While fans and critics opinions of Michael Bay differ, people have found that despite their views on his third film in the Transformers franchise it has been met with some reasonable success as it has crossed the $1 Billion dollar mark worldwide and is currently the seventh highest grossing film of all time.

Transformers Dark of the Moon stars us off in the 1960s where it completely rewrites man’s first landing on the moon into a super secret robot conspiracy theory. The film presents the idea that what the United States was really there to do was investigate an alien spacecraft called The Ark which crash-landed there many years ago.

Cut to the present, where the Autobots are still on earth doing pretty much the exact same things they were doing when we left them last in 2009; helping the US military and searching for the evil Decepticons. The films returning protagonist Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf, is currently looking for a job and he isn’t having much luck. Since the events of the last film, he has fallen out of touch with the Autobots, and has found that he isn’t too fond of the boring life he leads now. He has landed himself a new girlfriend (played by Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington Whiteley) who works for Dylan Gould, who is slightly mysterious and a little too friendly with Sam’s better half.) From there we learn that it is very important that the Autobots reach the Ark before the Decepticons do, because the Ark contains secrets that could threaten the existence of mankind.

That’s about all I can say for the plot, partially because the film is lacking in that area, and also if I told you much more it would spoil the film; and we wouldn’t want to go doing that. But to be quite frank, you really don’t end up caring about the plot, or the characters therein, or the big race to get to The Ark, or any of that. Now the reasons for this are certainly not that all of the films viewers, me included, are apathetic, horrible people who would love to witness the destruction of the earth. No, it’s not that at all; the audience wants to care about what happens to the characters, they want to root for the good guys, they want a happy ending; it’s the Director who obviously didn’t care. The further and further you get into viewing the film, the more it becomes apparent that the people who made it didn’t truly care about the characters, and just cared about action sequences and sex appeal. None of the characters grow and develop; they just shout at each other and dodge a mixture of real and CGI explosions. Unfortunately this has been Bay’s tried and true formula since the beginning of this trilogy, so it comes as no surprise to see it in action again. Viewers will get the feeling that this is a mindless action film which is constantly and so very rudely interrupted by small, pointless attempts at telling a story.

Out of all three of the Transformers films, the first installment was probably the best. It wasn’t the most amazing film, but it was entertaining. Part of this was due to Labeouf’s performance as the awkward high school student who stumbles across talking robots, Sam Witwicky. The witty dialogue and strange situations he got himself into were fun and enjoyable for audiences; unfortunately this same performance was not invited back for the Third film. An identical performance was also nowhere to be found in the second film, so I suppose it’s no surprise you can’t find it here either. This makes Laboufe’s character stale and boring to watch, having no real drives or motives that make us really pay attention to him. He is but a face on a screen, running and screaming with other faces; some real, some CGI. I suppose if I was asked to sum up the performances of all the actors in one sentence, I would use the above description. The new female stand in, Rosie Huntington Whiteley, doesn’t do much better of a job than Megan Fox did at acting; as the filmmakers placed her there just to look at. After all, what would the film be without an attractive female Sam Witwicky and the audience could stare at?

The action and CGI sequences are as over the top as ever, which is generally a good thing for most people coming to view this film. There were lots of explosions, lots of yelling, plenty of hitting, and lots of death. These make up a large chunk of the film, and at times can be rather cool. The film has no artistic value, but it does have moments that can be considered “awesome”; unfortunately not awesome enough to raise people’s opinion of the film, or its star rating in this review. But nonetheless, cool.

I really can’t say much more about Transformers: Dark of The Moon. It’s a bad film. The acting is bad, the story is bad, and the writing is bad. If you attend seeking women to stare at, and lots of mindless violence then you will find exactly what you seek. But if you look for something more, you will be sorely disappointed.
I am a major comic book geek, so almost by default I am a Transformers fan. Words cannot express how much I wanted to like this film. How much hope I had that maybe, just maybe Michael Bay would not leave me in the depths of cinematic hell with horrible acting, pointless storylines, and an overall bad film; but alas, he has left me and many others there; and he’s taking his $1 Billion with him.