Review: Transformers 3

I had the opportunity to sit in a preview screening June 27 of the new Transformers movie, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

I should say straight off that I was not a big fan of Michael Bay’s first foray into Cybertronian lore, and skipped the second movie altogether. But I was a giant fan of the TV show growing up.

 

We see our familiar characters of Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) and Optimus Prime. Sam is fresh out of university and looking hard for a job to stand up with his new girlfriend, Carly, (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), a successful businesswoman. The Autobots are working with the U.S. government, doing more-or-less as they are told.

Sam is trying to come to grips that, while he has saved the world on two occasions, that doesn’t get him a job, if no one knows about it

. He is separated from his robotic companions – and any chance of their importance rubbing off on him – by the government.

Things start to take a turn for the sinister when the Autobots learn of the true reason for the space race in the 1950′s and 60′s – a crashed alien ship on the moon.

The plot is surprisingly deep for an action film. Along with the space race and the true intentions behind it, we learn the real reasons for the Chernobyl disaster, and political intrigue abounds with the various human factions vying either for power or just for survival. The plans of the Decepticons, when they finally come to light about half way through the movie, are a surprise. So are the plans of the Autobots.

All these machinations culminate in the hour-long climax of the destruction of the city of Chicago. Civilians are seen getting mowed down and disintegrated by an army of robots and their towering ships. The opening parts of this battle are where the movie truly shines, showing all the glorious disaster-porn we have come to expect from our summer blockbusters.

My criticisms are many, but most aren’t original just to me; most movie critics have voiced them elsewhere, and these don’t need to be delved into. There are some scenes where the hell-bent action simply stops for no good reason and lingers on certain characters. One instance with Starscream and Sam simply refused to end, when it could have been taken care of quickly and with much more impact.

The characters played by John Malkovich and Ken Jeong are funny and interesting but last only one or two scenes. Malkovich in particular simply shows up in his second scene, then disappears, as if he wanted to be in the film more, rather than the plot calling for it. Ken Jeong is his typical funny self but quickly exits stage left, pursued by a Decepticon. Huntington-Whiteley, a replacement for Megan Fox, serves the exact same purpose as her predecessor – get captured and saved, looking good while doing so. Her one defining moment, in the closing minutes, with the Decepticon leader, Megatron, was one of the most logically-offensive scenes in the movie.

Megatron, ostensibly the villain, has about as much facetime as Malkovich and Jeong. The largest sum of time (outside of explosions and the large, set-piece destruction of Chicago) is spent on a new character, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nemoy), the original leader of the Autobots, whose lost invention may finally end the robots’ civil war.

I don’t want to seem like this was a ‘bad’ movie. It wasn’t. At no point was I really bored, and as long as I focused on the explosions, things went pretty well. But by far and away the best part of the movie was the 3D. This was the best application I have ever seen – it added depth where there should be depth, and that was about it. There were little subtle things that would come toward you, like a floating piece of paper or bits of a building, that add to the perception of depth.

Written by: Jon