his character. At one point in the film, the Autobots willfully leave Earth after the United States government orders them to do so (thinking they bring with them more problems than they can help solve). Soon after this, the Decepticons completely destroy the city of Chicago – the entire city – as part of a plan to bring their own planet into our sun’s orbit and enslave mankind. It is no surprise that the Autobots return to save us, but Optimus’s reasoning for allowing Chicago to be wiped out before their doing so is inexcusable: “Your leaders needed to understand that the Decepticons will never leave your planet alone,” he says. So, what we have is Optimus Prime, the most virtuous character in Transformers mythology – and one of the most virtuous in all of pop culture – allowing an entire city to be destroyed to prove a point. No. That is not Optimus Prime.

From nearly the beginning of Dark of the Moon when we see Sam’s mini Transformers, it seems that too much of the mentality that when into Revenge of the Fallen is still, unfortunately, present. As the film progresses through an alternatingly incomprehensible and problematic plot, juvenile attempts at humor, and far too few Transformer-on-Transformer action scenes, any suspicions regarding the Revenge of the Fallen mindset are confirmed. The first Transformers was a great sci-fi action film because it provided magnificently designed robots, awesome robot action in heavy doses, a script that kept things simple, and no desire to appeal solely to preadolescent notions of humor in its funny moments. Revenge of the Fallen neglected nearly all of those qualities, and now Dark of the Moon takes a small step closer to the first film while retaining most of the qualities of the second. There are a few exciting and intense scenes in this movie, but there are still too many problems accompanying them.

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