Review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) by Mikeambs1012 — 01 Jul 2011

Not only is Transformers: Dark of the Moon the best of the series, but it's diffidently Michael Bay's best work and probably one of the best films so far this summer. Now unlike a lot of people, I like Michael Bay as a director.

Is he great film-maker? No. But he has a lot of ambition, and that's what I respect about him. Michael Bay has made is fair share of good films and some bad films, but I wouldn't call them TERRIBLE films like some people do.

Maybe you can call Pearl Harbor terrible, but that's about it. I happen to like The Rock, Bad Boys 2, Transformers, and The Island. Now the Transformers films are, in average, a good series. I thought the first film was lots of fun, the second was mildly entertaining, it was a bad film but had some great moments.

Now, onto this film. The plot got really incomprehensible at times. Kind of like the second film, it goes all over the place. But this isn't as a mess as the second film. The plot is actually cooler than that of the second film.

And you know what, as much as a mess this was, I really didn't care. I went into this movie expecting robots kicking each other's ass and a bunch of explosions going off everywhere, and that's exactly what I got.

People need to understand that this film was made to blow the minds of the audience with dazzling 3D effects, jaw-dropping action sequences, and a great new girl. The film has a plot to back up all of the action, but the plot just isn't well executed.

One final thing that irked me as well was the poor character development. There were many new characters that I wanted to get to know more and the film was long enough to get into some of the new characters.

Shockwave, for example, basically had almost no screen time; he pops up in the beginning and does some fighting at the end, and he barely says a word. Hangover's Ken Jeong also has a small role, and he nails it.

He is very funny. The film is written by Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote Revenge of the Fallen. The writing is fine, nuff' said. Many of the same auto-bots in the other films return, such as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee (who is a bad-ass in this film), Ironhide, Ratchet, Sideswipe, and Weelie, along with some new ones including Mirage, Que, Brains, Sentinal Prime (who plays a large role in this film), and the Wreckers.

Also most of the performances are pretty good. Shia Labouf did a great job, as always, as Sam, the new girl Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is great, she can actually act unlike the previous girl. What was her name again? The film also has some strong emotional points with Sam and the robots, which was done really well.

Steve Jablonsky's score is awesome! It's epic as hell and it's really well placed into this film. It somewhat sounds like a mixture between the Inception score and the previous Transformers score. Linkin Park's Iridescent is great, though I think they overplayed the opening of the song way to much in the final hour.

After a first half of plot and dialog, we finally get kicked off into an action-packed second half with a phenomenal car chase featuring The Dreads (three dog-like deceptacons) and the final battle between NEST, the auto-bots, and the deceptacons.

I don't want to spoil a lot of the final battle, so all I'm saying is that it's one of the most epic movie- going experiences you'll ever encounter. It's an all-out war. Nothing else. It's an almost an hour long with lots of fighting and shooting and things blowing up and buildings falling and stuff getting torn apart and everything you'll find in a great summer blockbuster.

This IS the summer blockbuster of 2011. Overall, it doesn't have a well executed plot, but you really won't care when the action scenes come along. Believe me.