Re: Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Discuss, Grading, Reviews (SPOILE
It was pretty okay. Definitely better than the first two, but still only about a C or C+. (For comparison, I'd say the first was a D and RoTF was an F-, if such a grade were possible.)
Much of the credit for this improvement goes to the story, which was strong enough to survive everything Bay did to dumb it down. In the right hands, the premise of betrayal and double-dealing leading to an alien confrontation in a major American city could have produced an incredible action movie. Indeed, there's enough conceptual heft to the Optimus/Sentinel relationship that Pixar, say, would have no problem integrating it into an Oscar-winning story. Which is certainly not something you can say about either of the previous entries. Alas, however, here it gives us a serviceable but not remarkable summer blockbuster.
One of the larger problems I had was choppy transitions; for example, the start of the Chicago invasion – which is the major shift into the last act – comes out of nowhere, editorially. The bad guys set up their space bridge pillars in Chicago to teleport Cybertron to Earth in a scene which contains giant gobs of exposition the audience needs to digest. For some reason, as soon as they're done talking, we jump-cut to swarms of Decepticon ships in the sky already well underway blowing up the skyline. The hell? I was so entrenched thinking about all the new plot information we'd just been handed that I actually didn't realize for a second that the invasion had started. There were several moments like that, where time felt badly managed, which is inexcusable in a 2-1/2 hour film. Most of the movie managed to feel rushed and padded at the same time, which is no mean feat.
There's also a disturbing bloodlust underlying much of the action, where the Autobots not only kill the Decepticons but seem to take a savage glee in tearing them apart in the most horrific way possible. The final, epic three-way battle featuring Optimus, Megatron and a spoiler character concludes with said spoiler character sprawled on hands and knees, stripped of weapons, armor and most of his head while totaly defenseless and actually begging for mercy...resulting in Optimus cocking his rifle and blowing his disarmed opponent's body apart. It was profoundly unsettling, and made all the worse for being greeted with yelps of glee from the audience. Again, what the hell people?
But that's about all the stuff I hated. To Bay's credit, he does much better job here of managing the innumerable returning characters even while introducing several new ones. Which is not to say the movie needed as many as there were – I can think of four right now that could have been consolidated into two and been stronger for the result – but it's not a dealbreaker. If you've seen any of the previous films, you know that large casts of mostly useless characters is just something he does, and most of them this time out get something constructive to do.
Much of the humor was actually funny (I was especially fond of the photo of Sam receiving his medal from Obama – got a genuine laugh), and that which wasn't was over and gone before it could overstay its welcome. Shia was more focused and far less annoying than in either of the previous movies, and Rosie was inoffensive and not nearly as grating as Megan Fox. They're not good per se, but coming out of two really bad features, "not bad" is acceptable.
There's also more action than there needs to be, and as with all of Bay's previous efforts, I found myself more interested by all the non-action setup than the supposed payoff. But, again, that's kind of to be expected going in and it's hard to complain about it as if we didn't all know it.
Still and all, it's giant transforming robots in a visual effects extravaganza. So if you grew up on Transformers or like that sort of thing, it's well worth seeing – even if you wait for the DVD release and watch it at home.
Oh, which reminds me: the 3D was almost entirely pointless. The only moment of joy it brought me was seeing the inside of the Apollo 11 module with the astronauts and their floating pen. The rest of the time, it was mostly unnoticeable, except for the occasional gimmicky shot, which took me out of the film due it being all gimmicky and stuff. Despite their supposed improvements to the process, I actually had a harder time with this one than I did with either Avatar or Tron. For some reason, it was very difficult to keep the screen in focus and I spent much of the movie with a sense of some kind of filter distancing me from the experience. It was distracting enough that I'm considering going back to a 2D showing at a later date to see if my opinion is affected.