This movie is better then part two...but damn, did you SEE part two? The story looks as thrown together as the shrapnel-inspired robots. It is literally another, long toy commercial (I can already see "Moon Prime" and "Grapple Launch Sam" in my mind) that gave not thought to anyone over the age of 8. The love of Transformers always came from the diverse (and unique-looking) robots. Each one more different than the last, making each mission an adventure. Here we get canned dialogue that you can literally tell Michael Bay got them in for voice acting and told them to just "say a bunch of shit" and they'll make a movie out of it.
An actual conversation between Starscream and Megatron goes like this, I can't remember Starscream's exact line but this is pretty much their discourse:
Starscream: It pains me to see you like this, my master.
Megatron: You know only what you have been told...which is NOTHING!
...that was the entire conversation. If you can call that a conversation.
It's great having Shockwave & Laserbeak in this movie (I guess Ravage outlived his usefulness after the last movie?) but there are dozens of robots in this movie and I don't know 90% of them. They don't get dialogue, there is no dramatic tension between them other than the simple premise that Decepticons hate Autobots and vice versa. See one? Kill one!
Speaking of killing, a lot of the Transformers die in this movie (don't worry, you won't have a clue who's shooting who or who just died, anyway). The design of the robots has been one of this series' biggest obstacles. They look like a bunch of cutlery held together by static electricity...and fall apart just as easily! Seriously, these robots are supposed to have been around for millions of years and they're only just now being torn apart with one bullet to the torso? At least I think that's what I was looking at, I could barely tell the robots from the flying debris in the air. What is so wrong with the original Hasbro designs? Not only would the toys still sell, they'd sell even more because people like me would love the modern designs based directly on the originals. Look at the recent video game War for Cybertron for inspiration, those looked great!
The last 30-40 minutes of this movie is actually entertaining in the sense that it's almost one continuous action sequence (though sloppily edited together) and when it's over, you relax, just then realizing you've been tensed up for half an hour.
Unfortunately, I spent too much time in this movie wondering what anyone's motivation for anything was. All hell's breaking loose and Sam's having a chit-chat with his parents about relationships? The world's about to end but Sam's (hot!) girlfriend wants him to choose between saving the planet and going to a dinner party with her? WTF? It's like they filmed two separate movies and had to mash them up. The action is fast-paced but I found myself asking "How did they get there?" and "Where the fuck is Optimus?" (seriously, he's always disappearing or getting caught in crane wires to keep him out of the fight for some reason).
Editing was a huge problem during much of the action. There is one neat scene in the movie where Sam is riding in Bumblebee and there is an explosion they must avoid but they're going 100mph down the freeway. So, all in slow motion, 'Bee' ejects Sam into the air while he transforms and flies through the air himself, keeping debris away from Sam. All the while, Sam is screaming like a little girl and flailing his arms thinking he could die at any second. After safely surviving the explosion, Bee catches Sam, transforms back into a car and tosses Sam safe back inside screaming and shitting his pants. Bumblebee then comes to a screeching halt and Sam calmly announces "Let's get back to base". Everything in this sequence was awesome...until we cut to Sam saying "Let's get back to base". It looks like the explosion and stunt were filmed on Wednesday and then Sam's line and close-up was filmed on Friday and the continuity director was sick for those three days. It's as if Darth Vader clearly cut off Luke's hand and an instant later, they are still fighting and Luke has two hands.
The Transformers themselves have not been given justice at all in this series and I hope a reboot (and a complete re-design) can fix this. The story is about the war between the ROBOTS, not the people caught in the middle. Yes, it can be done, don't say you need a human perspective to narrate the story, that's just lazy. I do think humans should be part of the story just not the entire story. Prime and Megatron are fighting a war they've waged against eachother for countless eons, they have a LOT of history, as do all the characters. Make the characters cosmetically pleasing, it's obvious they steered clear of too much robot stuff because they just looked horrible on screen.
Without spoiling anything, I do think the morals shown in this movie are pretty grim. The Autobots pull the biggest guilt trip ever on mankind just so they could say "See, you need us, assholes" but they let thousands of people die to prove their point! Then Prime takes care of business at the end as judge, jury and executioner without a moment's hesitation. I guess he's as sick of all this as the rest of us.
All I can say is thank god this trilogy is done and someone else can come along and fix everything. Before the next series starts, I'm sure we'll likely be seeing a direct-to-video "Go-Bots" movie that will sadly be a million times better than any of the Transformers films.
- Jeff
