Transformers: Dark of the Moon Talk, banter, and possible spoilers

So just came back from seeing an early showing of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and found myself liking this one and having a good time. It's a Michael Bay film, so it's going to have its faults but I feel that Dark of the Moon manages to hold up as an entertaining popcorn summer film.

Well the early showing was in 3D, and I was okay with it. The one thing that kind of made me enjoy the 3D version was supposedly that filming this movie in 3D forced Bay to ease up on his style of filming, which is shaky cam, ton of explosions, and lots of stuff moving fast in just about every direction possible. I was kind of shocked that I could follow the action of the movie.

Here are the issues that I had with Dark of the Moon.

Once again Megatron plays the role of lackey to the new big bad in the film. To me, in Transformers lore Megatron is the Big Bad 'Bot on the Block and plays lackey to no one. In this one he's just here to serve as a typical plot device in the final act, and oddly enough people in the theater cheered when it happened.

The final act also had Optimus Prime take on a tone that I just didn't agree with. Again to me, Optimus Prime has always been the guy to value life and show compassion, he would even show mercy to his enemies. To hear him say "They Must die" or "He must die" just didn't sit well with me. I guess someone can say with the events that happened kind of hardened him and made him realize that with war hard choices have to be made, but to me it's just not in Optimus Prime's nature.

As usual with this being a Michael Bay film he throws in some characters that have quirks to bring some comedy into the movie. There were new characters in the film like this and I honestly think the movie could have done without 2 of them. Also some continuity issues with the first film, but it's a Michael Bay film so what can you do, aside from ignoring it.

So overall I thought the move to be good, it's what you would expect from a summer popcorn flick and would recommend seeing in the theaters.

Just got back, and to borrow Sho's catchphrase, I dug it. By far my favorite of the three movies.

The action scenes were GLORIOUS in this one. I've always believed that there's an art to good action scenes and many films don't do them well. This one freakin' nails it, and on top of all that the action scenes are absolutely BUGNUTS INSANE. You know that one with the giant robot sandworm kraken digging into the skyscraper you've seen in all the trailers? Yeah, you can expect that level of "HOLY SH*T" from every single action scene in the film.

Without spoiling too much, the villain in this one was probably my favorite villain character of the trilogy. He wasn't nearly as one note as Megatron or the Fallen, and he had a far more interesting backstory. I'm not going to say much else but we finally have a villain in a Transformers movie who's motivation can be summed up by something other than "CRUSH KILL DESTROY". And also, his plan was surprisingly cunning.

There were a LOT of G1 references in this one. Hell, the entire plot of the movie was pretty much a mash up between "Megatron's Master Plan" and "The Ultimate Doom". My favorite one was a shout out to "Atlantis Arise" where Megatron sits on the Lincoln Monument's throne. To go one step further, this one felt a lot like an adaptation of G1, just in the way the plot was structured.

The 3D was also excellent as well. There's been a lot of movies recently where I've outright forgotten that I was in fact watching the movie in 3D, but in this nearly every shot had a defined foreground, middleground, and background. There were also plenty of shots in the film where you could tell were done specifically with 3D in mind, but weren't the sort of glaring "HEY LOOK SOMETHING IS COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN" sort of shots that plague a lot of other 3D movies.

So yeah, in other words, it made me a very happy Transformers fanboy. If you have any interest in the series, go check it out in 3D. It's well worth the 10 bucks and 2.5 hours.

I just got back myself, I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far.


***SPOILERS***

So I didn't think Malkovich or Ken Jeong did much to add to the story. The cameo from the parents wasn't really needed. In fact the front end of the movie felt a little bloated. I think typical Bay where he lets his "comic relief' get too much screen time and be a little too crazy...

That said, the second half of the movie more than made up for all of it.

Lots of autobot action, loved the Ferrari, was said to see Arcee, Chromia and the other missing.

I loved Leonard Nimoy as Sentinal Prime, though about 3 minutes after he started speaking I was like, "Well ****, they cast Leonard Nimoy for him, that wasn't on accident, he's going to be a bad guy isn't he?"

Same realization just before Sam and his girly got into Shockwave in car form leaving the party, I thought that car reeked of energon the moment I saw it.


Over all, a lot of fun, my GF really enjoyed it too. Great action sequences, not too much blatant potty humor. And really the fall of Chicago to the Decepticons is I think what a lot of people have been wanting to see from these movies, true Transformer on human Carnage. Really my favorite piece of the first two films was the opening scene with Blackout obliterating the military base, since it just seemed like it was the purest execution of "what if these things were real."

The scene of Chicago being obliterated really captured that feeling. And all the Transformer on Transformer fights were done very, very well. Sam even got a kill on Star scream.

Some things didn't make sense, Bumblebee rescues same and the Colonel then the next time we see him he's a captive. But eh, it happens. Not crazy about optimus being out of the fight because he got tangled in wires, but again no biggy, it worked well enough

The 3D was good, used but not over used, not understated and it was gorgeous, looked very nice.

The only major complaint I had was Optimus nearly begging Sentinal Prime for his life when he lost his arm. The "no, please, don't" just wasn't him. Then he turns around and executes a downed Sentinal Prime, that's just not Optimus. Same thing when he executed the injured decepticon in the beginning of the second film. Optimus Prime is not an executioner, he'd have a robot captured, maybe suck the energon out and put it into sleep mode, but he shouldn't be standing over some one putting a shot in the head like a mob style hitman.


Other than that, fantastic flick ,lots of fun, lot more focus on robot carnage, and pretty gritty and dark in places without feeling too forced about it.

I'll see it again.

I was underwhelmed with it. I am huge transformers fan, but this left me feeling numb at the end. We already saw the whole evil Prime route in Revenge of the Fallen. Seeing the Star Trek clip at the beginning with Wheelie saying, oh this episode where Spock goes nuts as them dropping hints like clusterbombs to what was going to happen. I'd much rather Sentinel was actually a good guy(especially sicne he removed another heavy hitter in the process leaving them with Bee and Prime to do all killing.), and Shockwave really had been the main villain.

I'd say I ultimately liked ROTF best of the 3 films. This film was trying too hard to add a deeper plot, and never really got out of second gear as pacing was a bit slow at times. The fights weren't as good as the second film. The Forest Battle was superior to any in this film.


Hasbro seems want to make a fourth, with Megatron being wasted, unlike the novel puts them in a position where all popular or potential leader chaarcters for bad guys are gone. Shockwave was silent thug number 7, and probably should just been subbed with Sixshot and held off till later. I guess they needed a red herring villain to claim was the big bad for the trailers. Guess Thunderwing or Jhiaxus for part 4 heh?

I like Mark Kermode's in depth review.

Saw and dug Transformers Dark of The Moon. Awesome flick!! Only stayed during 1st quarter of credits. Anything post credits?

Only one scene during the credits with Agent Simmons but that's it. I stayed through til the end and was expecting Wheelie and his buddy to climb out of the crash or something, but nothing happens after the credits.

Ben Kuchera's review on Ars Technica wasn't exactly positive.
Yet, somehow, it actually has me thinking of going to see it in a theatre despite having given the theatrical release of Transformers 2: Truck Nuts a miss.

i tend to agree with Bad Monkey!'s comment:

Saw it, enjoyed it.

One thing stood out to me though:


*****spoilers*****


















I felt like Patrick Dempsey's character's actions after the invasion was just wrong. He was either dumb enough to believe the Decepticons would honor some sort of deal they made (before he knew what he was helping them do), or he thought he could still win their favor by continuing to help them by preventing Sam from interfering with the Rods. Either way, he should have seen the writing on the wall, if he was as smart as they portrayed him to be earlier in the movie, and had some sort of Prodigal Son turnaround at the end. It would have made more sense than him continuing to fight Sam till the bitter end.

io9 had an interesting review, first to paragraphs below.

An hour of absolute boredom followed by about 30 minutes of get to the splosions already... followed by about 40 minutes of great action.

It was better than the 2nd movie...

There was a number of plot holes that i've forgotten in the last 30 minutes since getting through it and some things like why do you need a space bridge if you can fly to earth while that damaged? Why haven't you figured out that the Decepticons have been on modern earth for 60+ years? and Why are you announcing the alliance with top secret alien machines noone knew about is over? The proper reaction when that was put on the tv would have been "There are aliens and we have an alliance with them?! When did this happen!?"

It was easier to tell characters apart this round too due to the colors and that there were large surfaces with those colors on them on a number of the characters...

Better ending would have been that the Autobots knew about this attack and launch themselves off cybertron when it gets brought over just a little, land and start destroying the decepticons and this would have worked even better with them not having to turn the device back on, making the stupid human character less dumb v.v

So, was it just three Star Trek references, or did I miss some?

Enjoyed the movie. Though I do wish they'd quit making Starscream look so pathetic. :/

Just saw it.

Just plain bad.