Maybe the next one won't be as crappy?

Rating: 4/10 (25 May 2009)

I knew it was gonna' suck going into it, but after chugging two 300ml bottles of sake and about 6 shots of ginseng vodka with this crazy Korean dude I met earlier in the evening, I had convinced myself to be guardedly optimistic. I knew it wasn't gonna' be as great as the first two, but maybe it would be better than the third (hopefully).
And you know what. If that's all you're expecting going into it, it's a good movie. Decent at least. Entertaining for sure. Definitely cheesy. At least Michael Ironside is in it. Too bad there's a mute black kid doing the Webster thing.
It opened decent enough. It really seemed to have a bit of momentum like it was going to be a futuristic war movie with its own spin. Separate from the rest of the cannon and inventive enough to stand on its own two legs. But then it just got lazy. Clichéd. Jeeze, the ending was shots literally ripped from the first two films so excessively you could hardly call it an homage. Especially considering the continuity blunders.
Since it was written by the two douchebags who had done the third one I guess I'll give them credit for not being as sucky, but that's about it. They really had a chance to do a movie that captured the despair and horror of the future Cameron briefly showed us in the first two films, but decided to totally make it a Transformers movie instead.
I'm sure some of the fault lays with McG (what a lame name). I guess he thought he was making a new Batman film for Bale, with all the hopping around and sitting menacingly on top of tall things he has him doing. Of course Danny Elfman scrapped the amazing soundtrack of the first two and gave us a Batman-themed score to match the cinematography. And all the sound effects for the machines seemed like they were picked up cheap at the Matrix trilogy swap-o-rama.
This is easily a rental. But if you want to see some cyborg love story crap on the big screen this summer, wait till it's at the discount theatre so you don't feel ripped off like I do.