Home Movie News REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

by Daryl
Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon

Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon

Firstly a warning, the first section of this review will contain a basic review of the movie with a few personal thoughts. The second section will contain many spoilers and plot holes, so if you don’t wanna know about the film, don’t read the second section until after you’ve seen the movie for yourself.

REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon

Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon

Well, this is the third, and if I’m remembering correctly the last of the Transformer movies for Michael Bay. After what I personally thought was a terrible sequel in 2009, with severe story flaws and quite possibly the most racist robots in the known galaxy I was prepared for disappointment with this film from the day it was announced as being in production.

T3 is set some years after the last, as Sam Witwicky has now completed his college years which he began in the previous movie and now lives in Washington DC with his new girlfriend Carly, after apparantly being dumped by Mikaela (I’m sure you all know why Megan Fox did not return). The whole world seems to know about the Autobots in this film, which I found quite funny, as the events in the baron desert and one video call in T2 brought them finally to the public eye, but the massive all out battle in the first film leading to hundreds of civilian deaths and massive destruction to the city seems to have been well covered up and forgotten. Even though everyone is aware of their presence, they are still hidden in plain site by the Government. It seems in this one that the autobots have lost their morals about killing humans, and in a montage you see them fighting and attacking several enemies of the USA.

Ok, I’m sure you have worked out from the adverts that this film revolves around the space-race, and the moon landings were all just to investigate a crashed ship. A very thin story with more holes than a fishing net then bring together some overacting and big CG fights, which see a major city ground into rubble by the end of the film.

Not surprisingly this film is more about visuals than story, and with the 3D it can at times be quite stunning, but sadly when it tries to make you think about the story, you start to realise how badly thought out it really is.

[spoiler title=”Click to view Spoilers and plot holes for Transformers: Dark of the Moon”]

Ok, this part of review will contain several plot flaws and parts of the film which did not sit well with me at all, they are in no particular order.

  • The Decepticons stole the Pillars from the crashed ship on the Moon between 1971-1973, and then hid a small army under the surface of the Moon. This plan by Megatron was completely reliant on Optimus Prime retrieving the Matrix and then going to the Moon and bringing the long dead body of Sentinal Prime and bringing him back to life… Well, can you see the flaws?!? Firstly, when Megatron arrived at Earth in early 1900s, he crashed in the Artic, and was then frozen until 2007. Also Optimus had not come to Earth, and how could they know he would, let alone that he would find the Matrix! Also, if the Decepticons had an army of over 200 hidden on the Moon for that long, why not simply invade in the 70s, without Autobot presence and dominate the planet as they wanted.
  • This film introduces a Decepticon called Shockwave, a cannon-weilding robot with a giant skyscraper sized worm that eats it way through anything it looks at. Now, it is established in the first film that to get their alternate forms, both autobots and decepticons “scan” a device and then transform into it. Where the hell did this robot find a 1000 foot worm?!? Are they now allowed to maybe watch movies and scan from those, and if so did Shockwave sit down to watch “Dune” and thought, that’d be cool!
  • The war-changing weapons known as the Pillars required 4 being placed at destination, and 4 at your own location to bridge the gap and allow instant transportation. These devices were gonna allow the Autobots to win the Cybertron war, but instead of deploying them, they loaded them all onto a ship and flew them away from Cybertron???
  • Sector 7, built Roosevelt Dam around the Cube and the frozen Megatron in 1905, but the Government are shocked in 1961 when the ship crashes on the Moon, over 50 years later?
  • Michael Bay apologised for the 2 racist bots in the second movie, and yet in this film he continues with the racial stereotypes. An italian bot called Dino, a cockney autobot that says “w*nker” far too often, and a terrible german accent of a character portrayed by the fantastic Alan Tudyk.
  • The new love interest for Sam, Carly is so one-sided its appaling. She is originally introduced as a British Embassy Staff member, but all through the film she is just eye-candy, and portrayed as a dumb-blonde who doesn’t even know when she is acting inappropriatly with her older boss and driving her boyfriend crazy with jealousy. What is more annoying is that it is her that actually tips the balance in the final fight by using such basic reverse psychology on Megatron to turn his loyalties!
[/spoiler]

There are far more problems with this film than I have time to write down, but feel free to add your own in the comments below.

Overall this film requires sitting back, putting on your ugly 3D glasses and switching your brain off and watch the fights.

6/10. “Better than the second film, but thats really not hard to do!”

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