Ambush Bug here. I wish I could agree with my AICN brethren and heap loads of praise onto Michael Bay’s latest effort in robots that are more than meets the eye. I wish I could say that Bay listened to your cries of dismay over the last two films when you watched two dogs humping and racist versions of robots babbling like loons take up time that should have been spent making us care about these Autobots and despise their evil enemies, the Decepticons. I wish I could say that this TRANSFORMERS fan of old was pleased to finally see the TRANSFORMERS film I’ve wanted since I bought my first transformable toy (a Jazz figure, by the way). But the only thing I can say about this latest version of TRANSFORMERS is that it is the best of the three films. Then again, that’s kind of like saying it is the most enjoyable time out of the three times I closed my balls in a drawer.
Everything you all complained about (everything I complained about), is still present in TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. The ultra-annoying parents, the babbling LeBeouf, the unfunny dog humor, the robots only there for comedic purposes, the paycheck grabbing John Turturro (joined by an obviously equally desperate for funds John Malkovich and Frances MacDormand), the convoluted plot, the confusing looking robots doing confusing shit to one another, and the ‘splosions, the ‘splosions, the ‘splosions. If you’re going into this one thinking you’re about to see the TRANSFORMERS film you’ve always wanted to see while banging those toys together in your youth in the sandbox –which was stupid because sand never came out of those damn things no matter how many times you tried to wash them out and then you’d lay them in the sun to dry and they’d rust or the stickers would fall off and then all the kids laughed at you because your Transformers toy sucked…sorry…where was I? Oh yeah, if you’re expecting that type of experience, you’re going to be disappointed.
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is another bloated Michael Bay film with less of the annoying aspects of the last two. If I described this film to you, would you find it interesting? A young man has difficulty finding a job. Once living a life of adventure, he’s having a tough time acclimating to the normal life and must please his parents and his super model girlfriend and look for employment. Soon, the young man gets a job in a mailroom and finds out that his girlfriend’s boss is trying to woo her. Doesn’t sound like a TRANSFORMERS film, does it? Well, that’s the first half of this movie in a nutshell. Yes, everything gets blowed up real good at the end, but the focus here isn’t Chicago getting decimated or Cybertron getting pulled to earth or the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. The focus once again is on Shia The Beef. Yes, I understand that there must be a human factor to these films. Yes, I also understand that some folks seem to think that there has to be an everyman character in these films to babble and say how wicked awesome or wicked uncool everything is. The thing is though, that character wasn’t in BATMAN and folks could relate. There wasn’t an annoying kid in THOR (ok, Cat Dennings was that person, but she had a minor role and she is forgiven because she’s hot), and folks were able to understand the powers of the gods and *gasp* some of the gods had personalities. Imagine STAR TREK, only you don’t get to really see a lot of Kirk and Spock and Bones. The story just follows some Justin Bieber-like noob as he stumbles through the Enterprise and shit blows up around him. That’s what all of the TRANSFORMERS films are like, and this one too.
Here, once again, though the title of the film is TRANSFORMERS, it ain’t their movie. Only droplets of character are sprinkled into Bumblebee. Optimous Prime juts in and out of the plotline and most of the time; no one knows where the hell he is. Megatron has a moment in the beginning and a moment at the end and that’s it. Sentinel (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), probably gets the most lines (aside from the annoying comedy-bots, more on them later), but even his story is tertiary compared to the main point of this film—which is that The Beef needs a job and his hot out of his league girlfriend is being wooed by her boss. Yes, by the end of the film, the Transformers get some extended action sequences, but for the first half of the film, it is loosely laced together and might as well be two completely separate films. That said, as things start merging together (the plot for the Decepticons to bring Cybertron to earth and of course the even more earth shattering question, “Will The Beef’s Victoria’s Secret model girlfriend open her eyes and see she’s dating him?”) there is no reason for The Beef or the hot girlfriend to be there other than to get in the way of explosions and robots fighting. The closest thing to character and variety between these robots are the awful accents some of them have. I’m not sure why there’s an Autobot with a French accent or two with Scottish accents that would make Mike Meyers blush. But they’re front and present….
Don’t get me wrong. Rosie Huntington-Whitely is hot. You would be correct in assuming I would like to wear her ass as a chinstrap. But forgive me. When I see TRANSFORMERS in the marquee, I want to see robots beating the shit out of each other. And we got that here, but only interspersed between extended segments of The Beef huffing and puffing and Huntington-Whitely falling from the Sears Tower, skidding down the side of buildings, climbing down fire escapes, and running through decimated streets…IN HIGH HEELS!!!! I shit you not. The chick wore high heels while falling from a building and evading an alien robot invasion for about forty minutes of screen time toward the end! Ree-donkified!
But the thing is, through the years and through many cartoons, comics, and toy ads, the Transformers have developed some cool personalities. There have been entire story arcs focusing on the intricate war between these two warring armies. You wouldn’t know it here though. It’s just shit blowing up and metal clanging metal. I understand why Bay decided once again to focus on the humans rather than the robots. Again, the designs of the robots are awful. They are just too complex, too many gears, too many parts; most of the time you can’t even make out faces. How can folks relate to something that looks like a TV dropped from ten stories? Had they simplified the designs and made the Transformers a little less visually complex, maybe the audience might want to get to know them. Maybe Bay would have been able to make getting some kind of story focusing on them to be convincingly interesting. All I’m saying is that it’s hard to relate to a character when you can’t even tell what or where the hell its face is.
Bay at least tries to make this story a bit more interesting than the last two. Lacing the Transformers war into American history was a good move. There are real moments of wonder at the beginning as the astronauts discover the crashed battleship on the moon’s dark side (we all saw it in the trailer, so I won’t label this with a spoiler). As I sat there and saw Neil Armstrong and the rest of the astronauts make their way across the moon’s surface and into the expansive ship, I actually thought Bay was going to get this right and hype the otherworldly aspects of these visitors and their first contact with earth. Then the two comedy bots showed up and I was reminded I was in a Bay film.Though the audience I sat with wallowed in laughter at these two robot equivalents of PAUL BLART: MALL COP, they are only slightly less African American sounding as the two robots who made such an uproar in the last film, every time the two spindly bots are onscreen I was waiting for at least one groaner and got two. Why so much time was spent on them and not more interesting Transformers, I have no idea.
There were cool parts. This is the first summer movie I’ve seen this year that warrants and takes full advantage of being in 3D. The layers of action and motion in this film are pretty damn astounding at times. The final extended battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons with my poor Chicago in the middle was pretty fantastic to behold. Though it was just faceless robots beating the crap out of each other and shooting shit, at least it all looked really good. Shockwave’s snake creature-mobile which slithers and digs its way though the ground and buildings and just about anything was fantastic to behold (though I do wonder why these robots drove vehicles when…they…themselves…can turn…into vehicles…ugh, never mind). The caverns of the downed battleship on the moon were equally spacious and expansive due to the 3D. If you see any 3D film about a boy trying to find a job so he can impress his out of his league girlfriend, uhmm…this would be that 3D film to see, I guess.
I don’t want to give away too much about the ending, but I have to mention that the film does end abruptly. The entire last forty minutes shows the utter annihilation of Chicago with multiple deaths of civilians and robots alike (which I’ve gotta give Bay credit for actually showing folks perishing in this onslaught). And then, the film just kind of ends with a quick speech. It’s almost as if the show went on until there wasn’t anything else left to blow the shit out of and then Bay said, “OK, cut. That’s a rap!”
I don’t mean to be a hater. I want to see an awesome TRANSFORMERS movie. There are moments of cool all over this film, but only shreds of TF character to apply them to. The last 30-40 minutes are absolutely thrilling and would have been more so had I known the names of some of these warring bots. If Bay would just lay off of all of the forced humor, do a little research, and actually understand that the robots themselves could actually be characters in all of this, maybe he could make a decent TF movie. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bitter. To me, TRANSFORMERS should be about Transformers. To me it should be a semi truck charging toward me with a roaring engine with all of the twisting gears, bellowing smoke, and piston pumping action all up in our faces. Instead we got a lame comedy vehicle in disguise…Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole / wordslinger / reviewer / co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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