Transformers Dark of the Moon: Or Why I Tried to Suffocate Myself on Popcorn: Part 1

What Emily and me saw yesterday: Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon

So yesterday, I didn’t write a blog post. As part of penance for that, I am splitting this into two parts (apart from the fact that I have a lot to say on this). Instead, yesterday I had the worst idea – let’s go see Transformers Dark of the Moon. Now I’m not usually nasty when it comes to films, I appreciate films more than I criticise them, but this one does take the cake. I’ve discovered 10 things I hate about Transformers Dark Side of the Moon:

[Note: if you want to see the film, but haven’t had the opportunity don’t read the rest of this post. If you have seen it or Don’t want to see it, carry on]

The casual robot carnage. It seems that only organic life is appreciated in this film. We have robots being blasted at point blank range, ripped to pieces and even a Mortal Kombat style fatality, ripping out what would be the head and spinal cord. Certainly not the kind of brutality I would expect a 12 year old to be watching – even if it is just robots. Likewise, on a couple of scenes, you can actually see red-ish fuel (or whatever the robots have equivalent to blood) splattering about the place. If you turned all the human characters into Transformers and the Tranformers into humans, this would be a very gory film!

The physics. Now, I know that this film has a very sci-fi edge, but there’s still a need to apply scientific reasoning to it. My first point is on the falling building. Now consider that the building is first shot at by a group of flying machines, tearing through several floors. Now the building bending, I can understand – maybe it’s still up in the air because it’s got a really strong design. Now throw in the one Transformer that would be able to bring it down in no time: Driller. And why would he be able to do that? Because his design is much like a sand worm. He slips through the building like it’s nothing and devours most of the structural integrity. Why hasn’t the building fallen down yet? Instead, it leans a little more, until it creates a convenient bridge onto an adjacent building, just short enough so that Mr Witwicky an co. can safely climb down. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when they’re trying to transport Cybertron to Earth, it doesn’t have any mass. How do I know this? There’s no gravitational pull of it – and considering it’s size compared to Earth, it definitly should have had an effect on the world.

This thing ate most of the building that Witwicky and co were trawling through

Action sequences were too long. Now this wasn’t just a problem with this film, but also the previous film. Action in film should be treated like a dessert. It’s smaller than the rest of the meal, but tastes really nice. This film doesn’t take a slice of cake for dessert, but rather guzzles down the entire thing. There comes a point when an audience begin to feel bored, despite all the explosions and stuff. Also, action should be mixed in with the dialogue and plot, not separated from it.

The beginning to one of the longest action sequences in existence

It tried to be a comedy. When it wasn’t trying to be just action, and it wasn’t trying to be apocalyptic, it was trying to get the audience to laugh. One or two jokes, sparsely separated are funny. Having so many jokes coming fast and furious ended up making the film look like it was trying to be half comedy. Now I don’t mind mixing genres, but at least match the tone. Black humour would have been fine for this film, in fact it could have suited it well, but this style of comedy was slapstick.

Bad dialogue. It’s obvious how they wrote the script: they watched films. They liked a line from something and opened a random page of the script and wrote it in there. Seriously, it didn’t feel like a homage, it felt like ripping off dialogue (famous ones at that!) and pretending like it didn’t happen.

Check back later for the second part of Transformers Dark of the Moon: Or Why I Tried to Suffocate Myself on Popcorn.

 

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