by Jesus Ibarra
Special coupon for Dinuba Platinum Theatre at the end of this review.
In Transformers 3 (I hate the official name so I am going with Transformers 3) we get the end of Michael Bay’s trilogy about robots blowing stuff up and laying waste to cities. Well the plot is more complicated than that, but let’s be honest we are all going to watch Optimus Prime be a badass kicking Decepticon ass. Now after the debacle that was Revenge of the Fallen (personally I thought it was ok, not great just ok), this movie sought to refine the elements that made the second one good, and try to cut the parts that didn’t. 
For this movie, I have to break it down into the good and the bad.
The Bad:
Inconsistent story lines. Essentially the plot of this movie somehow doesn’t connect to the last two movies, instead tries to explain the whole reason Megatron (the bad guys leader) came to Earth was for some completely different reason changing his motivations. It doesn’t make sense, worse it essentially means the first two movies were totally unnecessary. Science fiction elements that are not done right. In two points in the movie I thought to myself that is scientifically impossible, and usually when that happens filmmakers or showrunners have some sort of explanation, or show the theoretical effects on Earth so that I can continue to suspend my belief. But here nothing, which seems off putting considering how much science fiction tropes people know now with the slew of Sci-Fi out there.
Then there are the jarring shifts between comedy, drama and the action with the Autobots, which gets frustrating in the first half of the film. Speaking of the first half of the film: it mostly is all set up and unnecessary.
Finally the character of Carly Spencer played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (Sam’s new girlfriend since Megan Fox was fired) is totally useless, and seems to be the biggest plot device for one scene at the end of the movie which was out of character. The acting wasn’t any better than Megan Fox’s Mikalea in the first two movies, it was probably worse. I just wish they would have recast the character or not have a new love interest at all because it was useless.
OK now for the good:
Shia LeBeouf is solid as Sam Witwicky, the everybody character we can relate to.
The designs for the robots have been refined so that we can distinguish between Autobots (the good guys) and Decepticons (the bad guys) when stuff starts getting blown up. I loved Leonard Nimoy’s voice acting of Sentinel Prime, Optimus’s old mentor, and the twist concerning his character which I did not see coming. Although they could have fleshed out the relationships between the robots more, I think this film did a much better job than the second one in showing that the robots have personalities making, them more than machines. The action sequences, and fights in the second part of the movie made you forget the so-so beginning, because they were bigger, better, and more insane than in the previous movie.
Finally, Optimus Prime kicked ass and we got to see the darker warrior side of him a lot more as he darkly states in the movie “Kill them all!” Which is good, because I believe after two films, he would be pissed enough to just kill all of the Decepticons with no hesitation and be done with this war.
Overall, the good outweighs the bad, and this is definitely a better movie than the one before it, just don’t go in expecting Oscar winning material. Go in expecting robots beating the crap out of each other, while laying waste to cities around them.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is now playing at Dinuba Platinum Theatres 6. Showtimes can be found on their website.
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