Re: Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Discuss, Grading, Reviews (SPOILE
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?
With the Sentinel Prime bit it's worth remembering that:
A: He's already shown himself to be pretty much better in a fight than Optimus.
B: Has been a complete bullshiter throughout the film.
and
C: Was perfectly happy to kill Autobots who weren't actively fighting him (poor Ironhide).
Prime would have basically been an idiot to give him even the slightest chance. Compare it to a similar scene in the '86 animated film where Prime's slight hesitation over shooting a seemingly defeated and unarmed Megatron gets him killed real good for his troubles.
Generally I've always liked the more pragmatic apporach both sides have taken in the Bay films compared to previous iterations, they're in a fight to the death over the future of Earth, they don't play nice. Indeed, the Decepticons needing reminding by their human stooge that they don't take prisoners was the real out of place moment for me.
Well, once again its starting to look like I'm going to be the lone voice of support for the film amongst my closest family and friends, of the two who've seen it so far about the best they've said for it is they could actually tell what was going on in the action scenes this time. They generally thought all the fun had been taken out of the films and it was too dull and serious apart from a few random moments.
Myself, generally I liked it. Especially how it managed to pull off the tonal shift in showing the occupation of Chicago as a really nasty business with people dying and being generally distressed. Compared to the earlier car chase scene which continued the attitude of the first two of focusing on the cool stuff blowing up rather than any human cost (I mean, how many people would have died in that pile up?) it could have been real mood whiplash, but it still worked.
Cullen, Nimoy and LaBeouf all did the usual good work, the effects were stunning and well thought out (even if there wasn't really a forest fight moment) and the Chenobyl sequence was nicely evocative, even if I wasn't much of a fan of the "aliens did it" angle.
Middling niggles:
I didn't like the mixing of real footage with newsreel in the opening scenes, if only because it showed how much their Nixon and Kennedy stand ins didn't really look like the originals. Not a fan of the whole Apollo angle either, it seemed somewhat demeaning to a genuinely great achievement to suggest it was all to briefly look round a mysterious alien space ship, and I suspect Armstrong will be mildly embarrassed by the whole thing, unlike shameless attention whore Aldrin (and a man who wasn't trusted enough to be the first man off the lander because of his personal problems somehow got picked for a mission so secret he can never talk about it?). People less into the space program will probably not be so annoyed by that though.
And were the other two old NASA guys real people or just terrible actors?
The Wreckers came with the second wave of Autobots, presumably the new characters in ROTF, so where were they during the potentially planet destroying all hands on deck crisis in that film (the other new guys here get a pass as their origin isn't specified and thus could have come in a third or fourth wave)?.
Epps' subplot with rounding up the old NEST troopers felt fairly redundant, he could just as easily still been in active service and part of the advanced NEST scouting party with Sam. Surely he's not such a popular character they thought he needed his own mini-adventure?
The outright bad:
Only two things really:
First, Carly was terrible. She was pretty much exactly what Megan Fox's worst critics accused her of. Insanely badly acted, spent the entire film screaming "SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!" (it'd be interesting to see her have a shout off with Stacy "JAAAAAAAAMES!" Sutton from
A View To A Kill) whilst managing to keep her mostly white outfit virtually spotless in a battlezone, and with none of the proactive go-getter spirit Mikaela had.
The second is Megatron was pretty much wasted again, meaning that in all three films they pretty much wasted Hugo Weaving. The bit where he and Carly (two characters who've never met before- and there's not even any indication prior to this she even knows what Megatron looks like) talk like old acquaintances and she manages to change his mind about his entire plan in about six words even when all his obvious prior doubts haven't done it is just bizarre, did a bit from a draft with Fox in not get rewritten here? And him deciding to kill Sentinel just
before he finishes off Optimus was especially daft, just wait three seconds man.
I'd have probably given Megs the Shockwave role to beef up his part, make the deal between him and Sentinel more even and give him some decent action scenes so him managing to kill SP so easily wouldn't have come out of left field to such an extent.
On a minor note, with Barricade back and the overall sense of the end of an era it might have been nice if it had been him rather than Starscream in the "My eye!" fight, it would have created a sense of things coming full circle to have Sam and Bumblebee up against the Con who first brought them together. Though that's minor as I also like the way that bit turned out.
I was literally shifting in my seat muttering "this is awful!"
