Transformers One

Tonight, on Paramount+, I saw “Transformers One,” which came out theatrically in September and on Paramount+ two days ago. How is this latest Transformers movie, which happens to be the first animated film since the one from the 80s?

In the 40 years since the first “Transformers” series premiered on TV, there have been so many animated TV shows, videos, and movies – plus six overhyped live-action films (plus a really good one, “Bumblebee”) – and now the fully computer-animated “Transformers One.”

This latest film of the “more than meets the eye” shape-shifting robots that sell a lot of merchandise for Hasbro is energetic and entertaining – and could have been even more, if the Paramount and Hasbro marketing departments hadn’t interfered.

On the planet Cybertron, all the locals are robots but aren’t all created equal. The elite of Iacon City, led by the charismatic Sentinel Prime, voiced by Jon Hamm, have the ability to change their appearance – while the rest, robots without the “cogs” that allow transformations, are mine workers digging up the “energon” that powers the planet and helps Sentinel Prime fight the ongoing war against invading aliens on the surface of Cybertron.

One of the “no-cogs” in the mines, Orion Pax, voiced by Chris Hemsworth, thinks there’s something out there better for him. He convinces his friend, D-16, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, to enter Iacon City’s big race, something no cog-less robot has ever done successfully. Their audacity impresses Sentinel Prime, but not their mine supervisor, who punishes them to the lowest levels – where they meet a loquacious robot named B-127, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, or Bee for short.

Eventually, Orion, D-16, and Bee end up on the surface, along with a tough robot, Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Up there, they learn some facts about the war, Sentinel Prime, and the ancient “Prime” robots who once ruled Cybertron. The truth, told to them by Alpha Trion, voiced by Laurence Fishburne, makes Orion determined to change things for every robot, while it makes D-16 feel cheated and wanting revenge.

The conflict between Orion and D-16 takes up the second half of this nicely animated movie. If you don’t want to know the “spoiler” – the one that is the focus of the movie’s marketing campaign – keep scrolling.

The movie, the advertising showed, is the origin story of the most important characters in the “Transformers” universe. Orion becomes Optimus Prime – the red is an early clue, and eventually the truck look is a giveaway. That makes D-16 the future Megatron, who becomes Optimus Prime’s arch nemesis for the franchise.

The bottom line, not knowing what I just mentioned makes “Transformers One” a more interesting movie – because without knowing, the audience is allowed to know these characters as they evolve. Sean P. Means said in his review, “With that knowledge, the audience is just tapping its collective feet, waiting for the inevitable reveal.”

Means continued, “The animated action set pieces are engaging, as director Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) and his band of visual stylists make Cybertron a fully realized world with some interesting robot creatures living there.” The pacing is solid, and even if you don’t know what’s going on, you never lose focus.

“Transformers One” is a solid movie, and one that has set up a couple of sequels to explore the universe that the franchise’s diehard fans from childhood will want to see.

If you have been a fan of Transformers, this one is definitely for you. This animated film really brings people back to the Generation 1 robots that those who grew up in the 80s and they will get engaged. Check this out on Paramount+ because you will love it. Especially with a voice cast that includes Steve Buscemi, James Remar, and Jon Bailey.

Thank you for reading this review tonight. Stay tuned for the next installment of “Buddy Cop Month.”

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Today on Paramount+, I watched “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which came out theatrically last month but on streaming earlier this month, and I will let you know about this installment in the Transformers franchise.

Susan Granger started her review by saying, “Secrets of synchronicity: “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” once again lures fans back into theaters while the New York Times Business section lauds Silicon Valley’s highly anticipated new technology that would unite human and machine.”

Granger continued, “Known as The Singularity, it envisions a self-aware superhuman machine that could design its own improvements faster than any group of scientists.”

That’s not what happens in the seventh movie in the family-friendly “Transformers” franchise, based on the Hasbro action figures, but it’s not far off.

Coming off of the success of “Bumblebee,” it’s set in 1994 Brooklyn, introducing Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), an Army vet/electronics genius who is trying to get a decent job to help his mom (Luna Larsen) and 11-year-old brother Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez), suffering from sickle-cell anemia.

Problem is: Noah goes to his friend, Reek, played by Tobe Nwigwe, who gets him to steal a Porsche that’s not an ordinary sports car. It’s the comic relief Autobot Mirage, played by Pete Davidson.

Led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), the Autobots, including the motorcycle Arcee (Lisa Koshy), Chevrolet Camaro Bumblebee, and Volkswagen bus/mechanic Wheeljack (Dani Rojas), are trying to get back to their home on Cybertron to fight the Decepticons.

Meanwhile in an Ellis Island Museum, Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback), an archeology intern, is studying a strange bird sculpture with mysterious symbols – part of a gadget called the TransWrap Key, a space-time channel that’s been split in two.

Then there are the animal Maximals from the animated “Transformers: Beast Wars” TV series, led by a biomechanical gorilla, Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), joined by the peregrine falcon Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), Rhinox (David Sobolov) and Cheetor (Tongayi Chirisa).

Evil is personified by the planet-eating Unicron (Colkman Domingo), leder of the Terrorcons, along with his evil henchman Scourage (Peter Dinklage), and his henchmen, Battletrap (Sobolov) and Nightbird (Michaela Jaé Rodgriguez). Granger credited, “Steering away from Michael Bay’s sci-fi stridency, director Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II”) interweaves genial humans and sentient machines into a coherent CGI-based story, credited to five screenwriters.”

Sobolov also played Apelinq, another Maximal who you briefly see in the beginning.

There’s the unavoidable car chase – this time on the Williamsburg Bridge – and large-scale fights, but travelling via the Stratosphere, played by John DiMaggio, to Peru’s historic city of Cusco and the ruins of Machu Picchu to protect Planet Earth is a bonus you don’t see coming.

To this film’s credit, it is better than the previous sequels the Michael Bay directed. These last two prequels are really starting to turn the franchise around to being likable again. See this one on Paramount+ if you don’t want to see it in theaters. You will enjoy it, especially if you feel bored, you can always pause and come back to it later. I think people will enjoy this one, although I’m not sure how much it is not trying to follow the same formula as before. Especially with the addition of “Beast Wars,” which is a show I grew up watching in some way, I think you will enjoy it. Let’s see what the future holds, especially with the teaser at the end given by Michael Kelly.

Thank you for joining in on this review tonight. Stay tuned next month to see what I have in store.

Bumblebee

Alright everyone, I have finally seen “Bumblebee,” which came out almost four weeks ago. Everyone is probably wondering if this was worth going to see? I’m glad you asked because I will tell you that. This “Transformers” prequel is actually good, which feels strange to say about a live-action “Transformers” movie. But that’s the only way to say it, really. K. Austin Collins said in his review, “The movie, which was written by Christina Hodson and directed by Travis Knight, is a warm and fuzzy origin story about a girl and her robot, full of handsome emotional beats, a John Cena villain worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon, and a soaring sense of minds changed and good triumphing over evil. There are big splashy battles, sure, and a little bit of political intrigue in the plotting. But this movie was unabashedly designed to be a kick in the feelings.” Again: strange for a live-action “Transformers” movie.

That’s not really in a bad way. Huge fanatics of the “Transformers” franchise, who are out there, have to say that the five “Transformers” films released, all directed by Michael Bay, have had a pretty consistent run. Collins said, “They’re all very much Michael Bay movies: heated, overstuffed, and greasy as old junkyard parts.” It’s actually good to change things up, particularly for a prequel like “Bumblebee.” Collins said, “What’s intriguing is that the film should change things up in this particular way, with A-Ha needle drops and a plot ripped right from the E.T. playbook.”

Say anything about Michael Bay, but at least his movies have their own names. Collins noted, “They occupy their own territory—albeit one I don’t necessarily want to visit often.” However, “Bumblebee” could have been directed by anyone, as long as they were working from the right book.

This makes it a nice time, but not a bad one. The protagonist of “Bumblebee” is Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Charlie, an 18-year-old Californian trying to survive all of the bad 80s hair, teenage social drama (Gracie Dzienny), and a charming boy across the street (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). She’s confident and hardworking, but because the rules of being a 21^st-Century action protagonist, she’s also had some sadness in her past. Her dad has passed away. She still has her little brother, Otis (Jason Drucker), and mother, Sally, (Pamela Adlon), who has, alarmingly, a boyfriend named Ron (Stephen Schneider), a guy whose idea of a good birthday present for Charlie is a book encouraging her to smile more.

Charlie desires the same thing every 18-year-old wants for her birthday: a car. What she ends up getting, obviously, the Autobot she nicknames Bumblebee, voiced briefly by Dylan O’Brien, who at first look is a completely run-down Volkswagen Beetle. After a little repair, the massive, shy, yellow Autobot appears, as ashamed and easily disciplined as a puppy, and so do the Cybertron problems that brought him to Earth. Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) sent Bumblebee to Earth because of the war on Cybertron, only to be followed by the Decepticons, with one named Blitzwing (David Sobolov) removing his voice box.

Collins admitted, “The best scenes in Bumblebee are probably meant to be the heartwarming, humorously ironic bonding scenes between this young woman and her alien robot friend. But I perked up a bit more at all the other stuff:” the Decepticons villains named Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux) who came from Cybertron to track down Bumblebee, for example, or the military Agent Burns (current WWE Wrestler John Cena), whose only thought is to chase the lovable Autobot takes him amusingly off course.

Collins admitted, “There’s just a nudge more imagination in that stuff than in the central arc, which surprised me. Knight, C.E.O. of the increasingly inventive studio Laika, was an animator on the Laika films Coraline and ParaNorman, as well as the director of Kubo and the Two Strings. His studio’s been a welcome change of pace in American animation, a worthy counterpoint to the rounded-edge goody-goody vibes of most Pixar films.” In “Coraline,” the main character has to go up against the threat of a needle on her eyes, a villain who wants to replace her eyes with sewn-on coat buttons.

Collins noted, “In Bumblebee, though, the greatest danger is a nostalgia overdose: the same music cues, emotional beats and the like that have defined everything from Netflix’s Stranger Things to last year’s It remake.” “Bumblebee” is also more of a kids’ movie in look and feel than the previous “Transformers” movies, which makes you think whether there are really little kids out there who get into the opening scenes of Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Despite the film is mostly nice, little of the crafty, awkward strangeness of Knight’s other movies seems to inspire his methods to “Bumblebee,” which is almost too bad. Collins ended his review by saying, “Because while I can’t even begin to imagine with Optimus Prime by way of Coraline would look like, and am sure that would not be a good idea, it’s at least an idea.”

I know this may seem strange that I would say this, but this is the best of the live-action “Transformers” movies. You should definitely see this, even though there might be a little of Michael Bay-isms in the film. However, he is producing it, so he doesn’t have complete control over it. Also, Jon Bailey aka Epic Voice Guy is voicing two of the Transformers, so give him support.

Thank you for joining in on the review, stay tuned Friday for the continuation of “Madagascar Month.”

The Transformers: The Movie

Even though there’s five live-action movies (and an upcoming prequel), “The Transformers: The Movie,” released in 1986, is still the only Transformers film worth seeing.

Jeffrey Lyles said in his review, “For about 60 of its 84 minute run time, it is a shockingly mature, thrillingly violent production that doesn’t pull any punches for its younger audience who had grown accustomed to somewhat incompetent villains and a laugh-filled happy ending. That’s not the case here and the film is all the more memorable and better off for it. If only the film’s final act were stronger, the likely casualty of one too many rewrites and changes in direction, this would doubtlessly be considered one of the best films of the 1980s, animated or otherwise.”

There’s really a type of consequences that weren’t seen so much in the first two seasons of the animated series from the 80s. Favorite characters get killed from both the Autobots and Decepticons.

The human character, Spike, voiced by Corey Burton, is now grown up and a father, the good guys are the ones who lose the war and there’s even some swear words (Lyles said, “which were mind blowing at the time for 80s kids like myself”).

The film begins in grating ways with the arrival of Unicron, voiced by the late Orson Welles in his last role, (Lyles described, “The Transformers’ answer to Marvel Comics planet eater Galactus”) who goes to eat a planet on his way to the Autobots/Decepticons home planet of Cybertron.

This starts off an exciting hour with the best Transformers action we’ve ever seen. It’s almost one huge hour-long fight and it’s in every way as awesome as it sounds.

Megatron, voiced by Frank Welker, leads his Decepticons in a fight on Autobot City. The attack soon overpowers the Autobots led by Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack), Kup (Lionel Stander), Arcee (Susan Blu), Springer (Neil Ross) and Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) leading to the heart-breaking losses before Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) comes in to save them all.

However this time, the issue has serious consequences for both sides. Prime is forced to choose a successor and Megatron is rescued by Unicron and changed into his servant, Galvatron, voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, with the mission of destroying the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.

Lyles said, “Before the days when Oscar winners voicing animated roles was commonplace, the voice talent assembled for this film was truly groundbreaking signaling that the property may be intended for children, but that big-names also saw the potential in appearing in them.”

Fans of the animated series will notice the movie’s animation is a drastic improvement. There’s so much attention to detail and shading that gives the robots a more complex design, which gave the movie the right type of importance.

Vince DiCola’s music is definitely one that belongs in the 80s, but it’s appropriately heavy metal and the soundtrack, specifically Stan Bush’s The Touch, is perfectly right for the movie.

With all of these praises, there are a few issues with the film.

Lyles noted, “First off, Hasbro’s agenda to push the new characters — and make kids demand toys of the new additions — becomes a bit obnoxious midway through with most of the old guard from the cartoon getting killed off or (no pun intended) transformed into other characters.”

Lyles continued, “While the new generation Autobots and Decepticons are interesting (Kup is fun as the old veteran with a story for every occasion and Springer is just a bad @$$ Autobot), the movie really should have been more of a payoff for all of the characters fans had grown attached to in the two seasons of the TV show instead of the abrupt shift in Transformers’ status quo.”

Lyles went on to say, “It’s especially glaring considering so many of the fan favorites like combiners Superion; Autobot HQ defender Omega Supreme (who would have come in handy in that battle of Autobot City) and the fifth Dinobot Snarl were missing.”

There are also so many inconsistencies during the Great Autobot City Battle. Most notably the Autobots getting killed with one laser shot in the first fight while Optimus Prime’s cannon having animated show effectiveness of only stunning the Decepticons when he shoots them.

With every world-destroying fear, Unicron’s defeat looks like more of a stroke of luck accident than a calculated plan, which looks like the Autobots are really lucky rather than heroic.

Still, even though the last act doesn’t hold up, “The Transformers: The Movie” is something that every 80s kid experienced or lied and said they did and a little over 30 years later it still holds up very well. Rather than the Michael Bay botched up franchise that’s not worth caring about, look not too hard than this flawed, but very entertaining old school ride.

Expect other famous voice actors like Casey Kasem (the original voice of Shaggy from “Scooby Doo”), John Moschitta, Jr. (the Micro Machine man), Chris Latta (who voiced Starscream) and Scatman Crothers.

Now, even though I enjoy the Bay Transformers movies, despite that I acknowledge the problems people have with them; this one is actually the one I would recommend seeing the most. There are some problems with it, but you won’t be banging your head up against the wall like you do with how Michael Bay did the franchise. If you grew up watching the animated series, watch this and go on an exciting ride that you haven’t experienced since those days. Or, if you have seen it, see it again.

Check in next week to see what I’ll look at next in “80s Cartoon Movies Month.”

Transformers: The Last Knight

Guess what everyone? I came back today from seeing the new Transformers movie, which came out last week, "Transformers: The Last Knight." Do you want to know how it is? Well, here it goes: 

Alan Jones started his review out by saying, "Phew, I think I need to lie down! It begins in the Dark Ages with hints of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and ends up at the Stonehenge monument in an "Oh, so that’s why it was built there?" flash of enlightenment." 

Jones goes on to say, "In between, Michael Bay, helming his fifth and supposedly final Transformers movie (who shouted "hooray"?), takes you into outer space, back in time to Nazi Germany, outside 10 Downing Street, into every far-flung corner of the globe for another super-sized slice of incomprehensible action and deep down into an ocean abyss to solve the convoluted mystery that lies at the heart of this quite overwhelming spectacle. Nothing seems to have changed in that mind-numbing aspect endemic to this franchise." 

Bay leaves no stone unturned as he finishes the franchise (unless he decides to return to direct another Transformers movie) basically crushing the viewer into dizzying submission. 

I guess it's debatable whether this or "Age of Extinction" is the worst in the series, but the first is still the best, but it definitely has the plot that has so much jammed into it that it's hard to keep track of. 

You will thank Anthony Hopkins who comes in at just the right time to explain everything – somewhat – so the audience can relax into another stretched out finale of mindless robotic action that is complete and total pandemonium. 

The basic jest (which the scriptwriters failed at) Optimus Prime, reprised by Peter Cullen, has gone back to Cybertron, the Transformers home planet. He gets manipulated into becoming Nemesis Prime by Quintessa (Gemma Chan) and ordered to go back to Earth and retrieve Merlin's staff that was buried by Merlin himself (Stanley Tucci). 

You heard right: Merlin was real, as was King Arthur – his round table was an extraterrestrial metal plate – and the Transformers have did their role in every huge and epic disaster in human history. 

Why? Because Earth is actually the evil space enemy Unicron in disguise, ready to kill humans and turn the planet into the Transformers' peaceful slumber when Cybertron eventually dies off. 

That is currently going on, and the Transformers' new ally, inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Whalberg), is chosen to be the Last Knight needed to help Oxford University Professor Vivian Webley (Laura Haddock), Merlin's descendant, find Merlin's staff before evil Transformer Megatron (Frank Welker) and his team of Decepticons do. 

Hopkins' character, Sir Edmund Burton, is the watcher of the Transformers family tree and the one who brings Cade and Vivian together and gives them the task on how to save Earth from becoming Unicron. 

This is exactly what returning Agent Simmons (John Turturro) is doing in Cuba or homeless teen Izabella (Isabela Moner) and her robot sidekick Sqweeks (Reno Wilson) have to do with all of this catastrophe is beyond what you can say. 

The right answer is that what is needed is unnecessary but with all of these different plot threads – you'll easily miss Mitch Pileggi from "X-Files" as a Transformers Reaction Force group leader – you can't focus on one little detail for a second as this "The Fast and the Furious" action goes by quickly. 

When he's on screen and evidently has a fun time – with lines like "What a rockin' car she is!" - Hopkins also brings, as Jones says, "a much-needed aristocratic gravitas to the scattershot logic." 

Jones goes on to say, "And while the pairing of Whalberg’s rough-and-ready hero with posh fish-out-of-water English Rose Haddock must have looked good on paper, they generate zero chemistry together, and the much hinted at post-credits romance feels a non-starter." 

Hands down the most amusing and funny character in the head-banging mess is Sir Edmund's robot butler, Cogman, voiced by Jim Carter. Jones describes him as a "C3PO’d "headmaster" (a Transformer fused with organic life, do keep up!) with anger-management issues is virtually the actor’s Carson character from Downtown Abbey in sleek Aston Martin disguise." 

Someone somewhere knows how to loosen things up, and Cogman playing background music at a church scene is the one joke that works in the repetition of comic reliefs that don't work – like Cade's friend Jimmy, played by Jerrod Carmichael. 

Seeing how no one goes to see a Transformers movie thinking there will be a story must have been the main problem this entire time. 

The technically overwhelming, grandiose set-piece ramble continues in Bay's overdrive style where he doesn't look like he's directing as much as assembling cinematic maneuvers. 

Jones said, "A pyrotechnic display from Bumblebee (Erik Aadahl) kicks off the action in high style and the frenetic hyperkinesis continues relentlessly through junkyard wipe-outs, frantic driverless car chases, drone-hopping acrobatics, titanic underwater odysseys, extravagant Autobot face-offs and abstract, Escher-type dimensional battles." 

Jones goes on to say, "Add bodies exploding everywhere in artful slow-motion and the painterly sight of horn-shaped intergalactic spacecraft jutting through the Namibian and Jordanian deserts and you still won’t have a clue about how completely over-the-top this movie is." 

"The Last Knight" is way too much, yet not anywhere close to enough to say it's fun entertainment in anyone's blockbuster wordlist. It may not be easy to watch, but the awesome visual looks will keep you in your seat. 

As I have stated before, it's better than "Age of Extinction," since it's nearly not as long, but it may be worst in the sense that there isn't much focus on Optimus or Megatron, the action goes on way too long, there are boring scenes in here, and the human characters just aren't that interesting. However, I thought it wasn't really that bad. I might have liked this over "Age of Extinction," but I still don't think it's a good movie in any way. None of the "Transformers" movies are good, but I still enjoy the action for some time before I start getting bored by it. Hopefully this is the last movie that Michael Bay directs, but if he comes back, I won't be surprised. I would say wait for this to come out on Blu-Ray to rent, but if you want to go to the theater, then that's fine. 

Thank you for joining in on my review, stay tuned Friday for the finale of "Dirty Harry Month."

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Welcome to the finale of “Transformers Month,” where I will review the latest movie in the series, “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” which came out this past July. If in doubt, smash everything to tiny bits of pieces and be as loud as possible.

Director Michael Bay brought this Hasbro toy line in what Graham Young called “the best sequel so far to Transformers,” but I don’t really think so. I still enjoyed it, but I don’t think any of the Transformers movies are better than the other.

In the first film two Cybertronian races (the good Autobots led by the great Optimus Prime and the evil Decepticons led by Megatron) arrive to pick up where they left off in their ancient struggle on Earth with a high school boy who found an old artifact that held the key to the fight.

Revenge of the Fallen showed Sam Witwicky leaving the Autobots and being attacked by the Decepticons.

The Autobots then learned that there’s a hidden Cybertronian spacecraft in Dark of the Moon.

In Age of Extinction, crooked government agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and tech genius Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) hope a piece called Transformium will make a crowd of controllable Transformers.

Young does rebuttal by saying, “But the recycling business can be dodgy if some old Decepticon material ends up in the mix.”

Meanwhile, Witwicky’s replacement is a new inventor protagonist named Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) who is worried about his teenage daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz).

Finding an old wagon buried in a theater, Cade asks her to look at it as treasure, an understatement seeing that it’s Optimus Prime in disguise.

Targeted by a bounty hunter, voiced by Mark Ryan, Cade and Tessa go running with the Autobots.

I agree with Young when he says, “Age of Extinction is a bewilderingly excessive, non-stop demolition derby that works because of the action’s juxtaposition against some of Earth’s most incredible landscapes.”

Some of these landscapes include the pure-white Arctic, Monument Valley, the red rock playground of John Ford and John Wayne, Beijing, steely home of 21^st Century investment money, Hong Kong’s concrete slums, where east meets west in hectic, half-finished (or half-destroyed) structures.

Executively produced by Steven Spielberg, Age of Extinction rules as a new 21^st century genre: graphic anarchy.

Young mentioned in his review, “Despite the bloated 165-minute running time, the clunky dialogue, restricted performances and plot dementia, I loved Amir Mokri’s gliding camerawork and his unquenchable thirst to declare an all-out war on video gamers by delivering the biggest and dumbest action movie ever made.”

This movie lacks James Cameron’s edge-of-seat suspense, but it’s got dinosaurs (probably referencing that great “Beast Wars” cartoon that I remember watching in the 90s) and the best machine is…a classic British Mini.

Like the founding technology of the Apollo moon missions, there must be some spin-off lined up using so much energy. The filmmakers probably haven’t thought them up yet.

In the end, I will say that it’s up to you if you want to watch this movie because I highly think people will get bored by this movie very quickly, especially since it runs at 2 hours and 45 minutes. I am not kidding, that’s the length of the movie. I saw it in the theaters in 3D, and even I was wondering how much longer it was going to be. However, I still enjoyed it for the Transformers, the action, and some of the characters I liked.

Obviously I didn’t want to review the Transformers series back in July, especially since I saw two other new movies that month that were “way” better than this one.

Anyway, thank you for joining in on my Transformers reviews. I hope you enjoyed all of them, and if you want to watch them, then you may. Like I mentioned before, I’m not going to defend these movies as great and some of the best, I understand the backlash.

See you all next month, which will be a great month for reviews. Stay tuned to find out.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Now we get to the third film in the “Transformers series,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” released in 2011. Roger Moore said in his review, “All the technical prowess of “aliens invade” thrillers, from “Independence Day” through “Battle: Lost Angeles,” and the best comic actors money can buy serve “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” well. The funniest, best-executed film in the Earth-protecting robots-that-look-like-cars-and-trucks series, “Moon” delivers the popcorn in gigantic fist-fulls of fun.”

Obviously this is fist-palmingly stupid as always, a product placement action film with a Camaro as the protagonist. However, Michael Bay’s adaptation of a cartoon co-opts NASA history and redoes Chicago with a pleasure as over-the-top as any crazy Shia LaBeouf rant. Hey, what can he do when all of the best lines are said by the Transformers?

“I just want to matter,” says Sam Witwicky, a two-time environmental hero brought down to begging for work from the great over-the-top John Malkovich. He needs a D.C. job because he has broken up with Megan Fox for a hotter model, played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who wears shorts, tight clothes, and only has one scene where we see that she’s a model, not an actress.

The Autobots are always cautious, though there are the detractors (Bill O’Reilly of Fox News is one of them) who want them off of the planet. If you have any memory of the Transformers cartoon, you know that the Decepticons never completely disappear. This time, there’s a buried spaceship on the Moon, a NASA cover-up and bring back an ancient leader to life, Sentinel Prime, voiced by Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.

Moore said in his review, “Hearing Mr. Spock repeat lines from “Star Trek” movies in robot form is only the second most tone-deaf thing here. Having real-life lunar explorer Buzz Aldrin on hand to legitimize the bogus NASA history is the first.”

As Sam rushes from D.C. to the Kennedy Space Center to put together this movie’s version of the Space Race, he encounters a plethora of great characters – from the returning John Turturro (an ex-CIA conspiracy guy), to Frances McDormand, as a new intelligence chief. As always, Malkovich steals his scenes if he’s in them with the hilarious Ken Jeong, who you might remember from “The Hangover” movies.

“It is CODE PINK,” Jeong’s character yells in warning, “as in FLOYD.” For those of you who are Pink Floyd fans, he’s making a “Dark Side of the Moon” joke.

Jeong’s craziness isn’t beaten until we get to see the great Alan Tudyck from “3:10 to Yuma” as he uses a fantastical Dutch accent as an assistant to Turturro’s conspiracy talk.

“Dark of the Moon’ builds up to a robot battle royale that takes up the entire third act. However, Bay has learned from the last film’s digital shadow since he slows down the action so that we can see the gears turn and pulls off some great stunts to go with the effects – paratroopers flying into Chicago in wingsuits.

Moore does admit, “Yeah, the story is one big “God in the Machine” tale, heroic but hapless humans wait for robot rescue.” It’s all vision and too much of it with the two and a half hours runtime. The sound effects don’t match the visuals in balance, I didn’t see it in 3D, but Moore claims that “3D adds only depth, not gimmicks.” The finale is so extended that you will wish that maybe Hollywood will be shamed into not imposing another “Skyline” or its kind on us for a few years, that we’ve seen the last of the Transformers.

Then again, after you’ve made billions off a classic cartoon that was made to sell toys, shame doesn’t come into it.

I do have to say that I didn’t like how Shia LaBeouf screamed all of his lines. I know he did that somewhat in the last movie, but here he was doing that every single time, and it got so annoying. However, I think this movie is still worth checking out, but if you don’t want to see one of your favorite cartoons botched by Michael Bay, than don’t see it. I know there are people that don’t like Michael Bay, especially with the movies he’s done recently, so I can understand if you don’t want to see any of his work. I personally like all of these movies, but I won't defend it as one of the great sagas or some of the best work ever. If you don't like, I get it, this isn't for everyone.

Look out next week when I look at the most recent film to wrap up “Transformers Month.”