Sound and Fury: A Transformers Review (contains spoilers)

Poster by Jesse Philips. It's better than the film deserves.

There are several common accusations against critics of the Transformers films: "What do you want story for, granddad? Not every film has to be Citizen Kane, what were you expecting from a film based off 80's toys? Can't you just switch your brain off and enjoy the spectacle?" While this is such a broad sweeping statement it could be a daisy-cutter, these hypothetical voices have a point. You can't judge a silly action film by the all-time classics; no, you judge it by other silly action films that sit at the top of the genre, like Rambo, or Commando, or the delightfully stupid Crank series, or its nearest rival the G.I. Joe movie. My standards in this field are low, provided they can at least be consistently entertaining, and having sat through Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it manages to fall short even at that.

Let's get this out of the way first - yes, Dark of the Moon is better than Revenge of the Fallen, but that's not saying much. Revenge was a complete and utter mess, full of pointless comic relief, an incoherent plot with holes the size of canyons, action sequences that appeared to be shot by a nine-year old ADHD sufferer hooked up to an IV full of Relentless, and Skids and Mudflap. Not even director Michael Bay was proud of it, and vowed to learn from his mistakes with this next installment. And you know what, I was going into this with an open mindset. After all, I did like the first Transformers film, as flawed as it was, and I try to give every film a fair appraisal. The frustrating thing about Dark of the Moon is there are some legitimately good bits in it, it's just you need to sit for an hour-and-a-half of bullshit to get to those good bits.

The plot, such as it is, continues to follow Sam Witwicky, still played by Shia LaBeouf, now whining about being jobless, all the while living in a luxurious apartment and having a Victoria's Secret model for a girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whitley, a name apparently produced by an AI designed to come up with exceedingly British names) who is endlessly supportive of him for no real reason. The writers assume we still care about Sam at this point, even though he's a mouthy little fucker who ruins all of his job interviews and nearly gets arrested by not keeping his cakehole shut, and has spent the last two films running about screaming "OPTIMUS!!!!" and doing absolutely nothing heroic. Anyway, it's during his compelling search for employment that he becomes aware of a conspiracy involving the 1969 Moon landing, a Cybertronian ship stranded on its dark side (hence the title) (sort of), and cosmonauts and NASA officials mysteriously vanishing. The Autobots get sent to the Moon to investigate further, only to find the long-lost warrior Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) stationed there, inactive and awaiting revival.

It is nice to have a Transformers movie where I can actually follow the story, although that does mean it's now suspect to having its holes pointed out, as doing so in Revenge of the Fallen would be like complaining that the weather's a bit hot in a holiday resort on Mercury. Here's a fairly extensive list of things that make no sense in Dark of the Moon:

• Sentinel transforms into a firetruck, but never scans one during the movie and apparently has always been able to do that since he's seen in firetruck-y colours aboard his ship. Even though, so far as we know, he's never visited Earth before.
• Nobody seems bothered by the fact they have shapeshifting robotic aliens living among them disguised as cars. You'd think this would be a world-changing discovery, or at the very least car sales would plummet to somewhere around the planet's mantle layer.
• In fact, for "robots in disguise", they sure are distinctive. There's a scene early on where they attack some generic Arab terrorists who notably do not get suspicious by the sight of a really nice Ferrari rolling up to their compound.
• Pretty much the whole Sentinel storyline, now I think about it. He refuses the Matrix of Leadership, something that would make him stronger, by saying Optimus deserves it, even though he later betrays them for the Decepticons and could really use the Matrix. (Hey, you were warned.)
• One infiltrator-style Decepticon, Laserbeak, disguises itself as various gadgets around Sam's workplace, and kills someone revealing information to Sam that the Autobots couldn't be arsed to give him by pushing him out of the building and making it look like suicide. So why does he then start shooting shit up real good in the middle of the office?
• Why do the Decepticons think the humans will be useful in rebuilding Cybertron? They barely understand the technology. This is like trying to build a skyscraper with a billion-strong legion of ants.
• If the Decepticons had human liaisons, in this case Doctor McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy, and apparently have had them for years now, why did they not use one earlier in the first film to release Megatron? Seems smarter than having a legion of them invade Earth, thus attracting the Autobots to your location.
• When McDreamy reveals himself to be a Decepticon spy, don't get into the car he gave your girlfriend, since it's probably a Decepticon, which you should really be clued up to by now, you moron.
• Why does that robot sandworm keep changing sizes between each shot?
• Since when do the robots salivate and bleed? Or does Bay not know what "robot" actually means?
• Why do they make a point during the attack on Chicago (and no, it's never explained why they attack Chicago. Maybe the Decepticons just really hate deep dish pizza.) that no planes can get in, and indeed watch two F-21s get shot down immediately, then show five slow-moving planes carrying guys in wingsuits entering no problem? And why is it that Sam, Tyrese, and Tyrese's Wacky Fat Black Friend can just walk into Chicago?

Why am I complaining about this? What's the point of criticising the plot? Well, all of this takes up 90 minutes of a 154-minute long film. There's action, but it's sparse throughout and only really gets going in the last hour. To sit through all that, you need to be really forgiving, and since this is all plot, you can't switch your brain off and enjoy the spectacle for most of the film's runtime.

Things even get really bad taste at points too. Apparently Cybertronian technology is powered by graphite, because the Transformers are responsible for the Chernobyl disaster. This extends to some rather nasty violence for what is ostensibly aimed at children, as many of the defenders of this series have claimed. Decepticon Laserbeak infiltrates a suburban home by disguising himself as a smaller, pink version of Bumblebee to befriend the daughter (and no, it's never explained why he does this), and then murders everyone in the house once the dad, an ex-NASA official who apparently knows too much, turns up. Later on, robot heads get yanked out of bodies, trailing spinal columns and everything, and one Autobot - who we don't know and don't care about, of course - is executed Dirty Harry-style while begging for mercy (this also happens to the villain, and stuff like this is alright as long as it happens to the bad guys apparently). Anyone who wants to use the excuse these films are for children, I invite you to watch the brutality of these scenes and sit your ass down.

I can forgive the lack of plot so long as the characters are sufficiently engaging, but quelle surprise, there's not a single one to be found. Bay managed to get rid of Skids and Mudflap, but assumed they were the only problematic characters and filled it with more comic relief. Ken Jeong once again plays Mister Chow from The Hangover with a less thick accent, and spends his five minutes locking Sam in a toilet cubicle, stripping to his underwear, growling "Deep Wang" into his ear and having his existence prove once and for all there is no such thing as a loving god. Mind you, at least he serves some purpose - John Malkovich mugs for money as Sam's boss yet he contributes absolutely nothing to the plot. Seriously, you could cut out all of his scenes and the film wouldn't lose any momentum. John Turturro reprises his role as Agent Simmons, now clearly a glutton for punishment at this point; Sam's horrible parents return to absolutely nobody's delight, and Alan Tudyk plays Simmons' aide, who seems to think that Brüno was nowhere near as swishy and offensive as a gay stereotype could be.

The sad part is that this film has a great cast - Malkovich, Turturro and Frances McDormand all somehow get drafted, when they should be collaborating on a Coen Brothers movie. McDormand actually does pretty well even though the script gives her nothing to go on. You have these terrific actors and you squander them in largely thankless, pointless roles, just so you can focus on LaBeouf acting like a jackass, getting a close-up of Huntington-Whitley's bum and trapping her in what appears to be a hentai scene, and the usual band of military redshirts who take care of problems in the same way that worms are sent to gardens to take care of the pigeons.

Yes, because Bay has to bend over the table for the Pentagon and the US Army so he can get every gun and tank technically correct, the Transformers largely get sidelined in their own film. That big battle has the Autobots kicking arse off-screen while the military waste bullets fighting off waves of interchangeable Decepticons. I think part of the reason why we're expected to side with the Autobots is because they're at least colourful enough to discern at a glance - the Decepticons are all gunmetal-grey golems with scarlet eyes, and I swear they re-use design models for their ground troops. There's no immediate visual difference between Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave; at least Megatron wears a silly cowl-thing. But even the Autobots aren't appealing enough protagonists. We don't spend nearly enough time with them to get to know them, the ones that do die (this isn't really a spoiler, since Bay hinted at Autobot death in press junkets) are unknown to us, and Optimus (Peter Cullen) spends most of his on-screen time either sulking, being ineffectual - he gets tangled in wires for 20 minutes until he has to be cut down, I swear to God - or being a dick.

The whole battle of Chicago only happens, and gets as bad as it does, because Optimus stands aside so the humans can see who the real villains are, since there's a growing distrust of the Autobots. Let me just reiterate that. Optimus Prime, a father figure to many children during the 80's, the noble captain, who argues that "freedom is the right of all sentient life everywhere", lets innocent civilans get slaughtered just to teach the human race a lesson. All in the name of "freedom". Why is this guy our hero again?

But what about the action I mentioned throughout? Yes, it is good; Bay shot this film in 3D so shots are held for longer and are better constructed, meaning he's dropped the twitchy editing style that blighted Revenge of the Fallen and has at least created something watchable. Credit where credit's due, the visual effects are spectacular; there's nary an out-of-place or dodgy effects shot to be found, and you can tell that Industrial Light & Magic were at the top of their game here. The film actually has an impressive pre-title opening, with a lovely shot of war-torn Cybertron that looks like the cover of an 80's sci-fi adventure novel, and a look at the true purpose of the Apollo 11 mission (namely, to find the Cybertronian ship that crashed on the Moon) that manages to splice stock footage with new stuff really well.

The battle of Chicago is genuinely exciting...for about ten minutes. An hour-long action sequence sounds good in theory, but it's like a dinner comprised entirely of Smarties; fine in small doses, but too much and you start to feel sluggish. It's impressive, but that's only due to the quality of effects; I couldn't find one reason to care about anything that's going on because the characters were little more than shadows. Action means something when characters you care about are involved. It actually starts to get dull after a while, partly because the humans seem to keep wandering into danger with every alternate step, and partly because - again - the Transformers spend most of their fighting off-screen. Bumblebee teleports in to save Sam, and I do mean "teleport" since he comes out of nowhere, and then promptly gets captured. Is it too much to ask that the fight scenes in a film called Transformers should actually involve the Transformers for more than a few minutes? Because the audience gives not one fuck for the humans, I tell you that. 

And that's what so annoying and ultimately disappointing - there's good stuff, but it's few and far-between, and you have to go through so much filler, jingoistic oo-rah military bullshit and sexism to get to this good stuff you may as well not bother. I guess some of you will take this as a recommendation, but is this really all you want? A tale of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing, requiring you to be patient for 90 minutes? It's not like Dark of the Moon is the only action-packed summer blockbuster out there, so why is this being given a pass when there are other films that manage to tell an engaging plot with likeable characters, like Attack the Block, Thor and X-Men: First Class, and in less time to boot, that are going to get thrashed by this at the box office?

Are you really prepared to settle? This thing had a budget of nearly $200m, and yet they couldn't get a decent script to go with it. I'm not opposed to mindless entertainment, but when a film has this large a budget, and is going out to an international audience, I don't think a plot that doesn't suck and characters that you actually care about is that far out of the question.