Transformers 3 Review: Thanks for the Slow-Mo Mr. Bay

What a beautiful piece of crap. Slow motion violent fight scenes of CGI robots ripping each other to shreds are over abundant in Michael Bay's third installment of the Transformers live action film franchise. Not to mention his other frequent styles of over the top screaming, tongue-in-cheek humor and cute girls staring off in the distance with slow motion explosions behind them.

Honestly, I'd have to say that I liked Dark of the Moon more so than the previous installments of the franchise. This is pretty tough to beat as I am one of the hardest Transfans around. A Transfan is the Trekkie equivalent of a Transformer fan. I grew up with the cartoon series, which I watched about thirty of them this morning prior to going to see the movie. I guess that was why I was quite pleased to see some of Transformers characters and mythos appearing in the film.

Probably the most noticeable would be the character of Carly, played by the very sexy Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and what everyone would know of as Megan Fox's replacement. Carly's character first appeared in the second season of the original Transformers animated series, when she was adventurous and a M.I.T. student. Her character would later go off to marry Spike (aka Sam) and by the time that the original Transformers the Movie (1986) takes place, they have a really annoying son named Daniel together, who just gets into trouble all of the time in the third and fourth season. You can learn more about TFTM from my poem on Associated Content by clicking here.

Another notable tribute that Transformer nerds will geek out over will be the introduction of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, even though it is much smaller and less impressive than it was presented in Transformers the Movie. The Ark is briefly seen in the start of the film, which is the ship that transports the Autobots to Earth and crashes into the side of a volcano during the original animated series premiere in "More Than Meets They Eye." Another piece of Transformers mythos would be the mentioning of the Space Bridge, which was a constant menace in the first season for transporting Energon to Cybertron, along with getting Transformers reinforcements into the series. Not to mention we get to see Prime finally use his trailer and bust out some nasty weaponry from it (but no adorable Roller who sounds like R2-D2) L

There are some characters who finally get their Transformers due as well. Probably one of the biggest fan favorite appearances would be Soundwave. He unfortunately doesn't turn into a tape deck, but he does have his sidekick of Laserbeak with him, who for some reason is more like a shape shifter than a Transformer. Soundwave sounds almost like his original voice on the show, (more like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget) as Transfans finally got the originally voice actor of the legendary Frank Welker back into the franchise. I am still not sure why they don't have Frank Welker reprise his other original role of Megatron for the film, but instead giving it back to Hugo Weaving. Welker also plays other Decepticon legend Soundwave in the movie, who now for some reason utilizes this weird mechanical tape worm creature. Starscream also gets more screen time but acts primarily sniveling than treacherous.

I think the other big nod to the original Transformers film and an homage to science fiction in general was by having Leonard Nimoy play the voice of Sentinel Prime, who was the previous Autobot leader prior to Optimus Prime. Transfans may be more familiar with the character in the recent Transformers Animated series, who was played by Townsend Coleman, who also played the voice of the Tick. Nimoy also played the voice of Galvatron in the Transformers animated film in 1986, who was basically a re-incarnated form of Megatron via Unicron (say that ten times fast). But if you are a true Trekkie geek, you will also notice that Transformers watch an episode of Star Trek and mention Nimoy's former character of Spock. There is also a line from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan by Spock that Bumblebee spurts out to Sam. ALSO Sentinel Prime gives the infamous, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" speech that Nimoy gave as Spock in Wrath of Khan.

The writing of the film goes to Ehren Kruger who I feel does a nice job creating a world and situations that were familiar to the old television series. Kruger helped co-write the second Transformers film with Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, who I had heard were huge Transfans as well, so I was a bit skeptical to hear the pair of writers wouldn't have their touch on this film like they did with the first two '" (you can read my review of Transformers 2 on Associated Content here and also Part I). So what Kruger does is help create this world where the Autobots are primarily teaming up with the humans to solve their problems, humans making secretive deals with Decepticons and Decepticons utilizing the space bridge to plunder Earth of its resources. Unfortunately, it isn't energy like from the original show, but I won't ruin it.

On the downside what Kruger does is help create a few plot holes, a bit of nonsense, character inconsistencies, and some scenes that just don't seem to make much sense. Again, I don't want to give away and spoil too much, but one character has the opportunity to become all powerful, but refuses and only betrays everyone anyway in hopes of being all powerful. There is this long convoluted plot in the beginning about this Moon landing conspiracy, but by the end '" it doesn't seem to matter much. Several characters tend to be in on the secret and you get to the point where just one more person says, "by the way, I'm also with the Decepticons," it becomes a bit excessive. Finally, Prime comes off as such a bad ass, it is really cool at first. But towards the end of the film, he is clearly saying stuff like, "you are going to die," or "you die," and he shows absolutely no mercy as he decapitates heads, rips spinal cords out or disregards someone who begs for mercy as he blows their head off. But don't get me wrong, I am always up for violence, but I feel when you have noble heroes tearing their enemies to shreds and showing no mercy, then what separates them from the bad guys? Especially considering that there was a scene just five minutes prior to when Soundwave guns down an unarmed Autobot who pleads for mercy.

Finally, let us get to the Bay-Meister, Michael Bay. There were so many times that I sat through this one hundred and fifty-seven minute long epic blockbuster so that I just had to roll my eyes and say, "Oh Bay." I can't help but picture this guy still playing the sandbox and smashing cars and trucks together, which seems to be the dominant visual effect of the film. The second runner up for visuals is the over use of slow motion, which if you probably removed every scene with slow motion, it could be about one hundred and fifty minutes even '" which in my humble opinion is way too long for a sci-fi/action film. There is some really over the top screaming with a slow motion fireball and explosions erupting around as machines are blasted to pieces that become so repetitive it leaves you wondering, okay now what? But when I saw people jump out of windows and slid down the side of the building is it was slowly toppling over and then shot their way back through windows to get back into the building '" I knew the film had "jumped the shark."

Speaking of screaming, that seems to be Shia LaBeouf's main stay in the film, as you can't tell when he is being serious, screaming for help or having a temper tantrum. But I still can't get how Bay can get such great actors and actresses to his side to really come off with some hilarious scenes as well. Frances McDormand from Fargo plays a really uptight woman representing the governing force overseeing the N.E.S.T. John Turturro is back again, who always helps sell a scene with his own breed of paranoia, but now he has Dutch, played by Alan Tudyk (from Firefly) as a hilarious German accent speaking, gun blasting and overall tech guru as his sidekick. There is also a bit from John Malkovich when he fights Bumblebee like a cat on its back and even Ken Jeong from the Hangover, who plays a paranoid NASA geek.

Overall, I'd have to say that I did enjoy the over the top violence and explosions in the film. If you are a teenager, you will probably think that this film is the bee's knees. It has cute girls, fast cars, and a lot of explosions, gun fire, great CGI and quite a bit of well placed humor. I think Transfans will appreciate some of the old school nature of the film; there is one scene that reminds me of the similar plot from the three part season one finale "The Ultimate Doom." You may want to save your money, as I could have definitely waited for this one on Netflix, but what kinda nerd would I be?

References:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399103/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Prime

http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page