Transformers 3 - The Dark Side of the Moon

This week I ‘ave been mostly watching Transformers 3 – The Dark Side of the Moon (But not in 3D)

Although I’m up on technology I haven’t quite bought in to the whole 3D cinema experience. I am however quite taken in by Sky 3D football but don’t want to invest in a new TV until the next generation of 3D TV’s are released without the need for glasses!

Sorry.... off on a tangent there, I should probably explain that this is kind of how my thought process works so I could break into some random topic out of the blue!

So Transformers 3, I have to say individually not a bad movie at all, however as the 3^rd instalment to a major Hollywood Blockbuster I thought the storyline was shocking! I mean do the movie producers, writers and directors ever think to plan in advance how a storyline could be developed on the off chance they could spin a sequel when they decide to bring a new comic based franchise to the big screen?

It’s not just T3 that has this issue, but I will try to remain focused for today. I just don’t understand the thought process. I mean even if the belief in today’s market that a major movie release may fail at the box office, surely someone has their fingers crossed that if there might possibly one day be the chance to write a sequel, maybe they should invest some time storyboarding possible plot lines to tie future movies together! But obviously not.

So Transformers 1 has a pretty standard storyline about an all powerful “All Spark” that was lost thousands of years ago and the mighty Megatron crash landed at the polar ice cap some time after.

Random pub talking point...... is space colder than Ice?

So regardless of the outcome of the first film let’s look at the storyline for Transformers 2 – Revenge of the Fallen!

Decepticons remember that they’ve been to earth before and built a giant machine to harvest “Energon” by destroying the Sun, our local Star (remember this part for later)

So they rescue Megatron from the crushing depths of the ocean and revive him with some random bits and pieces of “the little one” (remember this part too)

He then proceeds to pop back to Cybertron for a quick chat with the Fallen (not that he needed instructions previously) they decide that with the All Spark gone that it’s knowledge and power have been “transformed” and absorbed into the human child.

They need to find him to figure out the location of the Tomb of the Primes (even though the All Spark was probably lost a long time before the machine was built, otherwise why would they have needed the bloody machine in the first place!)

Decepticons decide to redesign the Pyramids and the fallen pops over from Cybertron for a visit now he feels safe because Optimus Prime is out of the picture (although previously he was happy to take on all six of his Prime Brothers)

Optimus gets revived by the Matrix of Leadership (because we know this can’t be done with just any old spare parts!) He then proceeds to clean up as usual leaving Megatron to run and hide.

So that finally brings us to the plot of Transformers 3 the Dark side of the Moon (great Pink Floyd album by the way) and probably the point that most of you are thinking I should have started this article ..... sorry.

Storyline at the start of the movie is that back in the day, the Autobots had a super duper, all singing, all dancing new piece of tech that would finally turn the tide of the War. The ship carrying the Tech gets shot down and is lost forever, but somehow manages to travel the vast void of space to crash land on the Moon (in the early 70’s).

Storyline be the end of the movie however is that the great scientist and former leader of the Autobots “Sentinel Prime” decide a long time ago that if you can’t beat them join them, and as such thought the best way to transport the components of an Inter Galactic Space Bridge (as used by the former Decepticon Jetfire in T2) would be to use a ship and not an Inter Galactic Space Bridge (which is kind of like typing an email, printing it out, putting it in an envelope and posting it second class). Once on Earth, Sentinel Prime would team up with Megatron and use the bridge to transport Cybertron (the whole actual planet) closer to Earth to facilitate the use of human slave labour to rebuild the planet (Did no one think to check how we humans tend to use Giant Machines to build stuff as our opposable thumbs aren’t exactly designed for large scale metal work projects) But the Decepticons first had to trick Optimus to use the matrix of leadership to revive Sentinel Prime because we know from early that wouldn’t work with just any random bits of a Decepticon!!!

Sentinel Prime revived makes his first objective to open a small bridge to allow some 200 reinforcements (many of which appeared to be buried on the moon) to travel to Earth the old fashion way rather than just fly there themselves as that would just be silly!

New army of Decepticons in place, they decide to take over Chicago (mainly because that’s where Sam’s new pointless hotty girlfriend works alongside a secret society of Decepticon worshippers)

Some note worthy additions to the plot line is that only 35 people in the world (by world I mean America) were aware of the true purpose of the Space race and the existence of the crash landed spaceship full of gigantic robots, but of cause not one of those 35 happened to be the President of the USA or anyone that was involved in the whole Giant Robot in the Hoover Dam (built in the 30’s) Conspiracy or Sector 7!!! Or if they did know, they maybe couldn’t put two and two together :-)

So that kind of covers my thoughts around the general storyline, and means we can move on to my likes and dislikes about the movie itself.

Likes number one, nice intro to the new hotty Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, however her character seemed a bit pointless with her only really contribution being helping Megatron out of the dumps and convincing him to kill Sentinel Prime and take charge once again, although part of me wishes the scene would have ended with a nice Megatron style finger flick catapulting the hotty actress across the screen.

Likes number two, would have to be the new Ferrari 458 Italia Autobot “Dino”, although it did look a little out of place amongst his more America flavoured colleagues.

And that kind of covers the Likes, apart from saying that on its own it was a pretty good individual movie, it just needed some more forethought.

So on to my Dislikes, which you can no doubt presume by now may go on for a bit, so I’ll do my best to summaries.

Dislike number one, is that many of the scenes had been done before and I swear if I showed you some of the city based fight scenes you would struggle to know which of the 3 movies you were watching.

Dislike number two, is apparent across all 3 movies, in that for advance robots they don’t seem to possess a great deal of technology (other than big guns) and maybe they should invest in some mobile phones and GPS trackers, as for some reason they only seem to be able to communicate when in earshot of each other and don’t seem to be able to track the whereabouts of each other or the enemy! They clearly appear on our Radar in T1 and on Sonar in T2, but when the Decepticons have a city wide defensive perimeter in place around Chicago that can shoot down all incoming planes, there not able to notice a giant blue & red truck accompanied by a bright yellow Camaro sneaking up the road!

Dislike number three, would have to be the general lack of consistency in how much effort it takes to kill an Autobot/Decepticon and I’m not referring to the fact that half a dozen Autobots seem to be able to survive almost anything when outnumbered 20 to 1, but the fact that one clean shot or stab to the head means instance death (occasionally) but a million other rounds of rockets, lasers, punches and kicks literally have no effect.

OMG I nearly forgot a major dislike, we’ll call it number four, the scene with Sam’s parents in the RV with matching outfits, I mean why god, why?

A more serious Dislike is number five, is the whole collapsing building scene, in which the half destroyed building tips over and gently comes to rest against its neighbour rather than just collapsing in on itself.

Dislike number six, I always thought Soundwave was the decepticon in the first movie that latched on to our communications satellite and don’t remember any episode of the cartoon that he ever rode around on a giant snake like drilling machine!

The final Dislike number seven is the scene where Starscream destroys the Autobot ship shortly after takeoff. Now the reason I was annoyed by this is that it seemed too obvious and predictable. What I was hoping in vain for was that the ship would take off containing all the Autobots and make a quick detour to the moon, where using the Matrix of Leaderhsip Optimus would revive the remaining Autobots in the crash landed “Ark” (fingers crossed Grimlock and Co would be involved) then when Sentinel Prime opened the space bridge to Cybertron the Autobot squad with enhanced numbers would come charging through for an almighty battle royal with the Decpeticons, but what do I know!

And I think that covers it!

Although weirdly even with all the flaws and general disappointment with the Plot, I actually quite enjoyed it and look forward to a 2^nd viewing on Blu-Ray in the future!