...Its Michael Bay
Its 3:50 in the morning. I just saw the over 2 and-a-half hour attack on the sense the world will come to know as Transformers:Dark of The Moon. I want to sleep... but i have work in just a couple hours, and i dont think i could wake up in so short a time span. so... lets review.
Visuals
this is a no brainier of a topic. A multi-million dollar summer trilogy instillation is bound to be nothing less than visually breathtaking. Bay knows how to make things look good. Everything from the 50 foot robots to the skirt-wearing actresses look damn good. As would be expected.There were a couple of downsides though. Bay tries to inject that live action CGI we saw in Tron onto a scene with JFK... and it looks even worse than it did on Jeff Bridges (probably because they couldnt actually map JFK's face). They used the same tech later to get a close up on Shia as he was tossed into the air (a little better), and randomly throughout the film.
DoTM is twice as CGI heavy as its predecessors, and while it makes the big robots look twice as sexy, its pointless overkill in several other points
Story
...Its Michael Bay.Im sure im not the only one to notice that Transformers 1&2 didnt exactly follow a linear storyline. Both shared similarities with episodes of the Simpsons, jumping from random plot point to random plot point. DoTM is no exception.
The basic plot is that the government didnt tell the Autobots about the autobot ship found on the moon decades before. On this ship is the key to re-build the autobot race.. but with it comes betrayal and death.
I went with a group of my friends, and all of us asked ourselves "how the hell did we get here" at least once at various times throughout the film. The story is all very enjoyable, but after the 2 hour mark you start to take notice to the fact that 20 minutes ago the tone of the film was VERY different. And it was different still before that, and so on.
People are randomly introduced for no apparent reason other than that the actors that portray them wanted to be in the film. Often it is quite hilarious. But i challenge you to look back after the film and convince yourself that half of the characters were relevant.
There's also allot more death in this film than the others. WAY more. just saying.
Acting
Everyone did very well. The new chick ( i keep forgetting her name) is super hot, and as a result Bay doesnt over sexualize her as much as he did Megan Fox. Shia was great of course, and all of the returning talent kept up the same basic level of skill as before.As i kind of mentioned before, there are a ton of new, C level characters introduced in this film. Ken Jeong of Hangover fame, John Malkovich, Lester Speight, and (my personal fanboy favorite) Alan Tudyk all show their faces. However, their roles are all pretty limited to a couple of scenes each. Its a bi-product of the erratic story.
verdict
of course you should go see the movie. If you liked either of the others, its worth your time. Bay has this fantastic ability to sell you on what SHOULD be crap. He really does make movies full of Sex and Explosions, and here i am with my ticket knowing damn well what im about to get.4 of 5
0 Comments