Review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) by Nick E — 07 Dec 2013

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the best of Michael Bay's Transformers films. Better than the first two. Some call the first better than this, and there are even few who say this is the weakest of the trio (one of them is Mr. Diego John "Hugo fucking sucked" Tutweiller). I disagree. Dark of the Moon is without a doubt the one, truly great entry in this series. I do happen to be a fan of the first two films, but mainly as guilty pleasures. Yes, they have mindless plots, forced unfunny humor, Megan Fox being a pretty bad actress, and other things, but they had an okay protagonist, some good cast members, great action, and top-notch effects. The third one, however, is no guilty pleasure. It's entirely bad-ass.

Dark of the Moon opens on the planet Cybertron with some beautiful special effects and CGI. The Autobots and Decepticons are at war. An Autobot ship, the Ark, tries to escape the Decepticon ship known as the Nemesis. The Ark is carrying a secret cargo. The Nemesis launches some mini-missiles coming out of a rocket at the Ark, destroying it. The Ark escapes Cybertron's atmosphere and lands on the dark side of the Earth's Moon. In 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (the latter enjoyed After Earth), are the first humans to discover the ship. As they go back to Earth, we enter the ship and see the Autobot leader Sentinel Prime, voiced by the original Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. A great opening.

We then enter the present and we meet our protagonist, Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf. I didn't mind LaBeouf in the first two films, but in this film, he improved his acting skills and his character is a bit more mature. Sam is now a college graduate living with his new girlfriend Carly, played by Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Yep, Mikaela, played by Megan Fox, dumped Sam in-between the events of Revenge of the Fallen and this one. Thank God. Megan Fox has no talent. Watching her try to act just makes me want to take a pinecone and fucking eat it. Yeah, yeah, Megan Fox is hot, but where is the performance?

Compared to Fox, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is Sigourney Weaver. Is Rosie a great actress? Well, no, not exactly, but I thought she did a good job with what she was given here in this movie. Not to mention, her character actually...oh, I don't know...serves a damn purpose. Sam isn't working with the Autobots anymore and wants to matter. Carly serves a purpose because he matters to her and that's all he really needs.

To those of you who think the first film is better than this one, compare the two and see who the better actress is. If you believe Fox is the correct answer, you are sorely mistaken. Also, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is hotter than Megan Fox (fucking sue me, butthurt bitches) and her character actually seems like she genuinely enjoys being with Sam, whereas Mikaela seemed like she only wanted to be with him because he has a cool car.

One of the things I like about this movie is how the tone is considerably darker this time around. Don't get me wrong, we get some humor once in a while (mostly political humor; only two raunchy jokes that weren't over-the-top), but aside from that, it's arguably the most serious of the three films. Bay wanted to have the film be darker and include more character development. In that regard, he succeeded somewhat triumphantly. You get murder assassinations, betrayal, mass murder, death, and destruction everywhere. What helps is that the story is interesting and kept revealing something new as it moved on, and the plot, much to my surprise, makes sense for the most part.

The action sequences and special effects are orgasmically awesome. Every action scene is shot smoothly and is very elegant. Hell, this film is a straight-up war movie. The scene with the building collapsing should've won Holy Shit Scene of the Year at the Spike TV Scream Awards. I was speechless. The scene with Optimus going around tearing apart every Decepticon in the streets of Chicago and finally stabbing through Shockwave and tearing out his eye socket was fucking epic. Michael Bay topped every action scene he's ever filmed with this movie, especially the last 45-60 minutes with some highly stylized camerawork. The 3D used for the film was great and is by far some of the best 3D I've seen since Avatar.

FINAL SCORE: 8.5/10.

This is certainly a flawed film, but is still a bad-ass, action-packed, highly entertaining summer blockbuster that you'll have a fun time with. Some things in this film are messy, no doubt about that, but this film manages to still keep you on the edge of your seat with how fun and enjoyable it is. It's two and a half hours of very solid sci-fi action entertainment and is not only the best Transformers film, but also the best film Michael Bay's directed since Bad Boys and The Rock.