Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Box Office Review - Transformers: Dark of the Moon


The following is taken from my review of of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which was written almost exactly two years ago. “The movie is garbage, the story is terrible, the acting is bad, and the action is hard to watch. I bet Michael Bay is sitting in a stone fortress somewhere, cigar in his mouth, laughing as he burns a huge pile of money Dark Knight style”. While I didn't hate Transformers: Dark of the Moon as much as the second film, this excerpt could easily be used to describe the film.

Lets start with the positive. While I barely remember anything about the first two Transformers films, I am pretty sure that there is less action scenes in this third film involving Transformers fighting Transformers. This is good because it makes the actions scene a bit more coherent. Just like in the first two movies, when there are two massive robots fighting each other, the scenes are a visual mess. Another positive is the skyscraper sequence that takes place near the end of the film. It is easily the most exciting scene in any of the three films. There is some very imaginative things that are done with this skyscraper, and it was the only time I actually sat up and really paid attention to the film. Well, that's about it for my positive thoughts. The majority of the film is a snooze fest.

This film runs just over two and a half hours. That's TWO AND A HALF HOURS. It is the longest film of the trilogy, and for the majority of the run time not much happens. The story is fairly simple, but the film takes an extremely longtime explaining it. Basically the bad Transformers are going to rape and pillage the earth in order to rebuild their home world. The good Transformers are going to stop this. Along they way there is a major betrayal. It takes the film a good hour and a half to get all this information out. It really is excruciating. For the first hour the film develops a pointless romantic conflict between Shia (The Beef) LaBeouf in order to make him seem like he is a relate able guy. What it did, was make me hate LaBeouf's character more than I did in the other films.

As Megan Fox did not return for this film, a new actress was brought in so that thirteen year old boys would have something to look at when there weren’t explosions or robots fighting. This new female addition is first time actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Her job in the film is basically to look attractive, and she does an alright job at this. Michael Bay visually conveys that this is her role early on, by having a shot focused on her derriere long before we see her face. Michael Bay, giving male teens what they want since 2007.

It really is simple to sum up this film. If you liked the previous films, you will probably enjoy this. It is better than the second movie, so it has that going for it. If you didn't like the other films, don't see this. It is as simple as that. My hope is that after this movie, Michael Bay will get back to doing other things. I like more of his films than I dislike, and he probably could have made some more good films if he hadn't been focused on Transformers for the past four years. Here is hoping for future good Bay films.

A Banana Peel

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