Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon

There’s a moment mid­way through Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon where Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, chew­ing up an end­less stretch of free­way in his souped-up Camaro, yaps down his cell at Frances McDormand’s Sec­re­tary of Defense, Char­lotte Mear­ing. He’s made an alarm­ing dis­cov­ery: it’s been a trap all along; the Decep­ti­cons are about to ambush the Auto­bots; the human race is in grave dan­ger. Cue a 90-minute shit­storm of break­neck, robo-balls to the floor carnage.

It’s the div­ing block into the oncom­ing spec­ta­cle tsuna­mi we’ve been wait­ing for, the crys­tallis­ing nar­ra­tive junc­ture direc­tor Michael Bay has been build­ing towards. Only prob­lem is it’s one that’s tak­en him an hour to arrive at. It all start­ed so promis­ing­ly, too.

Like Matthew Vaughn’s X‑Men: First Class, Dark of the Moon rewrites the his­to­ry books, open­ing with a neat recon­struc­tion of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing – com­plete with a spooky mo-cap JFK – which sees Neil and Buzz set off on a top-secret sub-mis­sion to inves­ti­gate a mys­te­ri­ous wreck­age. The after­shock of this fic­tion­al lunar encounter rip­ples through to the present day and a Pen­ta­gon that’s still work­ing out the creas­es in its Auto­bot alliance.

After a lot of Agency flus­ter­ing the sec­ond man to have stepped foot on the moon (Arm­strong assumed­ly declined the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take one giant dump on his integri­ty) rocks up to ver­i­fy the event he’s been sworn to secre­cy over for 40 years. This rev­e­la­tion sets the wheels in motion, but just when you’re ready for all-out Bay­hem, the direc­tor applies the brakes.

Any­one who’s braved Trans­form­ers 1 and 2 will doubt­less feel as famil­iar with Witwicky as they’d care to get, yet Bay affords his whiny pro­tag­o­nist a full 60 min­utes of sac­cha­rine domes­tic tex­ture. We meet new squeeze Car­ly (Rosie Hunt­ing­ton-White­ley, the pil­low-lipped Devon­shire Victoria’s Secret mod­el who’s intro­duced in typ­i­cal­ly objec­ti­fied fash­ion), sit in on sev­er­al cat­a­stroph­ic job inter­views (oh, the inhu­man­i­ty of a hero on the dole), and even catch up with his RV-dri­ving rents.

Do we care? Did we ever? Not real­ly, but this extend­ed human focus is a must when so much of the run­time is ded­i­cat­ed to a bunch of all-star CG aliens cut from cold, hard steel. That argu­ment would be per­fect­ly valid were Bay’s fleshy stars not hope­less­ly shal­low action movie androids. Indeed, while the char­ac­ter­is­tics instilled in each Trans­former are played for laughs, it’s these duelling space­bots that inject pro­ceed­ings with some much-need­ed personality.

Ulti­mate­ly, it doesn’t mat­ter that Hunt­ing­ton-White­ley is dumb as a stick and twice as thin, or that McDor­mand, Patrick Dempsey and John Malkovich are painful­ly mis­cast, because Dark of the Moon is nev­er more than a play­ground for a boy and his mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar toys.

It’s trashy, know­ing­ly taste­less and, when it gets going, abstruse­ly paced. An ejac­u­la­to­ry mess that seeks to med­icate its audi­ence with a glut of whizz-bang spills and vein-bulging fist pumps. Of course, Bay has nev­er been one to con­cern him­self with plot holes – a quick dose of over­whelm­ing SFX will paste over any nar­ra­tive cracks. Nor does he waste his breath on detail, this is hyper-stream­lined impulse cin­e­ma; even ​‘The’ and ​‘Side’ have been cut from the title for opti­mum succinctness.

All this means that Dark of the Moon’s short­com­ings are as vast as its director’s ego. At 153 min­utes it’s way too long; there’s too much empha­sis placed on big name cameos that sim­ply don’t pay off; the plot is need­less­ly con­vo­lut­ed; casu­al racism is still rife in the voic­ing of the epony­mous mechanaughts (Hugo Weaving’s Mega­tron and Peter Cullen’s Opti­mus Prime remain the only tol­er­a­ble cast­ing choic­es); the OTT set pieces have an exhaust­ing, desen­si­tis­ing effect… Same Bay, same shit.

Restraint has nev­er been the director’s forte, but the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show he’s not just a one-trick pony has passed him by once again. You would think that back-to-back luke­warm recep­tions might trig­ger the real­i­sa­tion that some­times, just some­times, less is more. Even if that light­bulb momen­tar­i­ly flick­ered, how­ev­er, Bay has a rep­u­ta­tion to uphold, and it’s always a safe bet that he’ll ful­fil expec­ta­tion to the point of parody.

That said, denounc­ing some­one of patent­ly lim­it­ed abil­i­ty for play­ing to their strengths feels like a cheap shot. So what if Bay is a poor sto­ry­teller? When it comes to mus­cu­lar gun-met­al hoo-hahs, he’s the daddy.

If this is to be the franchise’s last hur­rah, then Bay has ensured his lega­cy by mak­ing it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­bly for any­one to fol­low in his foot­steps. His appetite for destruc­tion and uncom­pro­mis­ing cre­ative out­look have set a new prece­dent for action excess that few would have the gall or finan­cial back­ing to challenge.

And if he’s buried the series he’s done so the only way he knows how: in a hail of can­non-fire and sky­scraper demo­li­tions (they’re prob­a­bly still sweep­ing bul­let shells and scrap met­al from the streets of Chica­go). That’s not to jus­ti­fy the gross lack of sub­stance in the tril­o­gy, more to observe the fact that Bay will be Bay. You know what you’re in for by now, expect any­thing more pro­found or cul­ti­vat­ed and the joke’s real­ly on you.

Bot­tom line: you can throw all the mon­ey in the world at a movie, enlist an A‑list cast and even get the US mil­i­tary to loan some high-spec gear – staff wing­suits have soared to the top of our Xmas wish­list – but stick Michael Bay behind the lens and you’re beg­ging for a car crash.