Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Surprise – he’s still a douche!

Admit it, you are going to see this movie because the trailer somehow managed to convince you that Michael Bay had learned his lessons from the ultimate creative bankruptcy that was Transformers… whatever the last one was called. Two, or whatever.

You are going to see this movie because the scenes in the trailer set on the moon are kind of eerily beautiful. There is an almost contemplative quality to the images of astronauts discovering the remains of alien technology. What’s more, taken alone the historical twist the sequence gives to American motivations for carrying forward the Apollo program raised the left (or right) side of your mouth one millimeter.

Michael Bay at Transformers 2 premiere

Given the legacy of the Transformers series thus far, that single millimeter was so much more positive a reaction than you ever thought this trailer could evoke that your whole attitude to going to see it mysteriously changed. “If I was Michael Bay,” you thought, “I would have learned my lessons and tried to tell an actual story this time rather than give the audience two hours of giant space robots endlessly bitch slapping each other on a pyramid to no purpose whatsoever.”

Through the whole pre title sequence your little clenched… clenchedness will be relaxing by degrees. “This is kind of fun,” you will be thinking, despite a terrible makeup job on the wholly unnecessary JFK impersonator who turns up at one point. Maybe my trailer-mouth-millimeter was right after all…

And then the title card comes up and it reads: Transformers: Psych- I’m Still a Douche! And you have to sit through another two and a half hours of the most appallingly dull, story free, unendingly pointless pre-teen hyper violence ever forced onto a movie screen. Or leave, of course. Or just not go. I’d take option three.

Not only is the film boring and vastly insulting to the intelligence even of its core demographic of teenage boys, but it re-imagines moments of great historical trauma as unfunny comedy and throwaway spectacle. Chicago becomes the “ground zero” through which the legions of staggeringly uninteresting military minor characters fight after a battle cry of “let’s roll”. The Autobots’ spaceship blows up in a fiery duplicate of the Challenger explosion. (By the way Michael this is not poignant, it is simply one of many examples of you holding up a sign which reads: “I am an arse!”) And so it goes [sic]. It’s like Bay made a list of ‘cool stuff’ he wanted to see in a movie and then just went out and paid technicians to build the effects. Despite the credits, the film leaves you distinctly uncertain whether he even bothered with the optional intermediate step of writing a script.

This would feel like some kind of historical revisionism if the film actually had a purpose in revising history. As it has none, we are just meant to recognize the moments as they pass and go: “Oh that’s that thing, only not.” This is movie making so uninflected by ideas that the endless kinesis ends up feeling like the calm before the storm. We are waiting desperately for some – any – kind of creative let alone human engagement until it feels like the action has taken on the roll of the dialogue scenes in a porn movie without sex. All we are watching is filler between payoffs that never arrive.

Michael Bay at Transformers 3 premiere

When we do get human interaction it is played through a huge cast of cameo stars whose whole function seems to be to add their own scenery chewing excess to the rest of the visual un-spectacle in a desperate attempt to protect the fragile teenage audience from any single moment of humanity. The closest the movie comes to acknowledging human emotions – or at least glands – is in its extended and predictable leering at the body of the (terrible) female lead. Sadly this happens too near the start and millions of teenage boys will have to suffer another two hours in their seats with what the director clearly hopes will be a raging boner.  I can’t recall ever seeing a film with so little reason to care about anyone or anything. Oh wait, I’m forgetting Transformers 2.

The only person who leaves the movie with any credit is Shia LaBeouf who clenches his teeth and gives a less than nothing part his full commitment. It’s not his fault that he ends up being a fart in a sexist windstorm.