Review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) by John H — 26 Jan 2015

Transformers: Dark of the Moon a third instalment of the film series. The story takes place in 1960's featuring the 1969 man to the moon mission following a mysterious crash landing on the moon. They discover a alien craft from Cybertron and have kept it a secret for decades. In the present Sam and the rest are doing their own thing in life and wasn't long before the Transformers discover a engine part that was part of the ship that crashed on the moon and was kept by the Russian so they can understand it. It wasn't long before they found Sentinal Prime known as "The Technologies Inventor", but it was only later on where he remembers making a deal with Megatron to reborn Cybertron. The Autobots will need to find a way to stop the Decepticon invasion before the Earth is taken over.

I went into the third instalment with low expectation after the disaster from Revenge of the Fallen. After watching it I felt it to be a massive improvement from the second film. The film took a slightly interesting in terms of its story, the character choices, the voice casting and some quite interesting darker tone added it. The musical score from Steve Jablonsky really help the dark tone that was added, especially when it came to Shockwave's theme where it added some fear to the character.

The visual effects and the 3D dimension is undeniably impressive, it look believe and made you feel closer to the action. The action sequences including the fight scene from the Transformers is very good to watch.

The story was okay but it could have been better in some way. Personally I was hoping for more time with the Transformers than the humans. The performances from the human characters are alright, however, with Rosen Huntington-Whiteley, she was just awful and unbearable most of the time. The Transformers cast though was fine honestly.

The biggest problem was the films title, the story idea, some character development, some of the acting, the scripting and admittedly some parts of the musical score.

Linkin Park's Irscendent is very good but the song tone was properly use too much and I don't like it when stuff it over used, it becomes boring afterwards. When I first heard the title "Dark of the Moon" I was thinking that the story could involve Unicron being the moon and was spying on Earth for years. But we only saw at least three moment that involved the moon which is misleading personally. The story focuses on the humans too much and not enough of Transformers. Some character were really disappointing especially Shockwave who was meant to be a badass Decepticon but wasn't in the film a lot, ruffly about 2-5 minutes. Shockwave is one of my all time favourite villains and not to see him in the film a lot really upsets me; plus what didn't help was Frank Walkers portrayal for Shockwave and Soundwave, it was hideous. I was expecting a darker and better slightly younger voice from him in the future.

The acting was okay but there were some that couldn't act and just didn't feel they should be part of this film. The scripting was okay but some of the grammar didn't quite work and there line where it made you feel that it was unnecessary for that line.

Overall the film showed massive improvements from the sequel, bring in some darker tone to the story along with the score from Steve Jablonsky. Along with the visual effect and 3D shot. But the some undeveloped Transformers, along with some average-poor acting, poor scripting and misleading title not helping the film story make much sense.