Transformers-dark-of-the-moon movie railer in HD

The midtown-Manhattan crowd — real people, not movie reviewers, except for this one — stood patiently in line for a 12:15 a.m. screening of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third in Michael Bay’s ear-, eye- and block-buster series based on the line of Hasbro robot toys. When the feature began, a half hour late, the audience showed its fondness for the material by saluting each appearance of the friendly yellow car-bot Bumblebee, not with rowdy shouts but with courteous applause, as if after a sharp volley at Wimbledon. A few whoops greeted the 3-D IMAX leveling of Chicago. And when the movie ended, about an hour before dawn, the admirers let out a few decorous cheers. They sounded less like red-meat fanboys than connoisseurs at a wine tasting.

Transformers dark of the moon cast and crew

Directed by

Michael Bay



Shia LaBeouf

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Josh Duhamel

John Turturro

Tyrese Gibson

Patrick Dempsey

Frances McDormand

John Malkovich

Kevin Dunn

Julie White

Alan Tudyk

Ken Jeong

Glenn Morshower

Transformers dark of the moon overview

By now, if you're a fan of the Transformers franchise, or Michael Bay in general, you've probably already seen Transformers: Dark of the Moon. There's not much anyone can say to sway you from it. You want Michael Bay action. And Michael Bay has what you need.
And the film does deliver the usual Michael Bay-branded mayhem, babes and explosions galore, edited in that usual chaotic pace. The story makes little sense, of course. The characters are all stupid, naturally. And the film is way too long. Why not? But if you're a lover of Bay, none of that matters. Hell, even if you just casually like the guy, his usual sense of humor and demographic pandering/slurring can be passable in some cases.
Bay may not be some kind of storytelling artist, but he's brilliant at crafting large scale, epic action frenzy. His high-octane, overblown style is certainly emotionless, playing like cut scenes from a trailer, but somehow he makes it work in some weird way.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a great example of what Michael Bay does poorly, and superbly. His action beats are frantic and oddly engaging. His slick use of stunning visual effects with practical set pieces is remarkable. And the way he stages everything – the way he manages a set, crafts his action beats and skillfully cuts it all together – he's all style no substance, but there's an art there that deserves some respect.

If only he didn't feel the need to craft such a stupid, nearly incoherent story around the action. Can't the film just be Decepticons vs. Autobots? This isn't Shakespeare. This is robots fighting other robots. We don't need slanted political intrigue, coy deceptions, some lucid mystery subplot, and a series of subplots that go nowhere. None of that was necessary, and it actually detracts from what is good about the film.
We don't need a narrative that oddly borrows cues from the second film. We don't need all the pointless cameo roles that devalue otherwise great actors. And we don't need all the pandering, occasionally stereotype-driven humor. It's dull, dumb and worn out. We also don't need Shia LaBeouf, or any of the actors he plays around with in the film, including sexy newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who replaced Megan Fox as LaBeouf's damsel in distress. No offense to LaBeouf. He is a fine actor. But the character's time has passed with this franchise. There's no story there.

But if you like Michael Bay, you're not going to listen. I didn't. I've seen this film three times now. As much as I loathe parts of the picture, I can't look away when the action touches down. And with the added 3D effect, the mayhem is all the more enchanting. I guess that's Michael Bay's allure. Even when he's not great, he's still curiously watchable.

After a several month delay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon returns to Blu-ray as a bona fide four-disc special edition set. Was it worth it? Absolutely! The set includes a 2D copy of the film, a 3D copy of the film, a DVD, a downloadable Digital Copy and an Ultraviolet copy. Plus, there's a bonus disc stocked with some awesome extras, but more on that in a second.
I'll be glossing over the 2D version of the film, as well as audio which appears to be the same on both the 3D and 2D versions of the film. And because it's the same disc as the previous Blu-ray release, just hop over and read Cindy White's review of that disc here.

I first saw Transformers: Dark of the Moon in theaters in 3D and wasn't remarkably impressed. Barring just a few moments, the film didn't quite pop. After seeing this disc in 3D, I'm convinced that was just the theater I was at. Presented in 1080p/MVC, this 3D Blu-ray presentation is quite memorable, rich with color, incredible three-dimensional depth and some rather jaw-dropping 3D effects. That said, most action set pieces are a bit too frantic for the effect to properly work, and many scenes don't really feel 3D at all. There were rumblings that a large part of the film was shot in 2D and post-converted, and many of those scenes are easily detectable. But, if you want to enjoy this film the way it was meant to be seen, this 3D Blu-ray does not disappoint.
Michael Bay called the extras for Transformers: Dark of the Moon the "best we've ever done," and he's right. Leave it to filmmaker Charles de Lauzirika to deliver on awesome making-of documentary. This five-part, feature-length documentary explores the entire production, from the overall disappointment of the second feature, all the way through the incredible action-packed finale, post-production and all the work in-between. With such rich, incredible detail, this documentary might just turn any hater of the franchise into someone who can respect the time and painstaking work that went into the feature. Great job!

The extras are topped off with a half-hour documentary about the NASA space program and an awesome collection of multi-angle special features diving into previsuals and visual effects progression. There's also a beautiful art gallery, a handful of engaging featurettes, and a trailer gallery. All bonus materials are found on disc two, and are presented in high definition.
There's very little high art to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but compared to other Michael Bay pictures, the film plays just fine. If you like the guy, you'll like the movie (at least partially). If you don't like the guy, you'll probably tolerate the movie. But however you cut it, if you're in the market for a great disc, this Limited 3D Edition is well worth owning.

Transformers dark of the moon review

The midtown-Manhattan crowd — real people, not movie reviewers, except for this one — stood patiently in line for a 12:15 a.m. screening of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third in Michael Bay’s ear-, eye- and block-buster series based on the line of Hasbro robot toys. When the feature began, a half hour late, the audience showed its fondness for the material by saluting each appearance of the friendly yellow car-bot Bumblebee, not with rowdy shouts but with courteous applause, as if after a sharp volley at Wimbledon. A few whoops greeted the 3-D IMAX leveling of Chicago. And when the movie ended, about an hour before dawn, the admirers let out a few decorous cheers. They sounded less like red-meat fanboys than connoisseurs at a wine tasting.

The critics’ reaction has been more tentative. They decried the first Transformers (2007) and its sequel Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which together earned more than $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office. They charged Bay with failing all conventional (perhaps archaic) tests for coherence of storytelling and mise-en-scène. He sends the camera scampering in virtually every shot, even those lasting a split second, and he seems to think that matching them — locating a fixed point of view, a law that directors have followed since the earliest features — is for wimps. Reviewers of the first two films got so vexed by Bay’s eroticized violence, his car lust and carnage, his nonstop aural and cinematic assaults, that they saw his success in apocalyptic terms, as the end of movies as we once loved them and the triumph of a virulent new strain: robotulism. T3 screenwriter Ethan Kroeger mimics the typical critique of a Bay film when he has John Malkovich, as the hero’s epicurean boss, say, “You fall into a life-sucking abyss. It’s a visual and therefore visceral betrayal.”

With T3, many reviewers have retreated from their previous horrified stance to baffled resignation. I’m with them. I acknowledge that, for good or ill, Bay is the soul of a new machine, the poet of post-human cinema, the CEO of Hollywood’s military-entertainment complex. T3is the movie equivalent of an ’80s thrash-metal concert (not Megadeth but Megatron), with bits of spoken exposition inserted into the action scenes like the lead singer’s mumbled comments between songs. And yes, for Bay to give Optimus Prime and the other good Autobots blue eyes and Megatron’s evil Decepticons red eyes smacks of aesthetic fascism, but in a helpful way: how else are novice viewers to tell them apart? It’s all part of the director’s grand, lubricious vision — what we might call Bay-watch.

Plot synopsis: Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), blah blah, Optimus and Megatron knocking heads again, new Autobot named Sentinel (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), secret government project run by a bossy woman (Frances McDormand, more or less playing Hillary Clinton if she ran the CIA, and if you hate Hillary Clinton), new girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, whose generic blond sexiness makes her both a fembot and Playboy Femlin), big bot battle that devastates downtown Chicago (notably the aptly named Wacker Drive), blah blah, bring in the U.S. military and somehow let Sam command them to save the world — if he can first get Carly out of that Decepticon car that is trying to fondle her with its grabby tentacles.

To the first two movies’ clinking, clanking, clattering collections of caliginous junk, T3 adds what has become a go-to staple of Hollywood fantasy: the retro-conspiracy theory. Recent films have invented Jews who killed Hitler, X-Men who solved the Cuban missile crisis, Watchmen who insured a third term for Richard Nixon and two aliens, in Paul and Super 8, held captive since the ’50s in Area 51. Bay’s movie plays on suspicions about the U.S. moon landings, already voiced in Peter Hyams’ 1978 Capricorn One and soon to be elaborated on in the speculative horror film Apollo 18. T3 proposes that an alien race, the Autobots, crash-landed on the moon before we did and that the discovery of the crash stoked America’s Apollo expeditions, whose astronauts found the Autobot remnants on the dark side. The real Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, plays himself, either to validate the claim or to pick up what I hope was a fat check for a few days’ demeaning work.

T3, like Super 8, has Steven Spielberg in a guiding producer capacity, and his involvement with the two films shows how neatly he has bifurcated aspects of his early films. J.J. Abrams, Super 8‘s writer-director, ran variations on the awe and aw-shucks sci-fi tone of Close Encounters and E.T., while Bay updates the monster and destructo-fest elements of Jaws and 1941. When T3 escalates into soldier mode, Bay also appropriates bits of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and War of the Worlds. But he’s an equal-opportunity ransacker of movies. He throws in images of JFK, Nixon and Barack Obama, à la Zelig and Forrest Gump; stocks his bot bestiary with “cute” critters that cross Muppets with Gremlins; gives one of the bad bots a toadying, Gollum-like sidekick; borrows Army reconnaissance tropes from The Hurt Locker; convenes a reunion of Coen-brothers cast members McDormand, Malkovich and John Turturro; lets The Hangover‘s Ken Jeong pad his career-long résumé of grotesque Asian Americans; and includes nearly as many toy-auto product placements as Cars 2.

The Coenheads seem to have enjoyed their payday; and Alan Tudyk registers momentarily as a gay German (all stereotypes intact). But acting is irrelevant in such a venture, since it consumes precious seconds of a 2 hr. 37 min. tower of testosterone. Playing on the violent auto-eroticism of American males, with their vehicles both as sex objects (adolescence) and as smashable playthings (infancy), T3exists to bump chests and chassis and to blow stuff up. In these endeavors it can be almost enthralling. You’ll see a sensational highway chase in which Optimus reconstitutes himself to catch the falling Sam, and skydivers in bat-web suits, and a skyscraper calamity that is cool enough to evoke the Tower of Pisa more than the World Trade Center on 9/11. Militia types will also enjoy the spectacle at the Lincoln Memorial, where Megatron, high on power, pulverizes the huge sculpture to make room for himself on Abe’s marble seat.

Critics are also irrelevant to Transformers: Dark of the Moon. This review isn’t meant to send people to the movie or keep them away. In fact, the scorekeepers at the various sites that rate critics’ enthusiasm for a film shouldn’t even try to elicit a Pass or Fail grade from me on T3. I’m a fascinated, stupefied outsider. Just mark me Present.

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