Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is back but this time he is a recently graduated university student who does not have a job and feeling a little inadequate as he is now living with his girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-whatever) who basically supports him. Being an egoistic man he is all insecure because he is basically a very small fish is a very large pond. So he whinges for the first minutes of the movie about feeling like he "doesn't matter". Welcome to the real world, kid. Instead of being positive and thinking that he has so many opportunities out there he could explore he just whinges. But eventually he does get employment. But let's face it this movie isn't really about Sam and it’s really about blowing shit up. Let's be honest here. In the movie, we the audience are to believe that the moon landing in the 60's was really a way the US government to investigate suspicious activity on the Moon. After finding some sort of spacecraft and they decide to collect the evidence. They close down the moon mission (which we find out why and how later in the film) and that was the end. Or at least it was until present time when Opitmus Prime finds an item from his home planet and outraged that the humans have been holding out on him. Discovering this, the Autobots return to recover the former leader of the Autobots on the moon and revive him on the earth. But all is not well, there are suspicious activities as former officers and people involved with the space mission are dying off one and a time.
Naturally the Decepticons have returned and just as you thought Megatron was finally dead he somehow is alive again. And the next 1 and half hours is blowing shit up.
What can I say about Transformers that haven't been said before? It's a Michael Bay movie thus there is some requirement to BLOW SHIT UP. Visually a treat to watch because watching shit blow up is pretty entertaining and profitable. Regardless of bad screenplay, terrible actors and a questionable plot this is a bankable franchise and thus will probably not ending any time soon. But that being said this movie was much better than the 2nd movie, which should probably be forgotten. Transformers 3 do have its redeeming features; for one thing it wasn't trying too hard to have a complicated story per se. Yes there were some major plot holes like why wait 50 years for this to happen and this seems really inconsistent with the previous movies. And there were a couple scenes that do not make sense. And quite frankly the last battle was a little confusing but you get the jest of it; so you just go with it. Remember BLOW SHIT UP.
Let's blow shit up!
Other redeeming features are probably the characters of Bruce (John Malkovich) who was hilarious and Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong, Community) who was equally hilarious. But unfortunately the likelihood of Jerry coming back is really small as they did kill him off but let's hope they bring Bruce back. But despite these wonderful additions they still remain only minor characters in the background to the major characters. And the major characters are extremely disappointing. The character of Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) was just stupid and illogical and the only real purpose he served was to make Sam feel insecure more so. LaBeouf who usually carries these films is annoying and whinging in this film and although he remains the centre of the movie Sam's relevance is diminishing. Colonel Lennox (Josh Duhamel) much like the previous movies is underdeveloped while we see the return of Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson) who is really a walking stereotype and is a bit of an insult to black people. Then we come of course to Carly (Huntington-Whiteley, hot chick- to put bums in seats/replacement of Megan Fox), I would like to say she has big shoes to fill but I would be just taking the piss. Carly is very different to Mikaela (Megan Fox) but still lacks any real emotional connection or substance to her character. I don't know whether it's Huntington-Whatever’s a poor acting ability or the way her character was written, it's hard to say. Probably a combination of both.
So final conclusion- would I consider T3 a success? Well not quite however I would not call it a bomb either. It lacks the better characters and more emotional connection than the first film however it is not as predictable as T1. Furthermore has a more coherent plot than T2 despite the holes and confusing scenes but T1 is still remains the best so far in the franchise. Much of the entertainment comes from BLOWING SHIT UP and thus I did enjoy it and will give it 6.7/10.
