Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Movie Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After how bad Transformers 2 was, I thought I'd never watch another Transformers film, even if it did get Oscar nominations. So Transformers 3 came out, and I didn't see it. I heard it was better than part 2 and I still didn't see it. It got three Oscar nominations and by seeing it (via Netflix so Bay got no money from me) I've now seen all films nominated in 18 categories, that's all but 6 categories. Still it was bad.

I remember when Stallone's awful Cobra came out in 1986, that even the running time was designed to make the film profitable. At just under 90 minutes, theaters could fit an extra showing in an evening. Someone has to teach this to Michael Bay. There is no reason for Transformers 3 to be 154 minutes long.

And in a film about giant robots that change into vehicles, is there a reason that the main human character, is an obnoxious asshole in every scene? No wonder Sam Witwicky can't get a job. Though I guess it makes sense since every character in this film is an obnoxious asshole.

Part of the plot involves transporting a planet next to earth. It makes it halfway here. Apparently Michael Bay has never heard of gravity, because it seems to have no effect on the earth at all.

But I think most offensive part is that one of the evil robots is voiced by Leonard Nimoy and several times he quotes Spock from Star Trek II The Wraith of Khan.

After doing a great FAQ for Transformers 2, Rob Bricken did an FAQ for Transformers 3. It's a riot. Go read the whole thing or don't. This is my favorite answer:

Q: What's notable about that? [it doesn't matter what]
A: Well, two things: 1) When Shia learns of this, he frets that the Autobots have no way of leaving the planet, ignoring the fact that they took a spaceship to the moon half an hour earlier. 2) The Autobots actually get on a totally different spaceship anyways, which the government has tried to disguise by attaching it to a space shuttle, which makes it look like a space shuttle glued to the side of a giant and very obvious alien spaceship. Of course, when it takes off, a single Decepticon plane blows it up with ease.

2 comments:

The Dad said...

So, wait a minute...after a year of watching more movies than an average human sees in one lifetime, you decide to kick off e new year with a TRANSFORMERS movie? Did you watch EVERYTHING else?

Howard said...

So far I've seen 38 features and 19 shorts. As I said, I've seen just about everything else nominated so yeah, I have basically seen everything else. I've even posted other reviews this year.