Actual grade: 6/10
(For a full explanation of my grading system, check out this post.)
I'm not gonna lie -- I went to see TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON expecting to see one thing: giant robots who morph into cars fighting each other and blowing things up. I was certainly not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, and after the mind-numbing stupidity of REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, I was expecting a sub-par film. I was still expecting to enjoy myself in that turn-off-your-brain way, but I was prepared for the worst. However, after REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, this installment is decidedly a step up, excising many of the horrific mistakes made in the second film.
Gone is much of the slapstick comedy (there is still plenty of humor, but the film in general is much darker). Gone is Sam's annoying roommate. Gone are superfluous scenes of Sam's parents (they are funny, but best taken in small doses). Gone are the horrifically offensive, racially stereotyped twin robots. Gone are robots who can inexplicably transform into perfect human bodies. And gone is Megan Fox. Without these distractions, the third film feels more focused and streamlined than the rest (although it strangely has the longest running time of the franchise at 157 minutes).
As with every film in this franchise, DARK OF THE MOON's greatest weakness is its human characters. Michael Bay seems to think that we need human characters to relate to and subsequently wastes a lot of time on them, when all we really come to see (and the reason the brand is famous) are the robots. I could do with far less Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, and the rest of the human gang. Megan Fox has been replaced by British Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. I read somewhere that the script was written before Fox was fired, and they just added a few lines early on referencing the fact that she dumped him -- other than that, supposedly they just changed all the character's line headings from "Mikaela" to "Carly." I would believe it. The former underwear model is just as bland and objectified as Fox was. The human characters are so flimsily drawn, I would have preferred to focus on the characters we really care about -- Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron and Sentinel Prime (a new addition to this film, voiced to perfection by Leonard Nimoy).
The bright spot in the human acting department is the guest stars. John Malkovich plays Sam's overbearing new boss with scenery-chewing glee. John Tuturro returns as the zany, conspiracy-mad Agent Simmons. Fans of Firefly will delight to see Alan Tudyk in a campy role as Simmons' flamboyant assistant. Frances McDormand is a grounded center to the film as a no-nonsense government higher-up in charge of the Autobots. And Patrick Dempsey has the largest guest role in the film, which is surprising, considering he wasn't featured in a single trailer. He plays Carly's slimy boss (a refreshing change of pace from Dr. McDreamy) who, in a surprising twist about halfway through the film, ends up being much more important to the plot than you might think. The only guest star who fell flat was Ken Jeong as a paranoid employee at Sam's company. His appearance was brief and felt entirely out of place.
The biggest thing DARK OF THE MOON has going for it is its willingness to go darker than the previous films. It is a decidedly less kid-friendly plot, on an epic scale unprecedented in the franchise. There are several brutal assassinations of humans, the entire city of Chicago is essentially razed to the ground by an army of Decepticons, and we witness screaming, fleeing Chicagoans being blasted into ash.
The film climaxes with one of the longest, most exhilarating, and well-executed action sequences in recent memory. If Michael Bay is good at anything, it's filming action. And he has learned from his mistakes in REVENGE OF THE FALLEN and cut back on the rapid cutting, meaning it's actually possible to follow what's happening -- a welcome relief. The sequence feels as though Bay took all his big ideas, said "We're doing them all!" and threw them together into an orgy of battles, explosions, metal and mayhem. Two moments stand out: a confrontation between a skyscraper and a giant, boa constrictor-like Decepticon that results in a vertiginous, floor-tilting scramble for safety; and the skydiving entrance of American soldiers filmed, not in CGI, but by real skydivers with cameras attached to their helmets, resulting in a dizzying flight between buildings, which is made even more spectacular in 3D.
A note on the 3D: this is the first film I've actually shelled out cash to see in the extra dimension since the disappointing Thor. One of the major problems people tend to have with 3D is that the lenses filter out light, rendering the screen darker and harder to see. I read a report that Bay demanded theaters turn up the brightness on their projectors to combat this. I'm happy to report that it worked. There were zero vision problems (also helped by the longer cuts Bay used), and the 3D made the giant robots pop in all their glory. If you're going to pay to see any movie in 3D this summer, it should be TRANSFORMERS.
To summarize, go see this movie if you love action -- it is the epitome of a summer popcorn flick. If you are a fan of the Transformers franchise, you are guaranteed to have a good time, as it is a vast improvement over the second film and quite possibly even better than the first. On the standard of movies as a whole, it is decidedly average (5/10), but in the world of big-budget blockbusters, it is entertaining and has some of the best action of late (7/10), so I gave the film an averaged grade of 6/10. If you go expecting mayhem and metal monsters, you won't be disappointed. On those points, DARK OF THE MOON scores full marks.
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