JJ Reviews: Dark Side of the Moon Transformers


bumblebee transformers dark of moon

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The fan boys will be very happy with what's going on in this movie" - As a fanboy, no, im not impressed. Why? In transformers Mr. Bay changed things here and changed things there, and I accepted the film after waiting for 5 years as a standalone TF universe with some references to the cartoons and comics to pay homage to the history of TF. it was to be viewed as different. TF2, was, and no need for the explanation, a flop, blame the writers strike, blame whatever, thats what it was. the third, TF3 in comparison to TF1 was a mishmash of TF Generation 1 plots from the cartoons and comics. Megatrons plan to use a spacebridge to bring Cybertron to earth, been there done that, in the Gen 1 cartoon guess what it was realistic in that earthquakes and Tsunamis were destroying the planet, and prime with his love ofhiumanity had to save the day. the Ark? really im not even going to elaborate. Sending autobots to their doom via a space shuttle? (sigh). been there done that. did i say that already? its ok, if Michael can do it as a main movie plot... Sentinel Prime, what a bastardization of Alpha Trion, honestly the undertones of optimus' creation ideological (instead of physically) being the result of his respect for sentinel as a leader, was just plain gross. Alpha Trion was a awesome in the true sense. i was in awe when i say the guy who created a new form of robot to fight the decepticon. to have his image defaced by a treacherous politician, was just plain wrong. Ironhides death, TF Gen 1 film. the final fight was poorly executed. the same axed hand again from the original film, you think for a moment optimus may die, but no surprise its megatron who goes down. the point im making, is it honestly felt like bay and his writers just crapped their pants, watched all of Gen1 and just went with the most dramatic moments they could identify with in the hope to win a fanboys affection, and have the final movie go down really well at the cult level. no dice here im afraid.

Jimmy Jangles said...

Thanks for your thoughts ANON, sounds like there's no pleasing you either way and you'd have only been happy if Bay had been nominated for an Oscar!

Anonymous said...

I DID NOT EVEN MOTHERFUCKING SEE THE THE MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE! ALSO, I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLANE! MY NAME IS SAMMY JACKS, AND I AM REALLY PISSED OFF!