Transformers: Dark of the Moon
It got off to a great start -- I am a total Apollo geek, I loved all that stuff about the crash-landing of an Autobot ship on the moon being the impetus for the Apollo space program. Apollo 11 and the Transformers, two of my favorite things together! Yay!
On the other hand, being an Apollo geek means I was totally WTF trying to figure out how that actually could have happened. The scene goes like this: Apollo 11 has landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong makes his famous "One small step for man" pronouncement, then after a while Mission Control announces that they're about to go into radio blackout and says goodbye to the team... and, all of a sudden, the astronauts are on the far side of the moon and they're talking to a different, secret Mission Control and running off to investigate the crashed alien ship... and I'm all, wait, what? They can't be talking to Earth on the radio, they're in radio blackout (meaning the moon is between them and the Earth and no signal can get through). Maybe they're faking the radio blackout so they can run off and do their expedition? But no, the real Mission Control isn't in on the secret mission, so they'd have no reason to fake a radio blackout. And, anyway, the crashed ship is on the dark side of the moon -- it *would* be in blackout, no matter who knew about it. And how did the Lunar Module get to the dark side, anyway? Are we supposed to believe that, after landing at Tranquility Base (which is on the near side of the moon), they re-launched the Lunar Module and snuck off to the dark side? Without anybody on Mission Control knowing about it? Impossible! They're constantly monitoring the ship and the astronauts, they'd know if they lost contact. Besides, they didn't have enough fuel to take the LM off joy-riding. Or have a safe landing spot mapped.
No amount of handwaving can make that scene make sense. Even if you do accept that somehow they managed to sneak the LM off to the other side of the moon on their secret mission, there is still no way a radio signal can get through the solid bulk of the moon to the far side, so they can't be in radio contact with their secret mission control back on earth. Unless the movie is taking place in some alternate universe where the moon actually has a periodic rotation of less than a lunar year.... Maybe the crash landing of the Autobot ship started the moon spinning on its axis! But, of course, scientists would have noticed that and the crash landing wouldn't be much of a secret....
Well. Never mind. Back to the giant robots!
Now we come to the loooong middle section of the movie, in which we are subjected to Sam's new girlfriend and wacky parents and his unemployment woes. Eventually, he gets a job working for John Malkovich in the mailroom of his bizarre company, where Sam meets Jerry Wang, the guy with the evidence about the aliens on the moon, which catapults Sam back into the thick of things. Finally. Some of the stuff was funny, some was hinky, some was just "this is not the movie I came to see -- where are my giant robots!"
Once things got going, though, there was some really good action. Perhaps Michael Bay took to heart some of the criticism of the fight scenes between the Transformers being so fast and confusing you couldn't tell what was happening or which robot was which -- in this installment, the bots and cons seemed more distinctive, and the action scenes benefited from the use of slo-mo to make the action clearer. Although I liked the frenzied crash-and-boom of the previous movies, too, so I wouldn't have minded more of that as well.
As far as the bots themselves -- Megatron has always been my favorite, and he was AWESOME in this one. I loved, loved, loved, the beat-up look with the chains and tarp and smashed-up head with little innard-bots crawling in and out of his wounds, and his new Mack Truck alt form. He was mean and sneaky and not terribly bright. I loved how Carly was able to convince him to turn on his own ally by exploiting his distrust. And as soon as he saw that his plan for world domination was doomed, he was asking Optimus Prime for a truce. That's my Megatron!
Shockwave was also AWESOME! Loved his big red eye and gun and implacable destructiveness. Great choice for a featured Decepticon. Laserbeak was really cool, too, like a little robot dragon. I also loved the big robot sandworm thingie. In fact, I thought the Decepticons in this one were way cooler than the Autobots. I may be a bit prejudiced, heh. The Autobots were pretty cool, too. I just wish we'd had more time with them. The character bits with the robots were pretty few and far between.
As far as the humans go, John Turturro's Seymor Simmons has now become my favorite. Without losing any of his hyper freakiness, he's become a solid ally and a brave fighter. I also like Frances McDormand's CIA op.
Some people are saying this is the best of the three Transformer movies. I don't know, I think I still like the first one best, but this one is close. I would like to see it again in IMAX 3D, so I can get the full effect!
On the other hand, being an Apollo geek means I was totally WTF trying to figure out how that actually could have happened. The scene goes like this: Apollo 11 has landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong makes his famous "One small step for man" pronouncement, then after a while Mission Control announces that they're about to go into radio blackout and says goodbye to the team... and, all of a sudden, the astronauts are on the far side of the moon and they're talking to a different, secret Mission Control and running off to investigate the crashed alien ship... and I'm all, wait, what? They can't be talking to Earth on the radio, they're in radio blackout (meaning the moon is between them and the Earth and no signal can get through). Maybe they're faking the radio blackout so they can run off and do their expedition? But no, the real Mission Control isn't in on the secret mission, so they'd have no reason to fake a radio blackout. And, anyway, the crashed ship is on the dark side of the moon -- it *would* be in blackout, no matter who knew about it. And how did the Lunar Module get to the dark side, anyway? Are we supposed to believe that, after landing at Tranquility Base (which is on the near side of the moon), they re-launched the Lunar Module and snuck off to the dark side? Without anybody on Mission Control knowing about it? Impossible! They're constantly monitoring the ship and the astronauts, they'd know if they lost contact. Besides, they didn't have enough fuel to take the LM off joy-riding. Or have a safe landing spot mapped.
No amount of handwaving can make that scene make sense. Even if you do accept that somehow they managed to sneak the LM off to the other side of the moon on their secret mission, there is still no way a radio signal can get through the solid bulk of the moon to the far side, so they can't be in radio contact with their secret mission control back on earth. Unless the movie is taking place in some alternate universe where the moon actually has a periodic rotation of less than a lunar year.... Maybe the crash landing of the Autobot ship started the moon spinning on its axis! But, of course, scientists would have noticed that and the crash landing wouldn't be much of a secret....
Well. Never mind. Back to the giant robots!
Now we come to the loooong middle section of the movie, in which we are subjected to Sam's new girlfriend and wacky parents and his unemployment woes. Eventually, he gets a job working for John Malkovich in the mailroom of his bizarre company, where Sam meets Jerry Wang, the guy with the evidence about the aliens on the moon, which catapults Sam back into the thick of things. Finally. Some of the stuff was funny, some was hinky, some was just "this is not the movie I came to see -- where are my giant robots!"
Once things got going, though, there was some really good action. Perhaps Michael Bay took to heart some of the criticism of the fight scenes between the Transformers being so fast and confusing you couldn't tell what was happening or which robot was which -- in this installment, the bots and cons seemed more distinctive, and the action scenes benefited from the use of slo-mo to make the action clearer. Although I liked the frenzied crash-and-boom of the previous movies, too, so I wouldn't have minded more of that as well.
As far as the bots themselves -- Megatron has always been my favorite, and he was AWESOME in this one. I loved, loved, loved, the beat-up look with the chains and tarp and smashed-up head with little innard-bots crawling in and out of his wounds, and his new Mack Truck alt form. He was mean and sneaky and not terribly bright. I loved how Carly was able to convince him to turn on his own ally by exploiting his distrust. And as soon as he saw that his plan for world domination was doomed, he was asking Optimus Prime for a truce. That's my Megatron!
Shockwave was also AWESOME! Loved his big red eye and gun and implacable destructiveness. Great choice for a featured Decepticon. Laserbeak was really cool, too, like a little robot dragon. I also loved the big robot sandworm thingie. In fact, I thought the Decepticons in this one were way cooler than the Autobots. I may be a bit prejudiced, heh. The Autobots were pretty cool, too. I just wish we'd had more time with them. The character bits with the robots were pretty few and far between.
As far as the humans go, John Turturro's Seymor Simmons has now become my favorite. Without losing any of his hyper freakiness, he's become a solid ally and a brave fighter. I also like Frances McDormand's CIA op.
Some people are saying this is the best of the three Transformer movies. I don't know, I think I still like the first one best, but this one is close. I would like to see it again in IMAX 3D, so I can get the full effect!