Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011)

Michael Bay directs a third movie in the series. This time the All-Spark is completely irrelevant and so is the renewed quest to extract Energon. However, The Autobots and Decepticons are on a search for an old Cybertronian ship called The Ark, which crashlanded on the dark side of the moon in the 1950's. The ship transported an Autobot called Sentinel Prime, an engineer responsible for the pillars that form a space bridge. The main plot now is to transport Cybertron to Earth to rebuild the wasteland.
Several changes were made after the previous movie: no more African-American stereotypes, no more cowardly Leo, and no more Megan Fox. Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is three months out of college and is looking for work. Unfortunately it has to be the same formula within the Michael Bay movies: too many humans, too much detail of the characters we do not care about, and the presence of his ever-so-annoying parents who add more to the misery. Sam has a new girlfriend after Megan Fox was fired by Bay himself. No explicit explanation was offered, but it was only said that "she was mean". However, it adds more insult to injury because nobody would even hook up with this guy after the last misadventure that almost got everyone killed in the process. Any girl who has no taste for deathly pursuits would not have anything to do with a guy whose face was broadcast worldwide by the evil robots. As if that was not enough, we have to watch a montage of his job hunt. Like I said, anyone who is unemployed or not in full-time employed would be grossly annoyed by this montage when they came to watch Autobots and Decepticons duke it out on each other. More of Sam Witwicky than of the Transformers and we call clamor for a change in direction.
So when we do see the Transformers, we see our favorite robots reincarnated: Shockwave, Laserbeak, Soundwave as car instead of the satellite (I do not know how he did that and the movie does not show it). But we also see one other useless robot that plays no important role in the movie (a long-tongued stump), and another robot who could transform into a laptop once (named "Brains", like the Thunderbirds character, right?). You have to be honest, Shockwave is a bad-ass cyclops in his own rights with his giant worms and uses his worms to decimate every building and structure in his every sight. Laserbeak now talks, even though his previous incarnations never talk. There is some issue regarding his ability to transform into one ordinary hardware to another even without ample time to scan the object prior to transformation. I think the purpose of that is for product placement, otherwise they are just superfluous.
I have watched the 1980's series and have discovered that this movie derives two plot points from the series: "bringing Cybertron to Earth" and "kicking the Autobots out". I have to recall the first point: by bringing Cybertron to Earth's atmosphere, the Decepticons risk inducing powerful gravitational forces capable of tearing the Earth to chunks, as was acknowledged by the cartoon episode but grossly ignored by the movie itself. Yet Sentinel Prime has dedicated his alliance to Megatron just to enslave the human race. If the gravitational forces rip the Earth into chunks, these slaves will perish; so the plan is impracticable. On top of all that, one city Chicago is decimated with several victims being scorched by some factions of Decepticons who are possibly oblivious to their grand plan.
I can only assume that the incoherence in this story is shorter and less strenuous on one's logic. Here, we remember from the prologue that there is a ship that flew from Cybertron transporting Sentinel Prime with his technology. The ship was shot down into the moon and lay dormant for decades. But it is disclosed that the Decepticons shot down the ship without knowledge as to whether the ship would survive and perish. So Sentinel survives and is revived, only to later reveal his true alliance to Megatron. It might have been real pain for Megatron to realize that he had just demoted himself under Sentinel, from Prime to slime. Only Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) could talk some sense into him and <Spoilers>.
Speaking of H-W, I think she was less than passionate in her role. All her dialogue sounds wooden and child-like (as in, like child actors). I would not even think she was the best choice for a character to replace Mikaela Banes, with no emotion and very little rush in her aura unless in more serious situations.
Undoubtedly there is a series of destruction on highways, business districts, the NEST headquarters (which is no longer secret since Transformers can be seen with the naked eye). An orgy of explosions is a must, and there is this very long scene of one building being decimated with some occupants clinging to dear life. I am pretty sure that a lot of viewers were just hoping Sam Witwicky was just going to be killed off along with that overly heinous Jerry "Deep" Wang <urgh!>--thank goodness he was killed off. His appearance is just pointless and downright insulting to the 12A/PG-13 certificate. One other note, Tyrese Gibson only spends fewest minutes on-screen of the three movies. Seymour Simmons (John Turtturo) makes his third appearance for the sake of getting the plot forward, despite his role in the government sector being history. To top it off, he now has to make it big on us that he is rich and has a mansion of his own and no longer lives with his mother or owns a butcher's shop. He suffers from an injury in the highway chase which should have just thrown him out of this movie since he just sits in the wheelchair for the remainder of the film and talks about whatever he likes. There are several more unlikable human characters who should be killed off so that only the robots take up all the screen time.
This movie makes moderate improvements in some sections like having a story that can be digested, no more plot twists, and more action from the robots in disguise. But the Michael Bay formula still ruins the movie's chance of ever being taken seriously.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009)

Two years after the events of Transformers, Michael Bay brings us another blockbuster to the big screens. This time, the Autobots have new allies to add to the pack--and so do the Decepticons. Unfortunately it is the same formula recycled into this movie: human characters take up the running time, which is longer than it was in the last movie.

So here Sam Witwicky is going to college, and the Autobots have formed an alliance with the humans to form NEST to hunt down the remainder of the Deception forces. But it sounds like the Transformers are waging war on earth for no apparent reason since the Allspark has been destroyed. So why are they still here? Well as the story evolves, it emerges that the need for "energon"is at its greatest demand--and the Decepticons never leave their leader behind even in his death. But this plot point takes a very long time to evolve as we have to watch Shia LaBeouf ham up his screaming like a stereotypical damsel-in-distress, gibber repeatedly as a result of the All-spark being absorbed into his mind, and make a complete embarrassment of himself in the lecture theater. As if that is not enough, we have Sam's mother blow her blood pressure at the house after household utensils are inadvertently converted to feral Decepticons with a shard from the Cube, and then run amok at the college after eating some cannibis. All these scenes contribute to a longer running time, and a higher probability of an audience member sleeping off in the cinema.

And there is this student, Leo. Throughout this flick he makes like a freaking whelp who finds himself entangled in the mayhem with Sam and his friends, even though he has been on the case of unraveling the existence of the robots in disguise. If I may suggest, he has had several chances to walk away from this movie but does not do so. I mean this guy does not make any significant contribution to the group on any occasion; even Seymour Simmons finds him completely unreliable and tazes him one on scene. Thank goodness!

One thing we want to bear in mind is that nobody wants to give a toss about some poor soul in college, just the story surrounding the alien robots and their ravaged world. And why must Bay add more insults to injury with at least four examples of testicle jokes?

·         In the college dorms where one or two roommates mention "the balls sack" and "sucking the sack"

·         In the aircraft museum, where Leo accidentally tazes himself and jokes about "how many times you have to be tazed in the nuts before you can't have kids"

·         In the Egyptian desert, where Mikaela lands on Leo's crotch after Jetfire's rapid transport via the Spacebridge

·         On the Great Pyramids, where Devastator's two wrecking balls resemble his "testicles".

I thought this is a 12 certificate movie, and this filth just does not fit in at all. Tiresome and unclean as it sounds, I would not pay to hear this rubbish.

And let me recall the story. It is long-winded and takes so much time to get straight to the point. So if I got this, a Decepticon wants to activate a machine to blow up our sun and harvest the energy from it in the form of Energon. But the only way to turn on this machine is to find the key called the Matrix of Leadership. But this key is not exactly in line with the source material because I remember clearly that the Matrix is passed from one Autobot leader to another--and had this been the case, I believe there would have been no need to go through the trouble of looking for it in Egypt, only for it to turn to dust in the "Tomb of the Primes"! I mean seriously, this scripts so full of loopholes that one would be bewildered as to whether it was cross-checked thoroughly before the movie was ever green-lighted.

And before I forget, the subtitle to the movie is Revenge Of The Fallen. I expected the Decepticons, including Megatron himself, to be the fallen ones seeking revenge. But the real twist to this story, as explained by Jetfire, reveals Megatron's "master" to be the Fallen. I was completely bemused by this revelation and wondered whether all that exposition was just to throw us off course.

So I must be frank, watching this movie on DVD can be challenging due to the excessive writing and nearly incoherent storyline as a result. Michael Bay has decided to degrade some characters and add annoyance to the mix. Though we still have the heart-stopping, blood-rushing action scenes like before where the robots beat each other up with their missiles and lasers. And just like the first movie, we also watch heavy rampage and destruction in the beginning and the end of this flick, as well as in the middle. The movie minus the humans equals live-action robots excitement.

Transformers (2007)

Since the 1980s the Transformers franchise has been a craze in childhood. Toys, t-shirts, television series of various generations, and even a movie of 1986, have been a favourite to children of all ages. There were animations, from hand-drawn to CGI, so it was time to blend live action and CGI. So here we have it, Michael Bay's Transformers (2007).

On a mega budget of $150m, the robots in disguise make their appearance in our world and interact with humans. It is a marvellous sight on-screen to watch the heroic Autobots wage war against their foes the Decepticons. What is the cause of the war? As stated in the prologue, it is The Allspark--the power to turn ordinary technology into transforming robots. The Autobots want to use it to rebuild their ravaged home planet; the Decepticons want to use it to build an army, and dominate the universe. The Allspark crashes into earth and is discovered by mankind before the transformers.

With advanced computers and graphics, the robots are blended into the screen so that they appear to be as real as the human characters themselves. However, many of our well-known characters are much different to their incarnations of previous generations, including Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, Ratchet, Ironhide, Megatron, Starscream and Frenzy; new Decepticons include Barricade, Warpath, Bonecrusher and Blackout. Many of them have undergone radical alterations in their patterns of transformation, like a Rubik's cube rather than that pattern from any of the animated series. But it must be noted that a great deal of computer work has been as intricate as possible to give the robots a distinctive look, so that even without their respective insigniae we can tell an Autobot from a Decepticon. If you recall the animated series of previous generations (More Than Meets The Eye, Cybertron, Armada, Energon, Robots In Disguise), you will recall that the Autobots and Decepticons look so much alike that they would need their insignias to stand out. Thus a lot of care was taken in this movie to make the Decepticons look far too intimidating and nightmarish to be mistaken for Autobots.

A problem with this movie is the large chunk of running time focused on the human characters in this film, particularly on Shia LaBeouf's character Sam Witwicky. For a movie titled Transformers, we expected this movie to focus on the titular characters. Many of the fans could care less about the human characters and more about the alien robots. Besides, nobody wants to watch some kid continually stammer on the screen and scream like a sissy. One other thing, Sam's parents truly do not help matters at all, especially not Julie Witwicky.

So Michael Bay brings our robots to life; thank you for the computer animation, action, the humour and the plot. But we are not pleased with some of the human characters that take up too much screen time and spill crudeness onto us with their unwatchable acting and delivery. Work on the script so that excessive destruction to property will be averted; shorten the movie by giving less time to the human characters and focus more on the titular characters instead.