Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

Michael Bay's first threequel. It should have been Bad Boys.

JoeandChrisO has come full circle. We started this blog because Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was so unbearably bad, we really needed to make fun of it in a public forum. Now, two years later, we get to end with the (hopefully) final film in the disguised robot franchise. It has been a good and incredibly fun run. Thank you all for reading along.

Haha, just kidding. We love movies way too much. And to end on a crapfest like Dark of the Moon would be more depressing than a box full of whimpering puppies.

I got to hand it to Michael Bay. It takes moxie and a little bit of courage to make another film after Revenge of the Fallen. Or it took a very large paycheck, yeah I'm gonna go with the paycheck thing.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon does one thing a little bit better than it's predecessor. They at least try to set up a story. A reimagined history goes like this: we detected a spaceship crash landing on the moon. The US and the Soviets raced to the moon to get to it first. We all know who won that (America). Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin found a crashed Autobot spaceship. Fast-forward to the present. Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) is hanging out with his latest smoking hot girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whitely). Where is Megan Fox? Well, you get written out of the story and called a bitch by smack talking robots several times when you call a part-Jewish director Hitler. Sam's life sucks (except for the Victoria's Secret girlfriend thing) and the Autobots are off doing special ops work. Somehow they became the military's slaves. Through a series of escalating shenanigans by Decepticons, Sam learns that there have been humans working for the Decepticons this whole time trying to trick the Autobots into a nefarious plan. A plan that involves using their previous leader Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) to use some electronic pillar thingies to bring Cybertron to Earth.

There are so many extra plot points that they could have made a fourth movie (not a suggestion, please don't do it.) But the big controversy about this one had to be the whole Megan Fox deal. And the acting abilities of a model who has never acted before. Personally I prefer Rosie. Although she is way too beautiful. She might be CGI. Megan Fox looks like she's dirty. And not the good kind of dirty, the "go take a shower" kind of dirty. Rosie can act. Sort of. She isn't surrounded by anyone really great. Shia is obviously phoning it in. So is everyone else really. John Malkovich has about five minutes of screen time. One less than Ken Jeong. They threw so many actors into this film it's crazy. Ken Jeong, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey, Frances Mcdormand and Alan Tudyk (my favorite). Michael Bay tries to give every one of these characters a back story and it ends up being a fuddled mess where I don't care about anyone. We don't get to know the new robots and Megatron has less screen time than Dempsey.

It all stems from awful writing. They rehired the same guy, Ehren Kruger, who wrote Revenge of the Fallen. Are you serious? The guy who apparently wrote down robot heaven has a better paying job than me? Ludicrous I say. And Shia's character spends a lot of time screaming like a little girl. You'd think he had seen transforming robots before. Guess not. Can't assume too much when we are working with this crowd.

But what's good about Transformers? The visuals, duh. That's why people go to these movies anyways. Screw a coherent story and believable characters GIVE ME EXPLOSIONS. "Gladly," says Michael Bay. Everything that can explode, does. Including people. And probably small animals. The explosions are lovely, I am glad I didn't pay for 3-D though. I have one small gripe with the visuals though. The Decepticons are so lame. Their character designs are cut and paste. There is no originality, no spice or flair or color that the Autobots get. I can't distinguish Decepticons. The strong ones look no different than the weak ones that die after one shot. And their new flying machines, I saw Battle: Los Angeles a couple of months ago guys, give me something new.

Just when I thought there wouldn't be anything new, Michael Bay surprised me. In a move of surprising genius, Bay hired the wing suit guys. Crazy madmen who attach membranes to themselves that resemble flying squirrels. Michael Bay took these individuals and had them fly through a city. It was awesome. Especially when they jumped out of their burning helicopter. Admittedly, it was the absolute worst way to insert troops into a battle zone (five helicopters go in, all blow up) but boy was it cool. Oscar for best stunt goes to them.

Loud, big and probably a mite egotistical, Transformers 3 learned almost nothing from the previous film. If you introduced something in the last film, you should probably use it in the next film. What happened to the terminator girl robot? Or the giant Decepticon that was controlling the international space station? Did they just die? Stupid decisions at every turn. If Patrick Dempsey is the biggest bad guy, your movie might have a few problems. Restart at the first film which still is a decent movie. No wait, don't. I don't want to see any transformers for a long time.

1 star out of 4. Half a star for the wing suit guys and half a star for Alan Tudyk, because I love him.

-Christopher O'Connell

P.S. Dark of the Moon is the stupidest name ever. Does Pink Floyd have the rights to dark side of the moon or something?