I like the first film. It's good, but not great. I remember reading one time that Hasbro's current marketing strategy with Transformers is to reboot it every couple of years or so, so it always remains fresh. Once you convince yourself that the first movie is the latest reboot and not the Transformers you grew up with, it's pretty good. And great gobs of childhood nostalgia allowed me to overlook some of the film's other flaws.
The second film, Revenge of the Fallen, was the first film I ever saw in the theatre that was so bad, it made me want to throw things at the screen. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is just stupid. I understand the need for comedic relief, but so much of the humor was of the moronic variety. There's hardly any plot, it's just big loud action scenes strung together. Characters just stand around and do nothing. The Autobots are treated as little more than hardware...it's just bad. The film's defenders -- and there are a surprisingly large amount of them -- always defend it with, "It was based on a toy line. What were you expecing?" I'll tell you what I was expecting: A GOOD MOVIE. If you want to successfully defend Revenge of the Fallen to me, tell me how the plot was serviced by having John Turturro strut around in a thong.
And now, that brings us to our first glimpse of the third film, Dark of the Moon, coming out next July
What can I say? There's not much in the trailer to get whiny about. It shows us so little of the plot of the film. It sets up a nice mystery -- a downed Transformer spacecraft discovered by Apollo astronauts, and apparently it's been covered up for the past 40 years. Can't deny, though, that the trailer looks spectacular. I'm just talking about the visuals. Great special effects showing the Apollo spacecraft in flight. The moon's surface looks amazing, too.
It is highly derivative, though. It's like the opening scenes in Alien, or hell, even the first trailer for the first film, which featured a Mars probe catching a glimpse of a Transformer strutting around on Mars. As nice as it looks, there's a whole, "Been there, done that" feeling over the film.
For the talent working on this film, Michael Bay is back as director. The script this time out was written by Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the second film and wrote the American remake of The Ring. For returning cast members, Shia LeBeouf is back as token human Sam Witwicky, Josh Duhamel is back as soldier boy Major Lennox, and John Turturro is back as Sector 7 Agent Simmons.
For new cast members, the biggest news was that Michael Bay and Megan Fox never got along, so Megan Fox was fired from #3. Sam's new girlfriend Carly will be played by Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Patrick Demspey plays Carly's sleazy boss. John Malkovich plays Sam's sleazy boss. Alan Tudyk (whom my fellow nerds will remember was Wash from Firefly/Serenity) plays Simmon's old Sector 7 partner. And Francis McDormand plays NSA Director Marissa Faireborn.
Fun trivia fact: Carly was the name of Spike's girlfriend on the original 1984 cartoon.
Fun trivia fact #2: Marissa Faireborn is also a character created in the original 1984 cartoon. She was a spacefaring soldier dedicated to protecting the Earth from alien threats...and she was the daughter of Flint and Lady Jaye from G.I. Joe!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon hits theatres July 1.
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