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Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson and John Malkovich. Directed by Michael Bay. 157 minutes. Now playing at major theatres. PG
Picking the “best” of the three Transformers movies is like choosing death by firing squad, shark mauling or being crushed by one of Wile E. Coyote’s giant anvils.
On reflection, I’d choose the anvil drop, which is what the last 45 minutes of Transformers: Dark of the Moon feels like, as the good alien robots (Autobots) and bad alien robots (Decepticons) turn Chicago into a scrapyard.
This is the summer 2011 blockbuster that is supposed to be the saviour for 3-D, since director Michael Bay has typically gone all-in for a fading technology he once scorned. He’s consulted with a 3-D master (Avatar’s James Cameron) and hectored projectionists, so as to deliver as big, bright and noisy a sensory overload as (in)humanly possible.
Whether he’s succeeded is all in the bloodshot eyes (and burst eardrums) of the beholder, but there’s no question that the overlong Transformers 3 is an improvement over the incomprehensible Transformers 2, which I’m still in therapy for, and the pokey original Transformers, which first turned these robot-changing Hasbro toy cars into multiplex behemoths.
This latest eruption qualifies for “most revived franchise” status, if only because scripter Ehren Kruger, the guilty pen behind Transformers 2, has literally found the plot, any plot.
This one ludicrously connects the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing with Transformers lore — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin secretly discover a smashed Autobots spaceship on the moon’s dark side — but at least it’s a conspiracy theory we can follow.
The lunar find leads to our sweaty teen hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) being reluctantly dragged yet again into the Autobots vs. Decepticons fray. But at least he has a new girlfriend to play with, in between explosions.
She’s feisty rich girl Carly, played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a former Victoria’s Secret model. Carly easily fills the gap left by the departed Megan Fox, who was bounced for comparing Bay to Hitler. The assignment is a no-brainer, since the female lead in any Transformers film is simply required to supply the third “B” for the “’bots, bombs and boobs” franchise formula.
Such happy simplicity doesn’t extend to the rest of Transformers 3, which Bay and Kruger pack with so many excess characters, it’s as if they wanted the cast to be as bloated as Bay’s ego.
Whereas X-Men: First Class was content to digitally insert just President John F. Kennedy into its revisionist sci-fi, Transformers 3 two-ups the conceit by jamming JFK, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama into its historical distortions, complete with lousy look-alikes for all three presidents.
(Speaking of lousy look-alikes, the real Buzz Aldrin makes a brief cameo to remind us of how unlike him the film’s 1969 Aldrin stand-in is.)
Transformers 3 also triples up on the comic relief, with two pairs of humans and one pair of robots offering dubious yuks. John Turturro’s meddling FBI agent, which allows him to do his best Al Pacino imitation, now finds its distaff counterpoint in Frances McDormand’s snippy national intelligence director. Kevin Dunn and Julie White return as Sam’s smothering parents, mercifully with reduced screen time, while squabbling midget robots Wheelie and Brains once again check in to sell a few more Transformers toys.
The film’s best joke, however, is a tossed-off line. It’s when one Transformer tells another to “make something of yourself.” Such wit!
Also back are the cut-and-paste heroes played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson, who fill in on the action side while Sam goes through his tedious routine of arguing with and/or haranguing his parents, his transforming sports car Bumblebee and his Autobots mentor Optimus Prime before finally deciding to kick some Decepticon butt.
The crowd of villains includes two hiss-worthy corporate weasels, played by John Malkovich and Patrick Dempsey, plus Ol’ Reliable Megatron, boss of the Earth-threatening Decepticons, who still nurses wounds and grudges from the previous Transformers chapters.
Megatron still talks like a bad movie villain, the kind who always has to explain why he’s about to shoot/smash/disintegrate you. Much scarier is the new Decepticon muscle called Shockwave, an undulating creation that shuts up and gets the job done, such as knocking over an office tower in a scene that brings uncomfortable reminders of 9/11 — as does much of the script’s Bush-era bellicosity about “taking the fight to them.”
By my watch, Transformers 3 is about 45 minutes too long, and that’s the dull middle section before everybody starts wrecking Chicago in a reprise of The Blues Brothers.
At least Bay finally gets some genuine fight out of Optimus Prime, the Autobots leader who is one of the dullest of white knights. His modus operandi is to deliver a pious speech, to kick around Megatron for a minute or two and then to vanish for 15 minutes before returning to repeat the same ritual. Optimus at last gets down to some prime clobbering time.
The most interesting new inmate in the Transformers asylum is the acerbic and scrappy Autobots elder Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy, who was in the crashed spaceship on the moon.
He’s revived to add a needed note of cynicism to the picture, which is to essentially ask why it is that humans, Autobots and Decepticons keep fighting the same ridiculous battles in movie after movie.
Sentinel Prime wants to know: Can’t everybody just get along by going along? That’s the kind of common sense you don’t hear much of in the Transformers franchise, and if the direction he’s heading is far away from a Transformers 4, then allow me join his clanking parade.
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