Published on: Thursday, June 30, 2011

By Trevor Ruben

When you come to the same conclusion about a director after virtually all of his movies then he’s either doing something very wrong or very right. Michael Bay, known for his epic battles of asteroids, WWII bi-planes and giant robots, has nothing to say in his latest, Transformers:Dark of the Moon, except this - check out Optimus Prime’s sweet moves. Don’t bother looking any further into it.

Michael Bay will never change. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a good thing. If you want fantasies of the Transformer kind fulfilled, you won’t be disappointed. If you ask any more of Bay, like creating a fantasy of his own rather than fulfilling one, then you’ve asked too much.

Plot details are almost unnecessary. A plan to take over earth by the evil Decepticons brings Optimus Prime and fellow good-guy Transformers into the battlefield, and series mainstay Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) seeks purpose after college. If his job search and flow of tantrums weren’t enough, he yelps “I want to matter!” to hammer it home. There’s nothing like exploring a character than getting straight to the point, right?

Action junkies will, however, get their fill. There’s enough slow-motion robot beheadings (and in such a wide variety too!) to satiate even the most lustful fans. For others, the experience may become exhausting by the end, but as the film ramps up in robots so do the major set pieces. Nobody should say no to a skyscraper being torn down by a horrifying giant metal robot, nor to humans gliding through Chicago in squirrel suits.

If you’ve seen a Transformers film before, you know exactly what to expect minus the spiritual connection from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Thankfully, they go back to explaining the absurdities of Transformer lore with technology, not magic.

As a minor transformers fan outside of the movies, there is the happy edition of the sadistic Shockwave to the Decepticon team this time around. The cyclops is the first bad guy of the film series who can be described as terrifying, as Megatron and the rest of his crew have always been laughably over-characterized. Megatron walks a desert with lone rider drapes over his metallic back and a hand-held shotgun to boot. His arms transform into freaking rocket-launchers, so why does he need that?

Odd choices like that squander otherwise barbaric enjoyment. As in past films, Bay injects what he seems to think is a human element to his movies. In this case, that involves LaBeouf screaming a lot and trying to make good with his Megan Fox replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Carly. It’s all very shallow, she’s very nice to look at, but you’ll find yourself waiting for robot explosions more often than experiencing them in the first half.

Odd, campy scenes are squeezed into the two-and-a-half hours that only detract from the experience. Ken Jeong makes a brief appearance, if that’s any indication. He’s funny, but useless. Patrick Dempsey’s desperate villain approach gets the eyes rolling.

Once the film explodes into an all out war in downtown Chicago, all is good. I only wish it started sooner, as the tidbits of violence in the beginning only wore down my thirst for it, which made the climax just a tad bit stale.

One final complaint – this movie should have let itself fall into an ‘R’ rating. The Chicago setting is supposed to be ‘ground-zero’ for human tragedy, but aside from quick cuts to human vaporizing and doom-ridden looks from our heroes, little violence is shown to support the devastation the viewer is supposed to believe is happening. In the industry climate right now such a request is absurd, but one can wish.

There was one moment near the end that perfectly captures the kind of movie you paid for. Carly and Sam find each other in the battlefield, hug, and the camera cuts away to something else. When it cuts back, Carly is somehow standing on a car and both characters are giving the thousand-yard, action hero stare into the abyss of battle, with a Transformer posing valiantly in the background. The short quip of human interaction is immediately sacrificed for all things epic. It only bothered me for a second. More robots needed decapitating.