Many promises have been made about the third and apparently final (yeah, right) entry into the hugely popular Transformers franchise by its love-him-hate-him helmer, Michael Bay; less goofy humour, no pathetic robots crafted in the mould of archaic racial stereotypes, and of course, no Megan Fox. On the strength of his latest effort, Bay absolutely still has a way to go with picking cohesive scripts and self-editorialising, yet it’s safe to say that the third time round, viewers definitely get enough bang for their buck, in what is liable to be the only film to challenge Fast Five’s property damage high-score this year.
The plot is about as important to what’s happening on screen as clothing is to an issue of Playboy, but Transformers: Dark of the Moon has the admirable good sense to follow in the footsteps of one of the year’s best blockbusters, X-Men: First Class, by drawing from real events in human history and injecting them with a pulpy revisionism. The 1960s space race, as it turns out, was in fact a dash to recover a mysterious technological artefact which crash lands on the moon; an Autobot teleportation device called the Ark
While Dark of the Moon has its share of problems, Michael Bay does admittedly demonstrate a small modicum of growth as a director here; the pre-titles prologue scenes are constructed with a surprisingly nimble, even clever hand, no matter that they give way to the goofball humour, ropey performances and sketchy writing we’ve come to expect from a Bay production. Indeed, following the exciting and inventive opening – featuring some blistering coverage of a Cybertron battle rendered in stunning 3D – Bay applies the gears, frustratingly choosing to focus on the life and times of his protagonist, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a pointless exercise simply because nobody wants to watch a bunny-stunned young man fawn over his admittedly gorgeous new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, ousting Megan Fox), when we can watch gigantic robots battling for the fate of the Earth.
Such is the trade off; being shuttle-cocked between these scenes of “character development” and the other stuff – the explosions and destruction that Bay does so well – means that for the first two thirds of Dark of the Moon, the action is infrequent and stilted, occurring for mere single minutes at a time before it is interrupted by a gag or pointless scene about Sam looking for a job. Sitting through the excessive job-hunting scenes does at least unveil a few peculiar cameos – chiefly John Malkovich as Sam’s eccentric mentor – though you’ll doubtless wish the film had been chopped down by at least half an hour once the lights come up.
Audiences will likely have so much fun with the final hour of this film, however, that they’ll soon downplay or even forget many of its issues; the closing set-piece – a colossal battle in Chicago which takes place in the air, on the ground, inside collapsing buildings, and everywhere in between – is a jaw-dropping technical achievement, both a testament to the present state of visual effects and Bay’s prowess as an action director of scarcely contained confidence. For all of Bay’s flaws, there’s never a spatially confusing moment in this, or in fact, any of his films; his coverage is consistently exhilarating, that is, when he chooses to focus on action rather than drama. The film’s 3D presentation also lends itself extremely well to Bay’s directorial sensibilities, and given that Bay was egged into adopting the format by James Cameron, it’s little surprise that for the level of detail and sheer heart-pumping factor, this is probably the best use of 3D since Avatar.
It’s difficult to imagine more effort – or money, for that matter – being poured into any set-piece this year, for while it very nearly exhausts with its length and outright intensity, Bay’s slick direction and tendency to keep the action moving fast makes it difficult to become restless. This is absolutely the film at its very best – the most entertaining moment involving a desperate dash to escape a half-destroyed building, causing Sam and his comrades to slide several stories through it as though characters in a platforming video game – yet the chilling focus on a destroyed Chicago also inevitably recalls more serious-minded disaster fare, and of course, the spectre of 9/11. Bay doesn’t reach too far for pathos, but for what it’s worth, this is the least forgiving, most brutal film of the franchise; in the final showdown, innocent civilians die ad infinitum, exploding indiscriminately into piles of ash and bone.
It doesn’t do enough to remedy the previous film’s flaws – Sam’s parents still get their oar in and most subsequent attempts at humour fall flat – and the female lead casting change is hardly inspired (Huntington-Whiteley is every bit as doe-eyed and stolid in her delivery as Megan Fox, perhaps moreso), but what Bay gets right is the essence of the first Transformers film; less of a focus on the dumb, and more on the joy of the spectacle and the thrill of the chase, even if it takes him a while to get there. A few other plusses – particularly a cracking supporting turn from Frances McDormand as the Secretary of Defense – don’t hurt either.
It’s still chock full of embarrassing humour and soap opera drama, but Dark of the Moon is, thanks to a dizzyingly impressive near-hour climax, more a celebration of Bay’s strengths than a laundry list of his many flaws. But only just.
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