Directed by Michael Bay.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, Alan Tudyk, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Peter Cullen, Leonard Nimoy and Hugo Weaving.
SYNOPSIS:
The Autobots discover a crashed Cybertronian spaceship on the moon and race against the Decepticons to discover its secrets.
“There is a scene in the film in which Rosie Huntington-Whiteley stands next to a car and a character played by Patrick Dempsey says: ‘Look at the curves on that, eh? Phwoar, look at the curves on that. Phwoar. Look at the body on those curves. Phwoar. So Michael Bay is going: ‘Look, woah, phwoar, eh? Cars – phwooooar. Rosie Huntington – phwooooar.’…So what you have is Bay essentially going: ‘We’re taking this franchise, we are pushing the boundaries as far as we can in terms of leery pornographic tendencies because basically, what we all know is, women and cars and toys are all the same thing, right? They’re all just things to be leered at and played with and phwoar, eh? Phwoar, eh?’”
A very small excerpt from an epic Kermodian rant. You get the impression he wasn’t too fond of the movie. Likewise with Rohan Morbey’s marmite review – just look at the comments section - on this very website. He gave it one out of ten. All the hate nearly put me off. It would be quite an achievement not to watch one of the bigger summer blockbusters. Alas, I’m but a cog to their machine.
It starts off as expected. A clumsy opening sequence reveals the space race of the 1960s was actually a cover up to investigate a crashed alien spacecraft on the moon. The editing is much too fast and the splicing together of archive footage and hokey reconstructions looks awkward. The plot idea is an intriguing one, but it’s quickly chopped up into flimsy pieces by Michael Bay’s persistent cutting. If only he would hold on shots a little longer. Someone should remind him that’s where the tension is.
But then, about 20 minutes in, there’s quite a funny scene with John Malkovich. He’s only a cameo character, but he has these amazing, oversized dentures and a wig. Malkovich interviews Sam (Shia The Beef) for a job at his yellow-themed office, of which he is quite anal. At one point he shouts at a poor woman for drinking from a red cup. It’s stupid, but funny. Everybody onscreen seems to have already gone over the top and are now looking for new, ridiculous heights.
So it raised a chuckle. I was disarmed. ‘Perhaps it’s Stockholm Syndrome,’ I thought. After all, the film is extraordinarily long (157mins). But this was followed by a very good action sequence set amongst the ruins of Chernobyl. Quite distasteful, as Kermode illustrates later on in his rant, but a rather good fight scene. It reveals a nice little plot point too; that the Soviets had also recovered parts of the alien spaceship during their unmanned trips to the moon.
And so it goes on for quite a while: comedic scene between Sam and a celebrity cameo (Ken Jeong, Frances MacDormand, John Tuturro), followed by a serious, more plot driven segment. It’s classic story telling. Build up the tension. Release the tension. Build up the tension. Release the tension. Ken Jeong, by the way, had the cinema audience eating out of his hands. Every spasmodic twitch of his face made people physically crease with laughter. Thankfully, he’s more Senor Chang from Community rather than the grotesque Chinese stereotype from The Hangover. But no fear - there are plenty other uncomfortable stereotypes in Transformers 3 to be had.
And that is the film’s real ‘dark side’. No matter how entertaining it is, the unshakeable misogyny that Kermode identified at the start persists throughout. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is not there for her acting talents. Mind you, at least she seems like a nice human being, and is thus far more bearable than Megan Fox.
There’s also the casual racism. A Scottish Transformer threatens to bottle someone in one scene. It doesn’t even make any sense. Why would these mechanical aliens behave like offensive caricatures from Earth? For cheap laughs. The film is funny enough without them.
But these are just stupid stereotypes. More dangerous are the representations of Decepticon (read: bad guys) henchmen. Some have tubular piping sprouting from their head to resemble dreadlocks. The visual intention is clearly to evoke a certain ethnicity. Again, it makes no sense. These drones could have easily been made into evil, non-descript robots. It makes for difficult viewing.
However – everything else about the film is immensely enjoyable. In fact, it’s hard to classify Transformers: Dark of the Moon as a ‘film’. It’s more a series of awesome events. The supporting cast are terrific and appear to be having genuine fun. John Turturro and Alan Tudyk might well be cinema’s next great comedy duo.
The action is stunning to watch. The original Transformers’ only flaw was that the fight scenes were quite disorientating. They were filmed in close-ups where you couldn’t identify the robotic parts or to which Transformer they belonged. Bay has rectified this in Transformers 3. The shot structure is more coherent and seems heavily influenced by Zack Snyder’s style of direction. Specific parts of the action will be slowed down heavily to allow adequate visual digestion. Even then there is so much happening onscreen that the sight remains overwhelming. But not in a headache way. More of the dip over a rollercoaster.
During one car chase, Bumblebee transforms entirely in slow motion to evade an oncoming explosion. In so doing, he hurls Sam out of his interior and forwards across the obstacle. He transforms back, with all his intricacies and tiny mechanical retractions, to encase Sam back again within the front seat, all whilst avoiding the explosion. It’s breathtaking. The CGI, and the way the real life action is shot, is so good that the robots and special effects mesh almost seamlessly with their human counterparts. And at the centre of it all: The Beef.
He plays Sam perfectly down to earth. Again, there’s a lot of hate for Shia. Kermode calls him the ‘Charisma Vacuum’. I’ve never minded him, and he plays exasperated, slightly unhinged guy really quite well. That he manages to convey genuine awe and fright at the bizarre events that happen around him, whilst also being a convincing ass-kicker, should be applauded.
When Lev Kuleshov was investigating the essence of cinema in the late 1910s, he noticed a vast difference between Russian and American films: the latter had considerable more edits than those from his native country. He joked that it’s because the Americans wanted more bang for their buck. Whereas Kuleshov went on to slightly more intellectual pursuits of film, the fact remains: cinema audiences sometimes just want bangs for their bucks. Transformers: Dark of the Moon might very well be the dumbest film ever made, but it is hugely entertaining. The production values are visibly enormous, and that isn’t always a bad thing. It’s big, it’s brash, it’s American. And you know what? It’s bloody marvellous.
RATING: ***
Oli Davis
365 Days, 100 Films
Movie Review Archive
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