Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2013)

Why, oh why did I decide that it would be worth two-and-a-half hours of my life to watch the MichaelBay abortion known as Transformers: Dark of the Moon?  I mean, I didn’t like the first two flicks, so what possessed me?  Possession - yes, that must be the answer.  Some sort of demon must have ravaged my soul and forced me into submission.  As you can probably tell by now, my viewing experience wasn’t exactly the greatest.

The story of this flick revolves around an Autobot ship that landed on the moon back in the 60s.  Detecting said ship, the nations of the Earth begin the Space Race, thus tying the plot into the movement of actual history.  The US makes it there first, of course, and discovers the giant ship.  Only when things go bad in the modern day do they actually think about telling the Autobots about it.

The ship contains some crazy techno-pillars that, when arranged properly, can open up a dimensional wormhole back to Cybertron, thus allowing the residents of said mechanical planet to come through and set up a new home.  Of course, the Decepticons won the war, so that means a not-so-nice invasion of our planet.  So it’s up to Shia LeBeouf and his mechanical friends to save the day.  A huge battle ensues (seriously, it lasts for like 45 minutes straight) and the good guys win.

This flick contains all the crappy clichés that the two previous Transformers movies brought us, and even more!  LeBeouf does his usual sub-par acting job as do all the secondary characters and extras.  Being that it is a MichaelBay film, there is no need for character development or intelligent dialogue, just a host of special effects pasted together by a mostly idiotic script.

Worse yet, even the FX seem to have gone downhill in this one.  I spotted numerous scenes where the green-screen was obvious to the eye.  And, let it be known, I wasn’t even watching in HD or anything fancy like that.  I would have cringed to see this thing on the big screen.

This movie goes through the motions and offers nothing original.  The action sequences are just as predictable, the non-action sequences just as painful and the editing… don’t even get me started on the editing.  I would offer a warning that those sensitive to seizures may wish to avoid this movie entirely, as the scenes cut from one to the next in a seemingly random fashion, sometimes in what appears to be the middle of said scene.  I would even go so far as to say that this is some of the absolute worst editing I have ever seen in my many years of watching movies.

The folks at Rotten Tomatoes give Transformers: Dark of the Moon a very generous 36/56%.  This is a step above the 20/58% that they gave the second flick, though I do believe they’ve gone in the wrong direction.  The movie was so painful to watch that I kept checking the time on it every 15 minutes, just praying that it would reach its end before I lost control and turned it off for the sake of my own sanity.

Absolutely one of the worst films ever made, hands down.  Up yours, MichaelBay.  And may the Hollywood companies that keep giving you money all be banished to a particularly unpleasant level of hell.

Photo Credits -           

Transformers 3 courtesy of gamingbolt.com