Transformers 3: Dark of the moon

I'll be honest with this one. For quite some time I barely had a clue what was going on. The plot, if it can be called that, is quite clear, no mistake on that. But there are so many mistakes, oversights and just outright lies that Its hard to describe them all without publishing a book about it. If someone would write a book, here's a suggestion for the contents:

The Transformer 3 plothole-clopedia

Chapter 1: What the fuck happened between movies? We don't all buy comic books to find this out.

Chapter 2: Where the fuck is Mikaela? Who's this blonde chick and why is Mikaela not even mentioned anymore? I like Mikaela!

Chapter 3: Where do all those nameless decepticons keep coming from?

Chapter 4: The ongoing battle against the laws of physics. That tentacle raped building that staid upright somehow and the science behind it. (Guest written by Dr Heckemann, P.H.D in saying 'oh jawel!' after each argument)

Chapter 5: The violent character assasination of Optimus Prime

Chapter 6: The apparent love Michael bay has for the military and how they're somewhow still idiots in this movie.

Chapter 7: What the fuck is going on for the last 30 minutes?

Lets talk characters for a moment as I recover from the thoughts of the plot. 

Starting with human characters might be a bit superfluous as Michael Bay doesn't do actual human characters.. In what I like to call the Michael Bayiverse there are 4 kinds of humans. Heroic young pretty boy, helpless ludacrously hot woman, military stereotype and lunatic. That's all there is. Seriously.

Lets see....

Sam? heroic young pretty boy

Lennox? Military stereotype

Mikaela and new chick who's name I forgot? You take a guess.

Everyone else? Lunatic. Ministers, soldiers, Brazos, Simmons,Sam's parents, that asian dude, random computer operators. All complete lunatics.  Even the helpless civilians only exist in their own idiotic Bayiverse of madness. They keep running, hiding and popping up even when it makes no sense for there to be any more civilians left. 20 minutes into a ground pounding robot battle, they still run in all directions as if some of them just discovered what was going on.

I have a theory to explain this. Michael bay simply has no idea how humans work. Either that or he directs the humans while snorting cocaine. Every single scene that has humans saying things is stupid and incomprehensible. Every single one.

Right, moving on to robot characters then. Robot characters are more human that humans in the Michael Bayiverse. I was actually rather impressed by Leonard Nimoy's voicing of Sentinel Prime and Peter Wellen as Optimus Prime was still awesome. Just a shame Megatron had so little screentime this time.

I shouldn't be to hard judging on character development.This is a difficult task for any director who is at least trying to portray actual humans and Michael Bay just uses humans as scenery 

Meh, characters are boring anyway. How was the violence?

Mostly, I had little idea what was going on. The whole point of taking a city hostage kinda eluded me and the military's seemingly complete incapability to mount a counter attack struck me as wholy incompetent. An evil robot threatens to destroy the world, wouldn't the US send in all its planes, ships and soldiers immediately? Or at least just nuke the asshole.

Robots beating each other is still awesome of course. There's not much that can be messed up about that. However, there is such a thing as overkill and Michael Bay seems to take remarks like 'that might be overkill' as a personal challenge. I can imagine how a design meeting for the final 30 minutes would go.

Michael bay: "Ok, Shockwave tentacle rapes an entire building for the purpose of finding 6 humans."

Design person 1: "Why?"

Michael bay: "Because they have a rocket launcher!"

Design person 2: "Decepticons have just vaporised most of the population and are patrolling the entire city ground. Are those 6 humans an actual threat? How about we d0 a massive military counter attack, supported by auto bots."

Michael Bay: 'NO! I want my building rape scene! HMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm"

Design person 1: "Are you holding your breath?"

Michael Bay: "MMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNN"

Design person 2: "Ugh, ok fine. But can we at least have a scene where Optimus Prime doesn't violently decapitates Megatron in anger, as that is clearly against his whole character."

Michael Bay: "MMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNN"

Design person 1: "Oh for the love of... fuck this shit. Maybe Martin Scorcese is still hiring..."

That bit may have contained a spoiler. Don't read it if you haven't seen the movie.

So, while there are bits of unmistakeable coolness, most of the action is weird, crazy and not actually all that good. Also, the movie is 2,5 hours long which, I'm loath to admit, is far to long for a movie about robots beating each other.

Michael Bay, you are still a bad movie maker. However,  I will say this: the decision to remove the autobot twins was nice. Thank you for that. Had they been in this I would probably have been flopping on the cinema floor in convulsion. Now, please do not make a part 4. Instead, do a remake of War and Peace. That's one piece of literature even you would find difficult to mess up. And yes, that is a challenge.