Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I really wanted to like Transformers 3. Since Michael Bay promised he had learnt from his mistakes, I foolishly hoped that this last film of the trilogy would redeem him with him realising there is more to filmmaking then explosions, cheap jokes and leery shots of women. This optimism lasted only five minutes until the introduction of hot girl replacement Carly (Rosie Huntingdon-Whitley) with a tracking shot of backside and legs, apparently the directors idea of how to construct a respectable intelligent and believable female character; yes, he’s learnt NOTHING!

As with the previous films in the series, Dark of the Moon is a mess; the plot jumps all over the place and becomes increasingly hard to follow let alone care about, with what happens varying between illogically stupid and mind-numbingly predictable. The actors engage in the same contest as before, in which they attempt to be even more mechanical then the CGI robots that hog the screen alongside them. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is still a soulless walking cliché with about as much personality as a microwave, whilst the love of his life Carly just stands there looking immaculate and screaming about how she desperately needs help in a pathetic and irritating damsel-in-distress routine. Yet it is not just her the camera ogles over in an awkward fetishistic way, as like in the previous films seemingly every women in the Transformers universe feels the need to wear ridiculously skimpy clothes, with the exceptions of Sam’s mother and Frances McDormand’s security chief (who appears as some foolish ageing woman rather than anything else, which is the nearest the film comes to female entitlement). That said, in terms of being lewd and offensive the film is not as disgraceful as its immediate predecessor, and gone are the racist stereotypes; though it’s ridiculous patriotism remains, with us somehow supposed to take comfort in the fact that the Autobots love being America’s new uncontrollable illegal Black Ops team.

Perhaps this would not be so bad were it not for the fact that the film does not have any idea what tone it wants. Interesting ideas of betrayal and even patricide are seemingly inadvertently set up, and then either completely ignored or handled so badly that they lose all meaning and dramatic impact. This is also a the type of film that seems to think it’s okay to have scenes depicting massacres of civilians, and at one point an entire family being butchered, and then continue making extremely bad attempts at humour. Of course, many people will see this movie for apparent vast three-dimensional spectacle and glorious computerised effects, which would be a real waste of money. Yes, the CGI is pretty but soon I could not care less, and from about an hour in I had to start fighting the urge to yawn. Perhaps it’s a good thing the picture’s so loud, as it prevented me from falling asleep - although on second thoughts this would have been preferable to watching it. The 3D meanwhile only adds to the strange stupor the film creates, as it mainly provides a stream of debris directed towards you that just makes your eyes sting.

Admittedly, Transformers 3 is not the transcendently awful mess Revenge of the Fallen was. It is a more a restrained beast failing to match the excesses in terms of noise, vulgarity and general offensiveness of its immediate predecessor with everything turned from twelve back to eleven. Of course, this is not saying much as ingesting bleach whilst slamming your hand repeatedly in a car door is preferable to that particular piece of cinema filth, it does not stop this newest addition to the franchise also being a truly terrible film.

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