Tranformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers is a franchise purely driven by merchandise and profit. Whether it's toys, cartoons, or movies the dollar is the bottom line. There have been good and even great Transformers media, however the Michael Bay film series I believe is not an example of said good media, and the latest installment Dark of the Moon is my candidate for worst film of 2011. Even when a series exists for the sake of making money, at the end of the day it should earn our money and entertain. This is something Dark of the Moon fails to do.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the third in the Michael Bay trilogy about the Autobots and Decepticons (aliens from a planet called Cybertron) civil war that spills over to earth. At least, that's what the supposed plot in a nutshell is. In reality, our main attraction takes a back seat to Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) and the rest of the human ensemble. Something that in theory could have worked, but Transformers 1 and 2 showed us that when humans are involved in the Cybertronian war, it becomes less about the fate of Cybertron and earth and more about Sam trying to score with hot chicks.

The Human cast as a whole in this film isn't bad. The characters are mostly one dimensional but they are fun to watch. The characters in the military while stock, feel like they belong in the story. Shia Lebouf's....not so much. Sam Witwicky was a main character in the first two films but in Dark of the Moon his story is over. It’s even mentioned in the film by several characters that he isn’t needed but he’s dragged into the story just so there so the audience has an average Joe to relate to while the robots fight. The main problem being that the robots in this film is not only sentient, but they come off more relatable and human than the human cast.

Going through the entire roster of the Cybertronians would take up the entire review. One of the few things this film does right is have a large group of Autobots and Decepticons. Now, while this is purely for fans of previous Transformers installments, it’s a welcome change to the mostly human driven series. So let’s look at the leading sides of the Autobots and Decepticons. The previous two films did a great job of showing Optimus Prime as a hesitant warrior, but great leader that cares not only for his comrades but also just the innocents that may be caught in the crossfire of the war. In this film it’s explored, but not much by introducing his mentor Sentinel Prime. What should have come off as a mentor/mentee passing of the torch sub plot, we get one or two scenes where both bots argue about who will be leader before a later plot twist changes the established relationship.

The Decepticons are even more disappointing. For three films they were built up as this threat and yet they’re almost entirely in shadow in this film. Their leader Megatron maybe has a whopping 3 scenes before the credits role. The film tried to rely more heavily on that the audience knew who these characters were, instead of establishing any new motive or character development. This is a problem as Megatron shows up in the middle of the film with a new look in Africa in hiding. There’s a running subplot of Megatron recovering from his loss at the end of Revenge of the Fallen that like the Optimus and Sentinel subplot goes nowhere. We see glimpses of things that would make for a great movie but in the end disappoints. This is sad not only because the potential plot aspects, but the Decepticons are very interesting antagonists. Several new Decepticons are introduced in this film and all have great designs, and look menacing but they either get killed off with no real fan –fare or just forgotten about.

Of course we can’t talk about our Cybertronian characters without talking about special effects. Michael Bay brings his usual to the table. The explosions and action scenes are good and fun to watch. The CGI for the Autobots and Decepticons look good however, the robots seem more like set pieces and even when they’re tearing up city blocks they don’t seem to have weight. This is odd considering the robots have more character and better storylines than the humans. You know you’re doing something wrong when the CGI characters in your film can be better than your human characters and at the same time worse.

This leads to Dark of the Moon’s main problem. There are good ideas in this film, but they never lead anywhere. Watching Sentinel and Optimus Prime converse about leadership and their own philosophies should have been a poignant and emotional moment that leads to better things in the film. Instead, the movie introduces interesting concepts and ideas but pushes them aside to focus on the weak Sam Witwicky story. I didn’t watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon with hating it in mind, but when the credits rolled I felt disappointed and bored. Have I seen worse films? Yes, but no film, especially this year made me want my money back more.