Review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) by Alasdair B — 13 Jan 2014

I could honestly care less if critics or snooty film aficionados enjoy or respect Michael Bay's final entry in his Transformers Trilogy; I found it to be about as good as it gets. Having Transformers be a part of my life since age six, it's hard for me not to completely fall in love with this live action counterpart. The whole series has been so ridiculously fun to watch. Even if it has its uneven moments and goofy subplots, these are undoubtedly fun movies. Seeing characters from one of your beloved childhood classics in a real environment is just impressive in itself. The idea of making this concept work for a large audience is almost worth an incredible amount of praise.

When you think of Michael Bay, most people have images of destruction and expensive stunts coming to mind. Now this has got to be a perfect choice for directing a movie centering around fifty foot robots battling in big cities. Michael Bay might not be a Scorsese or Kubrick, but he does make some of the coolest action movies around. While these movies might be weak in story to those unfamiliar with the show or mythology, it excels at having beautiful action sequences. However, I am one of those people that will defend these movies for having great stories. Sure, it's easy to take the concept and characters for granted due to the longevity of the franchise, but this really is science fiction that I enjoy and have respect for. To have an entire world of thinking, feeling robots and have them crash-land on to earth and become shape shifters is genius. Then you have characters like Optimus Prime; pretty much the coolest robot ever created. It's as if John Wayne was turned into a machine and had an endless supply of great one-liners, fighting skills and ideals. Peter Cullen's commanding voice presence only backs up the visual awesomeness of the character. It doesn't stop there though. You have Megatron, who's pure evil concentrated into metal. There's also the loyal and brave Bumblebee and Starscream; a character who uses deceit as his primary function. The list goes on and on and practically every Autobot and Decepticon has their fun attributes. Now the live action movies have managed to take the core of these characters and show them to the greatest ability. I think they've accomplished by showing the best of the original series. Shia LaBeouf continues to be basically the anchor of this franchise and he's probably at his finest in this one. He plays the character of Sam so well and he's so easy to love. All of the cast additions here work really well and fit into the story pretty easily. While having an absent Megan Fox isn't exactly smooth, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley works fine as a suitable replacement. It's also fun having people like Josh Duhmal and Tyrese Gibson doing solid work at this point in the series.

Dark of the Moon has the best of everything when it comes to the franchise. The story has managed to become extremely broad in scope and encapsulates everything that makes for a "popcorn movie" to be worthwhile. However, no one should have to feel ashamed for liking or loving this movie. I almost feel bad for people that only allow themselves to like Transformers on a sarcastic level and make excuses. Dark of the Moon is just a solid movie no matter how you put it. It has just enough of a light tone, extremely high stakes for the characters and just about as much visual beauty as movies can produce. It's been a longstanding judgment that Michael Bay is a moron and all of his movies suck. However, I'm going to always be one of his defenders. He knows exactly what it takes to make a well paced and fun movie. He never steps out of his element and keeps trying to achieve new heights with his projects. Transformers is maybe his most memorable and will undoubtedly survive longer due to it's pre-existing fan base, but I think he's really found a concept and style that works.

In this movie, they basically have everything missing from the other movies that any hardcore fan of Transformers could want. We see the addition of Laserbeak, Shockwave, and a more featured Soundwave. Even more, we get exposed to even more mythology from the Transformers universe. The infusion of Space Bridge technology was just way too much of a geek-out moment.Infusing their story with Earth's history is something that I thought worked extremely well and just made the impact more realistic and interesting.

When it comes to the advancements of 3D technology and CGI, it's hard to beat Dark of the Moon. These robots look even more realistic than they did before and having a 3D backdrop for them to duke it out is just amazing. The attention to detail and ridiculously well planned out fight scenes is just too much to handle at times. If there was any glorification of the Transformers in previous installments, it was nothing compared to this. Every entrance is carefully planned and all the characters are treated with the utmost respect. The addition of robo-blood and even more detailed robo-slayings just added to the already beautiful representation of The Transformers. Now I'm sure there'll be those that just don't see the point of Dark of the Moon, but as a fan, it's probably the most well made in the series and gives the truest representation of the concept and characters. There's always going to be those who just don't get action movies, childhood nostalgia or just fun period in movies.