These Transformer movies would have been a little more tolerable - but not by much - if the lead human characters weren't shallow, unlikeable goofs. Sam seems self-absorbed and his character is as flat as his second Barbie girlfriend, who is also shallower than the kiddy end of the pool. In fact, most of the human characters in Dark of the Moon are idiots who cut jokes at very inopportune times, all in service of Michael Bay's explosion porn idiotshow. At least the appearance of Sam's clueless boomer parents is brief.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get at how these movies utterly failed to capture the spirit and essence of The Transformers and how a great opportunity was missed.
Beyond Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, none of the Transformers look or act distinct from one another. In the original, both the Autobots and Decepticons all had individual looks and personalities, which is partly what made the show interesting. You could get into the characters and maybe even relate to them because they all had individual character traits. Megatron looks and sounds nothing like Megatron. The rest of the Decepticons are just menacing-looking silver bots with hardly a distinctive feature among them. So too, all of the Autobots, minus Prime and Bumblebee, just seem interchangeable.
I know all these movies made gazillions of dollars at the box office - because, explosions - but aside from being a visual spectacle, in almost every other way this was the drizzling shits. But, I liked the work of John Turturro and Patrick Dempsey.
Review by Jeremy StyronBlockedParent2023-08-16T15:35:09Z
These Transformer movies would have been a little more tolerable - but not by much - if the lead human characters weren't shallow, unlikeable goofs. Sam seems self-absorbed and his character is as flat as his second Barbie girlfriend, who is also shallower than the kiddy end of the pool. In fact, most of the human characters in Dark of the Moon are idiots who cut jokes at very inopportune times, all in service of Michael Bay's explosion porn idiotshow. At least the appearance of Sam's clueless boomer parents is brief.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get at how these movies utterly failed to capture the spirit and essence of The Transformers and how a great opportunity was missed.
Beyond Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, none of the Transformers look or act distinct from one another. In the original, both the Autobots and Decepticons all had individual looks and personalities, which is partly what made the show interesting. You could get into the characters and maybe even relate to them because they all had individual character traits. Megatron looks and sounds nothing like Megatron. The rest of the Decepticons are just menacing-looking silver bots with hardly a distinctive feature among them. So too, all of the Autobots, minus Prime and Bumblebee, just seem interchangeable.
I know all these movies made gazillions of dollars at the box office - because, explosions - but aside from being a visual spectacle, in almost every other way this was the drizzling shits. But, I liked the work of John Turturro and Patrick Dempsey.