Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The one question I keep hearing in regards to Transformers: Dark of the Moon is, "has Michael Bay finally listened to his critics?"  SPOILER ALERT: Hell no.  Michael Bay doesn't give a shit about what you have to say about his movies.  Sure, critics dumped on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (and rightfully so), but no one who did went home to their mansions built of platinum and swam in their pools of hundred dollar bills with their pet bad eagle as Michael Bay presumably did after the dust settled.  The fact that Dark of the Moon is superior to Revenge of the Afterbirth speaks more to the fact that the latter was a victim of the writer's strike than it does to Bay's malleability.

For good or for ill, Bay stays the same.  Sure, the so-called "plots" to many of Bay's movies are tenuous sinews of 5th graders' dialogue pasted together with the drool of sleeping screenwriters that barely bridge brain-exploding action sequences together with shots of slow-motion helicopters.  But the man has a distinct style, a stamp that instantly identifies his work over the other cinematic dross.  Unhindered by a union strike of any kind, Bay is once again free to stretch his testosterone-filled legs and what results is simultaneously the best and worst Transformers film of the series.

It's been one year since the events of Revenge of the Mouthfart and the Autobots, still ever-vigilante for the return of the Decepticons, have taken up battling the world's (read: America's) villains in the meantime.  Our Hapless Protagonist (Shia LaBeouf), again dating a Ridiculously Hot Girl He Doesn't Deserve (Rosie Hungtington-Whitely), doesn't see his good buddy Bumblebee as often as he'd like, which is tragic consider he faces his toughest foe to date: unemployment.  So while we're supposed to be feeling sorry for the guy who's living in his smoking hot girlfriend's 2-floor apartment, we learn of evidence that shows the Apollo 11 moon landing was less, "hey, let's show the Russians our huge genitals" and more, "let's find out about and cover up the alien spaceship that crash landed there."

Can you guess if the spaceship had anything to do with Optimus Prime and his robot buddies?  Oh, you bet your ass it does.  Long ago when Cybertron was getting all 'splosiony, the ship escaped from the planet with an item that could've turned the tide of the war, nay, the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.  You see, on that ship blah blah blah semblance of plot blah blah blah humans working with Decepticons blah blah blah Leonard Nimoy. 

Look, let's be honest with ourselves – it wouldn't matter what the plot if Dark of the Moon was, you're interested in seeing the same thing you were interested in seeing in the first two: giant robots go balls to the wall.  But before you see Dark of the Moon, ask yourself – how much are you willing to put yourself through for those fleeting seconds of hot metal on metal action?  Really think about that because, as I said, the action sequences in Dark of the Moon make it the best of the series.  In this film, there are robots ripping each other's heads off, soldiers in flight suits jumping out of planes and zigzagging through a crumbling city and people sliding down the glass windows of a collapsing skyscraper.  These moments are purely cinematic, the kind of sequences that could only exist in movies, the kind of moments that Bay excels at crafting.  When Bay draws our attention to these moments, we are hooked, our pulses pounding, in awe of the conceptions and executions of a man whose ego and ambition finds complete fruition with a camera.

But I also said that Dark of the Moon is the worst film of the series in every realm outside of the action (read: almost every minute).  Thankfully, the film does away with the racial insensitivity that plagued Revenge of the Whatever, but it matches its predecessor in sheer idiocy and illogicality when it comes to that pesky story function known as "plot."  Narrative and character devices are introduced and dropped at the story's convenience while Ehren Kruger's awful dialogue is vomited out by Oscar nominees performing comedy that panders primarily to the lobotomized.  If you can make sense of the plot, you probably still won't care and even if you do, realize that you have to sit through TWO AND A HALF HOURS of it to obtain about 25 minutes of coveted adrenaline. 

Think long and hard about that before you commit to a movie ticket because you're the only one it's going to effect.  After the 157-minute running time, Bay still won't give a shit about whether you liked it or not.  He'll be swimming through his Olympic-sized pool of Benjamins while planning out 'Splosions 4 in 3D.