Review: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Is An Improvement, Though That Didn’t Take Much
- Jun 19, 2017
- 2 min read
Coming back for a third time around, Michael Bay delivers yet another Transformers film. It seems that he learnt something from his previous attempt, this time delivering a far more serious, far more Transformer oriented film.
In 1969 mankind landed on the moon. We were told it was for science, to beat the Russians, just because we could. But that was a lie. On the dark side of the moon there was something far older than anything we could imagine. A wrecked spaceship, one that disembarked from the Transformers home planet of Cybertron millennia ago. What they didn’t know however, was that the moment they set foot onboard they woke an ancient Autobot, Sentinel Prime, voiced by the late great Leonard Nimoy. Fast forward forty years or so to the present day and Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is looking for a job. But more importantly the Autobots and mankind are still working together. Dealing with dictators and terrorists, keeping an eye out for any Decepticons along the way. Following a botched operation in Chernobyl, the return of Megatron (Hugo Weaving) and the arrival of Sentinel Prime, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) prepares for yet another war.
Aside from some weird plot choices and the continual inclusion of way too much human content, Dark Of The Moon is everything that one might want from a Transformers film. We get some of the coolest iterations of classic characters, namely Soundwave and Laserbeak. The third act is pretty much non-stop robo brawling and it is glorious. While it’s difficult to get passed the unbearable Ken Jeong who seems to be stuck in perpetual overacting, and not the good kind. Seriously, he’s unwatchable but he’s dead soon enough and it couldn’t have come faster. Once he’s out of the picture however, the film picks up in a big way.
Once again Cullen and Weaving are excellent, bringing the badass to both of their characters. Leonard Nimoy is great as the wise and confused Sentinel Prime and he holds his own with ease. Frances McDormand drops in as a CIA executive and handily out-acts every other human in the whole movie. Outside of these few, everyone else ranges from bad to awful. John Turturro returns with his usual level of awful/entertaining and Shia remains dull and uninteresting. But let’s be honest for a second, no one watched this movie expecting the story and characters to be good.
As with the first film, the Transformer parts of this Transformers movie are great. There’s a lot of interesting ideas including the expansion of the human/Autobot alliance. Dark Of The Moon is a solid popcorn flick once it gets going and, providing you aren’t expecting art, and you really shouldn’t be, it’s a decently entertaining time.
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