Transformers: Dark of the Moon [Review by Haus]

You can forget the suspense. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (P.S., what?) is stunningly, impossibly, jaw-droppingly bad. If you think the title makes no sense, wait ’til you see the film. (Just kidding. Don’t do that. Seriously, shove a branch down your throat instead. It’ll be more satisfying.)

I’m angry. I hate this movie. And I hate how much I hate this movie, because I really wanted to like it. I loved the toys. I loved the cartoon. (I was a child.) The first movie was actually pretty good (and compared with this, it’s Fellini). The second one was a fumble, a strangely racially-charged and largely incoherent mess that saw Optimus Prime fighting with shortswords (?) on Egyptian pyramids. Robots started to have metal beards. Things were going very wrong.

But surely Michael Bay realized his mistakes: That he’d co-opted our childhood-favorite shape-shifting vehicles and selfishly recast them as his own wholly unnecessary pseudo-blackface gold-tooth sporting Jar Jars? (Yes, it’s the second time in a week that I’ve invoked Jar Jar. About this, I am no happier than you.) That one origin story is enough, and that each sequel can’t simply add another completely inconsistent layer of backstory? That robots shouldn’t fight with knives, and that if they must, the fights should mean something and be relevant to some aspect of the story? He realized these things, yes?

He did not. It is almost impossible to believe, but Dark of the Moon (still what??) is worse than Revenge of the Fallen. Much worse. This oppressive film is two hours and forty minutes of total, incomprehensible garbage. Kids banging around with the eponymous toys concoct more lucid storylines than this. I’ve cared more about characters in commercials. (Including the fifteen-second kind. You know, the ones that play on YouTube, or when you’re watching a show online with “limited commercial interruption.”) I’ve cared more about spiders I’ve killed with my Dyson handheld. I swear to goodness. I’ve cared more about milk. Someone else’s milk. I don’t even drink milk.

I’m going to save you some heartache and tell you what happens. As the trailers lay bare, the plot is this: A Transformers spaceship crashed on the moon, spurring the space race. (Thanks, Bay, for your reductio ad absurdum of a tiresome current trend — “re-imagining” historical events through CGI and doublethink storytelling.) This ship carried a bearded robot (aagh! Lesson NOT learned!) voiced by Leonard Nimoy (who’s much better in this music video). It also carried some nonsense space-bridge pillars (don’t even ask) that’ll be used to bring planet Cybertron to Earth to be … rebuilt by human slaves. (Why? It’s a dead husk of a planet. Also, what?) The Decepticons — led by a damaged Megatron, who skulks around the desert wearing rags and chains (what?) and looking like a homeless person — decide to … hmm. Rebuild their dead husk planet with slaves, okay. (Stupidest putative use of humans since The Matrix. “Each human body produces over 2,000 BTUs of body heat,” says Morpheus. Really? You’re going to use humans for their body heat? Why not use cows? The matrix could have been a pasture. Also, who still uses British Thermal Units?) But within seconds of learning this plan, we see the same robots set about murdering all their would-be slaves. (No reason given.) Said robots then spend the lion’s share of act three chasing a small group of humans for absolutely no discernible reason. There’s more, but it hurts my head to think about it. I’m not even kidding, I actually, seriously got a headache just now. I have it right now. No part of this film makes any sense.

Exasperated hands were thrown up. Heads shook. People laughed. (Some people, granted, really seemed to enjoy it — particularly the latest jive-talking comic relief robots.) Literally everything explodes within moments of coming on screen. Dark also rips off a staggering number of movies, mainly cribbing their “hero” moments, to no good effect.

The film also just feels wrong. I think it’s the sense of scale. Chicago lies in ruins, but only a handful of robots seem to be responsible. The battle area is a couple of blocks, max, and no other humans seem to be around. We cut back and forth between huge robots blasting stuff and … a few humans running up a staircase. None of it fits together. Oh, also: In act three, the film oddly cuts to black for about a second, then resumes with a full-fledged alien invasion well underway. My honest guess? Missing reel. Planet Terror did that — as a joke.

Honestly, Dark of the Moon reminded me of Atlanta Nights, a 2004 project by a group of writers who assembled “with the express purpose of producing a bad piece of work of unpublishable quality to test whether publishing firm PublishAmerica would still accept it.” (Thanks, wiki.) Atlanta Nights is a riot. Loved it. Characters change gender and race, and die only to return later. Two chapters are word-for-word identical, and another was entirely “written” by a random text generator. The masterstroke in my view was the late-game denouement, when we realize the entire story thus far has all been a dream — after which revelation the story continues anyway. It’s genius. But then, it’s meant to be bad.

Dark of the Moon, I’m guessing, was not.

Upsides? Parsi and I saw this film with Jon Voight. Seriously. Not even kidding. What else? Well, it’s bright and loud, with rich colors. And Bay shot the live action with real 3D equipment instead of faking it in post-production, so this has some of the better 3D live action shots around. What else … ? It has shiny cars in it. Nice cars. A Mercedes SLS AMG, a gorgeous Ferrari 458 Italia, a Maybach Landaulet. (Think Robb Report in 3D.) The CGI robots look terrific, and the graphics in general are beautiful. It also has some alright actors. (N.B. however, Megan Fox was replaced by a blonde with a swollen upper lip. This is neither positive nor negative, but I’m giving Dark of the Moon the benefit of the doubt.)

But none of that matters. It’s actually amazing how much money and effort is wasted here. This film is a full-barreled, pearl-coated, vector-lit embarrassment of mindless Western largesse. If opportunity cost were torture, Dark of the Moon would be Guantanamo.

Truly, this is a horrendous film. If you liked Transformers as a kid — or even if you, like me, enjoyed the first of this series — please just forget this smoldering log ever existed. Watch the first one, close your eyes, and imagine those robots doing just about anything else.

HAUS VERDICT: Utter, incomprehensible rubbish. In stunning 3D! 

See what the other half thinks: Parsi’s Review.