Movie Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Yadda yadda yadda, spoilers, yadda yadda

Well here we are again. Another beloved franchise of my childhood and another movie being made about it. I'll just start by saying I was not a fan of the first two movies. The first one was OK, and the second one was a steamy pile of dog shit with a little Megan Fox thrown in. That being said I had made my mind up that I was not giving Michael Bay any more of my money to crap on my childhood.  Well, that was before my 11 year old niece wanted to see it and some friends recommend it. Umm, how do you say "I was wrong" on the internet? Yeah, what I was treated to was an immense blast of a movie. Better than the first two in almost every way.

We start off with a fly through of a war torn Cybertron just as a ship is leaving. A ship that contains the key to the survival of the transformers as a race. Of course it's hit and begins floating disabled through space, eventually landing on the moon. For those of you in the know, this isn't too far from how the original series started with an Autobot ship crashing on the earth in prehistoric times, so, they get a couple of bonus points for that. Anyway so this crash landing on the moon is what supposedly set off the space race between the Russians and the US so that we can find out what the hell is up there. A good mix of historical footage in with the stuff they made up was a really nice touch. Apollo 11 finds the ship, finds the transformers, finds some cool stuff and comes back home. Flash forward to present day and enter my main problem with this movie. Shia LaBeouf. Why was he even in this movie? Aside from the fact he probably had a 3 picture contract, there was no reason for him to be there. He does nothing all movie except drool all over his new costar Rosie Lokatmytits. I like her a little better than Megan Fox but they both serve the same purpose: to provide distraction and eye candy without having to act at all. She does this very well and I'm not gonna complain about the visual at all. Anyway, getting back on track here (see she does provide a distraction) we learn that the Russians found parts of the ship too and try to use it as a power source and that's what caused the Chernobyl disaster. Optimus and team are sent in to retrieve it and are meet by Shockwave who looks very close to his cartoon form but a ton more bad ass. Small fight here, this was mostly just to introduce that there are human collaborators with the Decpticons, a fact we learn when Laserbeak is sent to assassinate the Russian showing our group through the disaster zone. Realizing what the piece of tech is, Optimus is pissed that the humans have held back some of what they have known of the transformers. Upon learning of the crash, the Autobots travel to the site and retrieve Sentinel Prime, the guy in charge before Optimus and the one who can use the tech found at the crash site. Optimus revives him with the Matrix of Leadership and introduces him to Earth. More pointless set up follows including a scene that I would love to forget with Ken Jeong (who I love in "The Hangover" and "Role Models") trapping Shia LaBeouf in a bathroom stall. Ugh. I'm just gonna cut to the point here. Sentinel Prime is really.....wait for it......the bad guy! du du dunh. His whole plan was to escape with these pillars to create a massive space bridge that would allow him to bring Cybertron to earth to be rebuilt. He had been working with Megatron all along and now wants the leaders of Earth to exile the autobots off the planet, which they do. They load up all the good guys in a rocket and shoot 'em into space, but no, wait, Starscream was there and blows the whole thing up killing them all. NOOOOOOOOO earth is lost! Good thing I watched the trailer and know that there's a crap ton of stuff they haven't shown yet. Way to give your dramatic plot point away before it's even shown. So now the bad guys have taken over and pretty much destroyed Chicago (which I loved. I hate that town) but by golly Shia LaBeouf is gonna go in there and get his girl. Wait, what? I'm gonna hit the fast forward button again (last time I promise) Sam is in trouble, he's going to die, all of a sudden out of nowhere a shot rings out and the ship is down. Low and behold it's Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots! They're not dead! Oh wait, I knew that already. Now the good stuff starts. Optimus is PISSED and proceeds to whip everything with even a shred of decpticon metal. He literally is a one man err robot wrecking crew. And this is where I just went into butter mode and melted. Gratuitous robot violence with flaming axes and swords. Yeah, can't get much better than that. Oh yeah, there's some plot stuff happening here too but I didn't care anymore. I'm just gonna end my review on that note. It was a good movie, and despite some of the problems, namely the human cast (why were they there again?) it was a good time.