Transformers: Dark of the Moon

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Amberly, Sam, Jennifer, Dominic, Zoe, A.J.

Well, it's definitely the best of the series. That may be faint praise to some and yeah it still has annoying bits, but at least everyone seems to have learnt from the mistakes they made before. More action, less bad comedic relief. The parents are still in the film, but you only have to endure them for two brief scenes in the first half. There are small gremlin-like bots but they don't hump anyones leg and get killed off rather heroically. Those Twins were nowhere to be seen.

They not only upped the action but also the violence. If those robots were performing the same fights as humans, this film would be rated R. Brutal deaths (especially that last villain), good and bad guys alike. They've even gone so far as to add red coloured liquid in the Decepticons so when they get all smashed up it looks like blood. And it's not just the robots, a heap of human characters get wasted in this one, quite a few on screen too which was a surprise.

Some of them I'm not so sad to see go though. The human cast has once again been filled with the most ridiculous characters. Someone has got to tell them that giving everyone a bizarre quirk does not make them unique and fully realised characters. I kind of expect it from Ken Jeong, but John Malkovich and even Frances McDormand! At least Alan Tudyk, who is probably the most batshit crazy of them all, is adorable, but that could just be because I love him so much. His antics were the only ones I actually laughed at. As much as Shia LaBeouf spends most of the action running away from explosions, like the other films, they've made him far more proactive and heroic which is good. Patrick Dempsey is some bad guy and probably the most contrived character in terms of believability. It's all very convenient...

The other thing that's better in this film is the plotting. It's ridiculous and full of contrivances, but it's actually comprehensible this time, far more streamlined. You can't expect Shakespeare but you can expect to at least follow the action and understand everyone's motivation.

The do the ol' Forrest Gump stock footage manipulation trick at the beginning and take it a step further too, helping set up the whole space race dark of the moon story, though actually getting the real Buzz Aldrin talking to Optimus is a bit of a geek out. But if Leonard Nimoy is going to be a voice in your film, don't reference Spock on TV, especially in an episode where they blatantly state what the character he voices will end up doing too. That's not foreshadowing, that's a spoiler.

But after sitting through an hour and a bit of that stuff you are treated to the most spectacular display of Bayhem ever conceived. Others have already said it and it's true, the destruction of Chicago truly boggles the mind. The epic scale is breathtaking. The whole sequence in the toppling building is impossibly awesome. The base jumping is neat too. The practical and the FX work blend so seamlessly together it's completely believable even though it's utterly ridiculous. I.L.M. and Digital Domain could totally do Akira.

I saw this in 3D. Some of it was really great, and some of it had some very post-converted artefacting, most notably when things were extremely out of focus still had hard edges cutting it out of the background. There were a lot of ghosting issues and the cinema we were in seemed to have a very dull projector, or did not compensate at all for the glasses. I'd be interested to see this at the fake IMAX, not just for the 3d and (hopefully) better image but also the sound, which as usual is top-notch.

I love that in this one they have transformations while humans are riding inside the vehicles. With that many moving parts, I don't think anyone would survive, let alone come through unscathed like that, but it does make a cool sequence.

A thoroughly entertaining midnight screening and a great high note to finish this trilogy on. Our drinking game was successful, although, probably due to having shot a lot of the film 3D there were a great deal less anamorphic flares. But there were still at least 3 helicopters at sunset shots.