There was a time in the Autobot's history at their darkest hour, when the future looked bleak and as the credits to Revenge of the Fallen rolled, Transformers fans wondered if Micheal Bay was actually the right guy to be directing these giant fucking robot vs giant fucking robot movies. It turns out he can and that we can squarely lame most of the blame for Revenge of the Fallen's plot failures on the the writer's strike cos Bay has delivered the smash that we all wanted Dark of the Moon to be.
ALERT MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW
Let's face it, a site called The Optimus Prime Experiment is going to give props to any Transformers movie but this time, I'm giving BIG props to Dark of the Moon. This was a fearless movie. You thought it was bad ass when Jazz was killed in the first movie? This is a movie where EVERYONE dies. And jeepers is it satisfying.
Sam finally has a true moment of glory against a Decepticon when he manages to remove Starscream's eye and replace it with a bomb. Sentinel Prime murders Ironhide in a classic movie betrayal plot point and well, Megatron finally got was coming to him, killed by his one armed brother, Optimus Prime. That's right, one armed!!
It was a bloody long movie with a whole 'building collapsing' plot point that served us nothing but a vehicle to show bad ass Shockwave was. Or wasn't. The trailers made him seem like he was set to rule the planet but in the end he was just there to make some fan boys happy.
And indeed, the fan boys will be very happy with what's going on in this movie - lots of head severing, Prime with his swords and finally, he has a trailer to lug around some awesome weaponry. Bumblebee gets a few by now mandatory heroic moments and Sam Witwicky actually gets a pretty decent run this time as he's matured from love struck teenager to love struck man about town with his newest sexy warrior goddess in tow. The Lazerbeak character is utterly brilliant and convincing as an evil bird.
If you enjoy Star Trek, there's an awesome bit where they get Sentinel Prime (voiced ably well by Leonard Nimoy (who voiced Galvatron in the animated movie)) to say the classic line the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" which is sure to be a classic Dark of the Moon quote.
You still have to check your brain at the door to enjoy this movie. It's one of those awesome thrill rides, that if you have enough pop corn to get you through, you're going to love.