Does the idea of three-story tall robots bashing the crap out of each other appeal to you? Do you want to watch Chicago turn into a war zone? What about seeing the most mind-blowing 3d presentation yet? I would say yes to those questions too. There is quite a lot to discuss in Director Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," but as far as the simple should you go or shouldn't you go... well, you know who you are. This film isn't as obnoxious as the shoddy "Revenge of the Fallen," it also isn't quite as charming as the 2007 original (which outdid “Super8” as a re-engineering the 80s Spielbergian style). Still, “Dark of the Moon” is precisely of what it wants to be... the most state-of-the-art action epic you have ever seen.
There is has to be some sort of summer movie perfection director Michael Bay achieves here. A complaint many have lobbed at this film (and the series in general) is that there isn't more to say about these people than what is written on their sleeves. But imagine if this film was fully animated, in the quality of a big Disney movie, and I’d bet we’d all feel these characters and archetypes were something wonderful. Imagine Sam Whitwicky (Shia LaBouph), young and plucky, as the heroic Brave Little Toaster. What about beautiful and smart Carly (Rosie Mary-whitington), Sam's girlfriend, as a supportive princess like Pocahontas. There is Director Mearing (Francis McDormand), strong and tough, who gradually accepts the help of young whippersnapper Sam, just like the crotchety old man in “Up.” Bay readily treats his characters like cartoons, and gets a lot of pseudo-emotional mileage out of it. Do we expect the heroes of “Finding Nemo” todwell on the nihilistic feelings a father experiences after the loss of a child for that cartoon to be touching? Do we really want Beauty to truly inhibit and understand those all-too-human feelings of love when the good-girl falls for the bad-boy Beast? Do we want our cartoon heroes to plumb real psychological depths in search of truth? Of course not. Michael Bay knows this, and is pulling from this easily-expressed emotional tradition.
Bay uses these simple characters as puppets in his constantly moving storytelling style. Never is there a moment in “Dark of the Moon” where it feels like something important isn’t happening. Villains are taking over! Heroes are arriving in the nick of time! Huge betrayal! Hold up, here’s a joke, and isn’t it the funniest joke you’ve ever heard! Composer Steve Jablonky’s orchestral score throws out the perfect music que and Bay matches it up with one of cinematographer Amir Mokri’s perfect images to create a strong emotional response, and it happens every 30 seconds. His well-known years as a commercial specialist have certainly paid off. I don't think another filmmaker out there can build up that much emotion in such a short period of time, even though the emotion is ultimately sort of meaningless, the way it is in a tv ad.
Also of note is the top-notch 3d presentation. It is nice and bright, full of small details, and unlike so many 3d films, there’s never the moment where spatial positioning feels amiss. As far as I am concerned this is even more impressive than the previous high-water mark of “Avatar.” The overwhelming majority of this film takes place on location, not in a incredibly advanced computer simulation. Compare the stand-out skydiving sequence in “Dark of the Moon” (a platoon of soldiers jumps out their plane is bizarre skydiving suits and shoot through the magnificent canyons of Chicago) to a similar sequence in “Avatar,” where our lead character flies a cgi bird for the first time. “Dark of the Moon” is the one that is more exciting; these are real people, the camera is whooshing past real buildings, and that level of reality makes all the difference.
That reality is maintained through the feel of the picture, especially the way the film escalates the story to full-blown war. Chicago is dressed to look like a third-world battle zone, the torn curtains blowing out the windows, the smoldering piles of wreckage, and shrapnel and dirt overlaying everything. It is quite heart stopping to see Chicago wrecked to the point it looks like a war zone from CNN. I liked the touch how the villainous robots are now hiding out in the middle of the desert in a makeshift camp, echoing images of terrorists hiding in the deserts of Afghanistan.
With this terrorism metaphor is certain nastiness in the treatment of the robot’s war, with the bad guy robots being joyously ripped apart and torn to shreds by our heroes. It’s a little disconcerting in a fantasy film based on a kid’s toy. In particular is a moment that seems to echo the recent dispatching of Osama bin Laden. A main villain has been beaten, his weapons stripped from him, he cowers on the ground. Our hero says something patriotic about freedom, and then blows the unarmed robot’s brains out. It’s odd, and with an audience that clapped many times over the course of the film, no one clapped here. When you think back into the movie, the tables were turned in earlier scene where the villain has the hero is a similar situation, but the villain lets our hero go. The undercurrent is clear. Bad guys deserve death no matter what.
Listen to the last speech before the credits start, the war of the robots is over. Yet we listen to talk of how this was “another battle, the war continues...” I was drawn to thoughts of how even with Bin Laden’s death, an obvious marker of what we set out to achieve in post 9-11 war, we are now choosing to keep our military machine in the same overseas wars where we have been the last 9 years, no end in sight. I am sure no one intended the film to be read this way, the film was written and shot well before the death of Bin Laden became known. It is odd nonetheless.
All these pieces add up to an overwhelming experience. The constant emotional mechanisms, the intense CGI detail, the visceral 3D effects, the bizarre real-world metaphors... as the end credits began I must admit I was dazed. Maybe it was that I saw the film in IMAX, and the oversize screen didn’t allow for the same distance you feel in a normal theater. It took me a good hour or so to recover my thoughts, to even begin thinking about the movie on a critical level.
Keep in mind I don’t intend any of this as a negative criticism, it is more just observations I had. I am glad I saw “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” I would watch it again before “Thor” or “Hangover 2.” I love spectacle, and I am always interested in seeing what the best technicians and professionals in Hollywood can turn out when money is no object. With the summer halfway over, no other film appears to be competition on those terms. You will be fully entertained... which isn’t the same as being charmed.
Check out Transformers preview after the Jump
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