Transformers 3 – Movie Review

movie reviewHoly smoke where do I start? First of all I have to say that I absolutely don’t get it. By that I mean all the cash this series made. I can understand that someone goes to see a movie to have a fun evening with friends and doesn’t care much about the movie. And yes, I can see how the series has a certain appeal and entertainment value to it. But man… parts of the series are an insult to my intelligence. I’m sure other people would agree but simply don’t care. They just wanna see big robots ruining whole cities while they’re fighting for… I don’t know anymore. And there we have one of the biggest problems.

All three movies are more than two hours long. And half of the time we don’t even see robots because we follow the plot of that Shia Lebeauf character. And some other pretty much useless people. Ok, I agree… they’re just there to give us a human point of view. The robots on the other hand are there too, yes. But they’re nothing more than ‘supporting cast’. If that term can be accurate. I don’t know. I use it anyway! So half the time we see Shia running around, doing things… things we mostly don’t care about. Especially when his parents come into play. Turn your brain off or you’ll end up drooling yourself while bouncing around in a padded cell. There’s also ‘the girl’ factor in these movies. Part one and two had Megan Fox. Now in part one lady Fox was stunning. I mean… sexy as hell. Of course Michael Bay knows how to put sexy women on celluloid. In part two then, I don’t know. I’m fairly sure that Megan Fox had some surgery going in her face. I may be wrong but I felt she looked different. Which was a little turn off. She was stunning to look at in part one. And that’s the only reason why she was in the movies. To look sexy. Now in part three they dumped lady Fox because she refused to to work with Mr. Bay again. Apparently he must be quite the a**hole and treating women not very gentlemen like. Good for her. It was a ballsy decision to say no and it deserves support. Now the new girl (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) they casted was visually less my taste. But! She gave her character more life. I felt she had more screen presence and is, from my pov, the most likable character in TF3. Unbelievable! Shia Lebeauf’s character is a total idiot in this movie. Up until the last 45 minutes of the movie. Then he kinda got his shit together somehow. Anyway…

Now the third movie starts and we learn that all things we learned in the previous movies were for nothing. Fu** continuity! Thanks to you, overpaid hollywood writing talents. Did I say talent? Anyhoo! In the first 1 1/2hrs we follow Sam Witwicky and his weird shenanigans while he’s trying to find a job. He’s unemployed and lives in a flat that probably costs $10.000 a month. Well, yeah… his new girlfriend apparently earns quite a paycheck in her job – nonetheless, everything around that guy screams ‘money’! How can he afford all that? Makes no sense.

We also have to witness some of the weirdest timed comedic scenes in movie history. Especially John Malkovich. What exactly is the reason he’s in the movie?! There are more well deserved actors in this train wreck of a movie. I guess they just wanted to have some mindless fun. Can’t blame them. They surely knew it can only be hilarious when they read the script. And they indeed had fun. You can almost see it in the movie. Except for Shia Lebeauf. There’s rarely a minute where I thought he enjoys to be in this. Will be interesting if he’s in the fourth movie too. And yes I would bet my brain that there will be a fourth one. No doubt! And so far it looks like Mr. Bay will not do it. So it could be interesting to see what a different director will do with that material.

If you survived the first hour the movie slowly begins to speed up. Things start to happen. Things blow up while giant robots do their graceful waltz of destruction through the windy city of Chicago. Now that’s where the movie can turn the tide a little bit. It shows the Decepticons killing people and destroy the city. The movie makes us side the Autobots in their fight. And that fight surely is some of the best VFX work ever put on film. I cannot even fathom how much work went into all the stuff that happens in the last hour. Quite some stunning moments. Too bad it all went into a movie that delivers such a poor story and unsatisfying ending. And yes. With such a vfx overkill it soon starts to become uninteresting. “Yeah another explosion! *Yawn*” – something like that. It, nontheless does look great. Then the last ten minutes of the movie feel as if they wanted to wrap up the whole storyline (if you can call it that) of the three movies. It all happens very fast and whoop the movie is over.

In a recent review I read that the opinion was that Michael Bay should stop being a director. He should do more pure cinematography. And I couldn’t agree more. His movies look absolutely amazing. The way he establishes shots. His lighting, composition and style in general are top notch. So the conclusion can only be that his specific directing skills are below the level useful. Unfortunately. I don’t know to this day how he managed to make ‘The Island’ such a decent movie.

So Transformers 3 can be an entertaining flick when it comes to certain points. Throw all hopes for logic over board and be younger than 14 years old and you would surely be perfectly entertained. For everyone else skip the first half and only watch the visual effects benchmark demo reel part. That’s honestly very impressive material there.

6.3/10

Transformers 3 on IMDb

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