For 11 dollars, Michael Bay will kick you in the brain for 157 minutes.

Yup, he's a 30' robot who turns
into a palm-sized tapedeck. Deal.

Soundwave is my favorite Transformer ever. In fact, a recent poll I just made up suggests that he's everyone's favorite Transformer, in part because of his voice. He's got a sort of a sinister monotone that kind of sounds like a Cylon. Awesome right? Soundwave's original voice actor Frank Welker even plays him in Transformers 2 and 3 but for reasons passing understanding they don't use the voice modulator thing to make him sound like Soundwave, instead he sounds like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget (also Frank Welker). How could they screw this up? What the crap Michael Bay? You're just doing it wrong. Speaking of which-

Yeah, I went to see Transformers Dark of the Moon: Explosion, alterna-rock, explosion, incomprehensible dialogue, screaming, explosion, emo alterna-rock, explosion, more screaming and then (spoiler alert) explosion. There. Transformers 3. I just saved you 11 dollars and a lot of brain-kicking.

You're welcome!

It was a classier time.
(He used to have missile codes)

Far be it from me to complain about any movie that gives us transforming robots pummeling the crap out of each other for two and a half hours but seriously Michael Bay, two or three more movies like this and I might stop showing up. It's not that I want my money back (although, could I have my money back?) it's just that...well, Transformers 3 made me feel really, really old. Like you know old people drone on about how movies were better back in their day when men wore hats and people made lists of Communists? I kind of felt like that. But unlike our elders and their nostalgia for the days before polio vaccines, I'm not going to start complaining about the violence or that there're too many swears (if anything, more swears) but holy crap I had no idea what was going on for most of the two hours and thirty seven minutes (!).


The story, as much as I could follow anyway, goes like this-spoilers (I think, who knows for sure?) ahead:

"No, for real: shut up."

-Director Michael Bay

A Cybertronian starship crashes on the moon carrying these pillar things which can create a space portal allowing Transformers and later their whole planet travel to Earth. Why they now need a portal when all the robots in the previous movies just flew here is a mystery wrapped in shut up. Anyway, NASA covers this up for forty years and it's only when Professor Chang from Community is hilariously murdered by Laserbeak does anyone bother to tell the Autobots. Ok...

The blood of millions of Chicagoans
is on your hands Buzz...

Buzz Aldrin (in the best cameo this side of Bill Murray in Zombieland) finally comes clean to Optimus Prime and the Autobots go get the pillar devices. Then we find out that there're secretly hundreds more of them that Megatron already retrieved back in the 1960's despite being frozen until the 2000's (as seen in Transformers 1, remember?). So thanks to the magic space portal things, a Decepticon invasion force (which I guess came from their supposedly uninhabitable home planet) starts kicking the shit out of Chicago for some reason.

If there's one thing we Americans love it's
nightmarish imagery of buildings collapsing.
Thanks Michael Bay!

Shia LaBeouf (French for 'the beef') and his new girlfriend (Meghan Fox having been fired for comparing Michael Bay to Hitler) team up with the Army in the smoking rubble of Chicago ostensibly to blow up the 'Main Portal Thingy' but really it was just an excuse to have twenty minutes of commandos in wingsuits flying around the city while buildings collapse. Eventually they destroy the portal and Optimus kills Megatron and then turns to the camera to say how neat freedom is. Movie over.

Yup, that's the Government for you,
always with the mind-control.

Look, the Transformers movies ask us to believe that evil hyper-advanced robots from space can have their plans foiled by an Earth teen and his plucky Camaro. I'm fine with that, but what I'm not fine with is that plot doesn't make any goddamn sense. I guess Transformers 3 was a little more coherent than say Transformers 2, or this rant I saw stuffed in a newspaper vending machine (see right) but it still kind of made my brain hurt. Doesn't anyone watch these things first? What really burns me is that there's a more than decent chance (say, 100%) that I'll find myself waiting in line for Transformers 4. Goddamnit Michael Bay...



p.s. if you have any nerd in your soul, go to the Transformers Wiki. It's amazing and brilliantly snarky as it attempts to make sense of the six-dozen conflicting Transformers series and continuities (look up the Japan-only Kiss Players series, and then go shower). Also, it's where you can find this adorable picture of DJ Soundwave:

Soundwave: Superior, Transformers 3: Confusing.

*Yeah, I was going to call it 'Dork of the Moon,' but a quick and thorough Googling turned up like 15 other Dorks of the Moon. If you've got a better title, send it to me, I'll use it.