TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Just to get this out of the way, the third TRANSFORMERS movie, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, is much better than TRANSOFRMERS 2. It has a straight-ahead plot and a clear story of good over evil. That said, it’s not a great movie, because it tries to pack a lot of action into a short time frame.

The movie opens with Sam (played by Shia LaBeouf) living with his girlfriend and upset that his parents are going to find out he doesn’t have a job after graduating from an Ivy League college. Several firms reject him, including one where he tells them he won a medal from Obama, and they say, “We’re all Republicans here.” Finally, he gets hired by a firm run by Bruce, a strange character played by John Malkovich. He’s hired because his girlfriend Carly’s boss, Dylan, has put in a good word for him.

At the same time as Sam is searching for a job to give his life meaning, the Autobots are shown helping mankind by getting rid of a nuclear reactor in the Middle East and trying to solve an alien Decepticon problem at Chernobyl. Secret papers reveal that the space race to the moon was all about the crash landing of Autobot Sentinel Prime’s spaceship on the dark side of the moon. It’s revealed that the Decepticons won the war on their home planet, and Sentinel Prime barely escaped with some devices that could have saved the Autobots, if only he had not crashed on the moon.

Meanwhile, Sam is accosted by a crazy Chinese character in the men’s room where he works. The man, whose name is Wang, and calls himself by the disgusting moniker of “deep Wang,” passes on to him some pages describing an evil plan by the Decepticons to take over the world. A Decepticon kills Wang, and Sam reunites with Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. Sam discovers Carly’s boss is in cahoots with the Decepticons. Sentinel Prime may hold the key for the Decepticons to conquer Earth. Thus, the race is on to save the world.

DARK OF THE MOON has a lot of thrilling action. It has the advantage of having a straightforward plot. Right at the beginning, the audience knows the Decepticons want to take over the world and the Autobots, who are hopelessly outnumbered, need to save it with Sam’s help. In the process, Sam works together with an elite group of Marines and our favorite cast members from the past movies. By and large, the characters are better developed in TRANSFORMERS 3, and the action is defined well.

That said, the movie’s ending does not have the heartfelt emotion of the first movie. Instead of having a powerful standoff, the movie ends with all guns blazing, like a gigantic fireworks display. Thus, the ending is entertaining and spectacular, but not inspiring.

The good news is that TRANSFORMERS 3 has a lot of patriotic content, some prayers, the heroes hide at one point in a cathedral, and the movie clearly opposes dictatorship, communism and even Islam. In fact, the evil Decepticons look like Muslims in dress and speech, and one of the first targets is a Middle Eastern nuclear site. Also, the Russians are still bad guys.

Sadly, the movie uses the revisionist history storyline becoming so common in Hollywood: in this case, the noble JFK-initiated race to the moon becomes a massive conspiracy. Furthermore, Sam’s parents are just goofy, and his mother is more sexually charged than necessary. Sam seems to be the adult, and his parents seem to be the children. Finally, Dylan appears to be another villain of Big Business who’ll do anything to make money, including betraying humanity. In fact, there are too many villains in the movie.

Finally, although there’s not as much sexual innuendo in TRANSFORMERS 3 as the second movie, there is a bedroom scene and crude innuendo. Also, unlike the previous movies, there are a couple very annoying homosexual jokes. For example, the Chinese informant Wang produces the secret documents through his zipper.

All in all, therefore, TRANSFORMERS 3 is not a movie for children, and strong caution is advised.