film review: transformers 3
Directed by Michael Bay, Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon, is the third (and hopefully final) instalment in the popular franchise. The film starts off promisingly enough as audiences are introduced to archival footage that is combined with re-enactment scenes from the 1960s where we learn that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had an ulterior motive when they landed on the moon. In 1961, a space ship that was piloted by Sentinel Prime crashed on the moon, carrying “the pillars” – a technology that could ultimately save the Cybertronians. NASA was able to detect the crash and John F. Kennedy authorised a mission to collect samples from the space ship, which occurred years later in 1969.
The film cuts back to the present where the Autobots are working with the United States, but during a mission in Chernobyl, Optimus Prime learned that the Soviet Union managed to use one of the pillars as a power source which resulted in the disaster of 1986. This act of ‘distrust’ from the humans caused the Autobots to set out and locate the pillars and revive Septimus Prime on their own. All of this information is swept over very quickly and forms a short-lived sub plot to the film.
The protagonist, Sam Witiwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is now a college graduate who is struggling to find a job, and various subsidiary characters are carelessly introduced, including Sam’s new love interest Carly (British model Rosie Alice Huntington-Whiteley), her wealthy boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), Sam’s employer (John Malkovich), his co-worker (Ken Jeong) and the National Intelligence Director (Frances McDormand). Josh Duhmal and John Turturro also reprise their roles, and while most of these characters provide some comic relief, there is no character development.
Over 90 minutes of the film becomes devoted to pure action sequences that drag on longer than you can imagine. Unfortunately the final scene is also clichéd – slow motion editing is used as the predictable ending finally reaches its climax and Sam and Carly embrace. This film is unnecessarily long and even Shia LaBeouf’s adorable charm cannot mask this shallow script.
