Broken Frontier

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is very much the offspring of Transformers (2007) and Revenge of the Fallen; she's got her Mother's looks, but her Daddy's smarts. She's gorgeous and occasionally funny, but near the end of her two and half hour story you just want her to shut up and go away.

Like its forebears, Dark of the Moon is more concerned with frivolous human subplots and their comedic hijinks than it is with transformers. The main conflict is the Autobot / Decepticon battle over the contents of a transformer ship that crashed on the moon in 1961. But the bulk of our time is spent with our hero, Sam (Shia LaBeouf), and his new squeeze Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). Half of the Sam plot is him job hunting while the other half is him investigating the details of the '61 crash with the torturously unfunny ex-special agent Simmons (John Turturro).

Mysteries are uncovered. We learn the Autobots now work with the American government. We get additional backstory on the Cybertron war. Sam gets a job working for a neurotic tyrant (John Malkovich). There are twists. None of this matters much. The first Transformers taught us that these movies are best when they are about likable human stories first and robots fighting second. Oh, and don't forget the relentless attempts at humor.

I loved that first Transformers movie. I watched it three times in theatres. On my third viewing I studied the audience. Weeks after opening night they laughed as Sam pitifully tried to win over Mikaela (Megan Fox), and cheered when Optimus Prime violently thrust his arm blade into Bonecrusher's cybernetic jugular. So did I. In doing so, we sent a message to director Michael Bay and his producers about how we liked our Transformers movies, and how we liked our Optimus Prime.

Thinking about this, I left Dark of the Moon feeling very sad.

Dark of the Moon very precisely removes the original Transformers's skin, puts it on, and performs a technical and impressive dance. Its movements are mesmeric. It peers at you (from beneath the skin suit) with dead eyes as it shimmies its tuckus. You watch, horrified, as the flabs of skin waddle. The audience might have laughed throughout Dark of the Moon, but not as consistently as they did with the first Transformers. There's no heartfelt story here about a boy and his car, no charming high school Sam Witwicky striving to get Mikaela's attention. And Optimus seems more concerned with killing than he is protecting. "We're going to kill them all," he says. Twice.

There is a gargantuan opportunity here to nitpick writer Ehren Kruger's heartless script. That Kruger is the sole credited writer for Dark of the Moon is troubling. Films where Kruger was the principle writer (The Brothers Grimm, The Skeleton Key, The Ring Two, Reindeer Games, Scream 3) have recurring story problems. As stated in one of Roger Ebert's reviews: "The Skeleton Key is one of those movies that explains too much while it is explaining too little." This is true of Dark of the Moon as well.

The list of plot problems is long. Here is my favourite. As Sam gets more involved in the Autobot story, Carly becomes uncharacteristically unsupportive. We learn (for the first time) she has a brother who died in combat. (Cut to his picture in a frame, then back to Sam and Carly.) She expresses her brother's importance in her life and how she won't be able to handle that kind of loss again. Sam reassures her. What experiences formed that special bond? What makes Carly care about her brother? What makes us care about him? We never find out. The brother is never mentioned again.

The transformers themselves are similarly disregarded, much to the franchise's detriment. I like to talk about how "smart" the first Transformers was. Michael Bay is a gifted director who has an innate handle on the the pulse that excites audiences in action films. Presumably, this same ability encourages kids to buy transformers toys. In Dark of the Moon, however, most transformers are so immaterial I would be surprised if a child were capable of asking for one by name.

I have trouble remembering the names of the new characters too, despite passable performances. We meet Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) ass-first, walking up stairs wearing no pants. My mother would have something to say about that. She's somewhat more relatable than Megan Fox, but that's not saying much. Mearing (Frances McDormand), the antagonistic government authority figure, and Bruce Brazos (John Malkovich) the oddball boss, do well as characters in a Michael Bay movie; though the film would have been fine without either of them.

By now Michael Bay has mastered transformer combat. He even delivers my one request of action films to "never confuse bad guys and good guys during action sequences." I never lose track of Autobots, Decepticons, or humans. And yet, much of the film's action was largely unsatisfying. Apparently I need to amend my rule.

I suppose I should say something about the 3D. Dark of the Moon is shot entirely in 3D. Director Michael Bay even strapped a 3D camera on the head of a guy jumping out a helicopter. This highly advertised "wing suit" sequence was reportedly bold and new. But by the time they did the second slow motion leap from the helicopter, however, I rolled my eyes. It took so long to get to that climax, and the reasoning behind using the wing suits was so preposterous (we are told "it's the only way" but I assure you it was not) that I just wanted everything to be over.

Just before the credits, I started writing notes in my pad for the opening paragraph. "Don't see it in 3D, don't even see it in 2D." As I scribbled, the credits rolled and the crowd cheered. Not all of them. Maybe 20%. Clearly for those people the movie wasn't too long, and they didn't mind the story problems. That makes this easy: If a movie's story matters to you greatly, take a nap somewhere in the middle. Ask a friend to wake you just before the climax.

Thank me later.