Blu-ray Review: Transformers - Dark of the Moon (2011)

For his third bite at the Transformers cherry, Michael Bay has gone back to the drawing board, or at least made a gesture in that direction. After the cacophonous Revenge of the Fallen, a film Bay himself has admitted some shortcomings of (which can’t have been helped by the writer’s strike forcing a half-written script to be produced), Dark of the Moon feels slightly more in the vein of the first, successful, outing. Bay certainly hasn’t reinvented the wheel, and indeed this third instalment is no less bombastic than its processor (more, perhaps, if that’s possible), but it is less muddled and convoluted. In fact, after misguidedly trying to forge some sort of epic mythology in the second film, this time it’s relatively more streamlined, with a more straightforward plot. The opening ten-minute prologue sets it all up nicely, showing how an Autobot ship crashlanding on the moon was the catalyst for NASA’s Apollo missions. A clever melding of actual archive footage and CG-assisted reconstructions delivers the necessary exposition efficiently, allowing the rest of the film to move forward without getting too bogged down.

Unfortunately, but predictably, the first hour or so thereafter is largely uninspiring. We’re back with Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and his new implausibly hot girlfriend played by English model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Bay and Megan Fox having had a public spat. Her replacement is not quite as awful as you might expect in the acting department, but her role is as token as it gets (look great in spotless white clothes while running though scenes of massive destruction). LaBeouf has marginally toned down his manic antics and thankfully a lot of the dead weight characters from the prior films have been dropped, replaced by a some enjoyable newcomers like an orange John Malkovich, smarmy Patrick Dempsey, and the grizzled voice of Leonard Nimoy but this first hour still feels slightly aimless. Also trimmed is the writing team, Ehren Kruger now receiving sole credit, but that hasn’t eliminated the traditional Transformers propensity for gaping plot holes. As suspected, it proves largely to be just treading water to delay the grandstand finale, which consists of an hour or more of alarmingly scaled carnage.

Bay knows how to put his budget on screen like few others. The finale basically sees the whole of Chicago engulfed in mechanised warfare, and it’s thrillingly staged, if a little overextended at points (e.g. when an enormous Decepticon worm-thing demolishes a skyscraper, which goes on far too long). It’s spectacle in its purest form, narrative cast by the wayside in the quest for ever bigger bangs, which could be a good or a bad thing. For my part, I must admit, on a visceral level I found it extraordinary. It’s rare to see scale this monumentally huge, and despite all Bay’s detractors, he can certainly construct an action scene. For the most part the geography remains clear and concise, and he tends to hold back slightly from his music video cut-cut-cut style, allowing each shot a bit more time to breathe and the viewer more time to take it all in (it’s hardly Kubrick, though). This may be a consequence of his employing 3D for the first time. It’s a combination that seems a recipe for a headache, but Bay’s wise easing of his more ADHD tendencies pays off, even when watching in good old two dimensions. Strangely, given all the bombast, the end is again abrupt, as if Bay is saying, “Right, you’ve got what you paid for, so I’m done.”



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 / Distributor: Paramount

Presentation
As you'd expect, the disc is a treat for the eyes and ears - an advert for Blu-ray. The film was mostly shot digitally in native 3D (this Blu-ray is 2D), but it looks very filmlike throughout, albeit retaining Bay's usual penchant for extremely saturated colours. Detail and clarity is beyond reproach and the effects are seamless. The soundtrack comes in Dolby TrueHD 7.1 - Paramount being one of the only studios preferring Dolby to DTS-HD these days - and it's fantastic, making some of the best use of surround sound I've ever heard. With endless depth, impact and nuance, it's beyond reproach.

Extras
Nothing whatsoever - Paramount are saving them for the 3D edition.



Summary
A definite improvement over the second film, Dark of the Moon is no revelation but it does deliver everything most fans could want out of a Transformers flick, never skimping on the phenomenal action.