Where is Bay trying to go with this franchise?

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2011)

¨You may lose faith in us, but never in yourselves¨
Somehow after the third Transformers film I have managed to lose my faith in the highly successful blockbuster director Michael Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger who have turned one of my favorite cartoons into a terrible franchise. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the first Transformers and thought it was awesome to see those characters brought to the big screen, but the sequels just haven't managed to live up to expectations and my faith in the series is long lost. As Optimus Prime states, at least I haven't managed to lose my faith in myself. The special effects are extraordinary and we get plenty of action, but there is no character development whatsoever. The movie is exceedingly long (over two and a half hours) and not even with all that extra time do we get to see some character development. The final showdown is also extremely long, but I guess action fans won't be disappointed because they get a lot of excellent fights and cool visuals. As for me, I would have liked a better story with more character development. I could have also used a bit more comedy; the jokes just get old after three films and I would've really enjoyed something fresh and original in the series instead of relying on John Turturro all over again for the funniest moments. There are some new additions to the franchise, some interesting actors, but none of them are enough to save the franchise. Transformers is one of those movies that is extremely loud and makes a lot of noise, but really never ends up saying anything at all.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is back again to save the world for a third time from the Decepticons, although this time he has a new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). He meets her at the White House after receiving a medal of honor from president Obama. Sam is out of college, but is having trouble finding a job, although he is living with Carly who is doing well at her new job working as an assistant for a rich man named Dylan (Patrick Dempsey). On the meantime, the Autobots are helping humans maintain peace between them while the Decepticons remain silent. Lennox (Josh Duhamel), who works with the Autobots, receives a call from Ukraine saying that they have found some form of alien life at a former radiation plant. The Decepticons seem to be searching for something and the answers can be found in the past: they have to do with man's first arrival at the moon. A few select men at NASA have been hiding some key information about what really was hidden at the dark side of the moon: a Cybertronian spacecraft containing some dark secrets. Both Decepticons and Autobots begin a race to uncover this secret that could threaten life on Earth. Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, and the rest of the Autobots are back along with some new ones, while Megatron leads the Decepticon's new army. There are some plot twists so I do not want to give too much of it away, but the main focus of the film is almost entirely on the action and the almost hour long destruction of Chicago.
In this third film we discover that Optimus Prime isn't the last remaining Prime after all since Sentinel Prime has been unconscious in the dark side of the moon during all these years. When Optimus Prime finds him he revives him with the Matrix; but Sentinel isn't the only new character in this film, we also have Frances McDormand as Chief Mearing in charge of the NEST operation, the funny Ken Jeong as Jerry Wang, Sam's co-worker who might know what NASA was hiding doing the trip to the moon, there is also John Malkovich as Sam's new boss, and then there is Alan Tudyk as the Dutch who is Simmons's personal assistant. Even though we have all these new characters (remember I also mentioned Carly who replaced Megan Fox, and her boss Dylan) the film still seems more of the same and lacks freshness and originality. None of these characters were able to bring something new to the franchise because the script was mediocre and the film relied solely on the spectacular visuals and action scenes. Much of what Michael Bay puts on film is eye-candy, that is the reason he brought Rosie Huntington-Whiteley to replace Fox as she isn't much of an actress, but she is just as hot as Fox. I just wished Bay spent the same amount of time he does on the action scenes with the screenplay. The 3D visuals work really well in this film, especially with the action scenes and the destruction of Chicago, but the movie just felt way too long in my opinion. I'm also tired of the open ended finales which suggest there might be another sequel on the way, and wish they just brought closure to the Transformers franchise
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