The Fight For Our Freedom Begins
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Kevin Dunn, Ken Jeong, Buzz Aldrin
Director: Michael Bay
2011 | 154 Minutes | PG-13
“Why do the Decepticons always get the good shit?” – Robert Epps
Synopsis:
The Autobots and Decepticons get involved in a space race to reach an ancient Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the dark side of the moon.
The movie opens with a really cool Transformers revisionist history look at the moon landing. I like stuff like this that helps ground a movie/comic/story in our own history. X-Men: First Class also did this really well. Unfortunately this is about the pinnacle of the movie’s storytelling, leaving us with nothing left to look forward to but standard Michael Bay exploding robot action… which, I guess, isn’t the worst thing in the world. At least it can be fun at times.
I’m so glad that Shia LaBeouf is no longer in the Transformers movies. He just isn’t likable to anyone other than whiney teenagers… maybe they don’t even like him. I don’t know. I don’t care if Sam Witwicky can’t find a job. And I don’t care if old his girlfriend has left him.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley isn’t my favorite either. She’s cute but she isn’t THAT cute. And the fact that she most likely used her moderately good looks to get a job in the white house and then with some car collecting accountant doesn’t impress me and certainly doesn’t make me like her.
The most interesting characters in the movie are the robots. And quite frankly, this is the most interesting the Autobots and Decepticons have been through the entire series. The problem is, aside from Optimus and Bumblebee, none of them are easily discerned from the other. Had we spent more time focused on the Autobots instead of the humans it would be a lot more clear who we were cheering for.
The skydiving scene is definitely the best of the movie with planes and buildings falling all around as the soldiers dive out of planes to get to the perfect spot to make the shot that can take down the transport. This is followed by what must be the second best scene of the movie which I will call the tipping tower scene.
The rest of the movie is exactly what you’d expect. If you’ve enjoyed the other Transformers movies, you’ll enjoy this. If you didn’t, you won’t. Even having seen this movie pretty recently, a lot of it is already blending with the other movies in the series in my mind. That ain’t good.
Action Movie Fanatix 