Transfomers - Dark Side Of Uranus

After the major disappointment of the first Transformers sequel Revenge Of The Fallen two years ago I was somewhat hoping director Michael Bay had listened to his critics and made a better film with the latest installment, Transformers - Dark Of The Moon. In order to succeed Bay had to scale back on the childish humour (usually involving Shia LeBeuf's parents or Section 7 Agent Simmonds), reintroduce the sense of magic and surprise that the first Transformers movie possessed and then simply have the plot make some kind of sense.

While Dark Of The Moon is better than Revenge Of The Fallen, it still falls way short of the entertainment value of that first movie. It's a film of two distinct halves. The first half, dealing with a conspiracy which leads to a large alien invasion is utter garbage. Although Bay has wisely minimised the appearances of John Turturro, Kevin Dunn and Julie White, he then stupidly casts John Malkovich, Frances McDormand (both actors I love) and Ken Jeong in roles that eclipse the franchise regulars in terms of annoyingness. It's the same with the irritating robots; Bay ditches racist robot's Skids and Mudflaps from the last movie and replaces them with much smaller, but just as stupid, mini-clones. Bay also disposes the stunning looks and non-acting ability of Megan Fox and replaces her with the stunning looks and non-acting ability of Rosie Huntingdon-Whitley (actually I don't think she's awful awful...she'd be right at home in Hollyoaks or Eastenders...but she's a posh Brit uncomfortable acting in a dumb American movie).

Even the regulars are short changed. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson have no character development scenes of any kind while poor Shia is turned into an insecure, whiny, unlikable bitch for the first half of the film, fretting about his girlfriend's boss, his lack of funds, his lack of job and the general lack of respect from everyone and everybody. Problem is when he's this much of a selfish twat, I don't care about him either...a bit of a problem when he's your lead in a $200 million blockbuster.

And then there's the plot. Bay said that the terrible story in Revenge Of The Fallen was down to the fact they shot a rushed first draft script completed just before the writers strike kicked in back in 2008. Dark Of The Moon had no such industrial action inhibiting it's script but the narrative is just as convoluted, just as dumb, just as badly structured and just as confusing as the last sequel. I'm a guy who's proud to say they can follow the plot of Sucker Punch and Inception but an hour into Transformers 3, I just gave up. As usual there's a MacGuffin both the Autobots and the Decepticons want and whoever gets it first rules the world....so I just switched off and waited for the robots to hit each other.

That's where the good news begins. When the action starts...and there isn't much in the first half...so does the movie. This is the best 3D I've seen since Avatar. The extra dimension actually helps you distinguish the mass of pixels from one another, making sure the robots and the backgrounds don't blend into one another as in Transformers 2. Since the 3D has meant Bay has had to slow down the pace of his editing (apparently it takes the eye 3 seconds to process a complex 3D image)the action is much better than in most Michael Bay movies. Characters are easier to distinguish, the geography of the action is much easier to follow and the fact that there's more attention to the quality of the image as opposed to the sheer quantity of edits means the action is much more exciting. And since there's more of Bay's trademark slow-motion on display, the number of ultra-cool slo-mo shots has increased tenfold. Whether it's the burning wreckage of assault helicopters plummeting past parachuting combat troops or a suddenly vehicle less passenger freewheeling through the air above a still occurring freeway pile-up, Bay has managed to turn the restrictions of the 3D technology into a major victory.

The effects are staggering, up there in scale, quality and detail with Roland Emmerich's 2012. The whole skyscraper based action scenes in particular, with our heroes climbing over, through and under a collapsing megastructure is mindboggling and it's stuff like this that Bay proves that he's a master craftsman. Like the first Transformers movie, the objective of the action is made more clear, making the stakes seem higher and the drama more urgent. Setting the carnage in the middle of a western city, rather than the middle of the desert, also helps to engage the audience as the setting is more relatable.

Never have I seen a film so divided within itself. The lack of comprehensible story, universally unlikable (or completely blank) characters, the lack of any major action and the over-the-top, misguided attempts at humour made me want to murder, maim and torture the projectionist to encourage them to make the film stop. And then, a bit later on, I watched with mouth agape, giggling like a 7 year old on Christmas Morning, at the stunning action and imagery I was witnessing.

While I liked large chunks of what I saw in this sequel I'm just glad this is Bay's last Transformers movie.