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.
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.
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